Founder-led, sales-led, or marketing-led growth?

A while back I saw a poll on LinkedIn that got my attention. It was created by Pierre Herubel and the question was: “What is your company’s growth strategy?”.

4 potential answers: Sales-led growth, Product-led growth, Marketing-led growth, and Founder-led growth.

The results after 448 votes, were kind of surprising for me:

• Sales-led growth – 39%
• Product-led growth – 18%
• Marketing-led growth – 28%
• Founder-led growth – 16%

If you believed what surprised me was that Sales-led growth was the first choice, that’s not the case.

In a world where with $100 you can scrape emails, create content with ChatGPT, and send them in bulk, it’s not a surprise.

The real surprise is that I was expecting to see a clear winner, probably Sales-led, and even if it has 39%, it’s still not a clear winner.

It’s more a confirmation of “We need to do sales to get clients, but also don’t forget about some blogs and LinkedIn posts”.

I don’t want to say everyone has this approach, but I have seen this mindset over and over during the years…

Btw, I let Product-led growth on the outside because if we talk about services without self-serving, it’s a different story.

So, Founder-led, Sales-led, or Marketing-led growth?

Well, to see the results of the poll from Pierre, I picked Founder-Led. I did that because of 2 big reasons:

First, it kind of combines Sales-led with Marketing-led, because the point is to involve the founder in both of the activities.

And second, “the founder thing” is the most unique unfair advantage a company ever has and this can be leveraged in several ways.

But if you ask me, no matter what I picked or someone else did, the answer is not the right one.

Because to drive sustainable growth over time, you need to make these 3 work like a well-oiled machine.

Call it FSM, FMS, MSF, FSM-led growth, or whatever model.

You need to have a Sales-led approach for short-term results and rapid experimentation with less budget.

You need to have a Founder-led approach to highlight your most unique unfair advantage and “be in the market”.

You need to have a Marketing-led approach for long-term results, demand creation, and demand capture.

The Sales-led approach might lead to team silos, Marketing-led to burned budgets, and Founder-led to missing opportunities.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.