PLG CONSULTING — Diagnose and build the self-serve motion

Jake McMahon
Jake McMahon — ProductQuant
8+ years B2B SaaS · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data (Masters)

Your product starts acquiring and retaining users through itself — not just through your sales team.

Product-led growth means your product does a share of the selling: users sign up, find value on their own, and expand without a rep involved at every step. This engagement diagnoses where that motion is breaking, builds the data and onboarding layer it needs, and leaves your team running it without outside dependency.

Start with a focused audit. Then build the motion.

WHAT YOU HAVE AT THE END

Activation diagnosis The exact step where sign-ups stop becoming active users — confirmed by data
Clean instrumentation Event taxonomy, dashboards, and segments the team can act on
Onboarding rebuilt Redesigned around the moment users first get real value from the product
Operating cadence A weekly review loop your team runs without waiting on a consultant
Self-serve motion Users acquire, activate, and expand without a sales rep at every step

Audit firstthen build

We redesign your product to grow itself.

You get a specific plan for turning your product into your best acquisition and retention channel — so growth doesn't depend entirely on sales.

FREE-TO-PAID

Thousands sign up for your free plan. Almost nobody upgrades.

We find the exact moment users hit a limit that should trigger an upgrade — and redesign that moment so upgrading feels like the obvious next step, not a paywall.

VIRAL LOOPS

Your users love the product but never invite their team.

We identify the features that naturally involve other people and build sharing prompts into those moments. Your users bring in new users because the product makes it easy.

ACTIVATION

New signups create an account and never come back.

We map the steps between signup and "aha moment" and remove every unnecessary one. Users reach value faster, so they stick around instead of bouncing.

SELF-SERVE REVENUE

Every deal requires a sales call, even for your smallest plan.

We build a self-serve upgrade path so small customers can buy without talking to anyone. Your sales team focuses on enterprise while revenue grows in the background.

ACTIVATION
FIXED

Activation gaps identified and resolved — the exact step where users stalled, confirmed with data, rebuilt and measured.

RETENTION
EARLIER

At-risk accounts surfaced weeks before they cancel — CS acts on a weekly list instead of reacting to churn that already happened.

EXPERIMENTS
RUNNING

Experiment program live — hypotheses grounded in real data, results that produce clear ship-or-kill decisions every sprint.

Teams Jake has worked with

Gainify
Guardio
monday.com
Payoneer
thirdweb
Canary Mail

THREE SIGNS THE SELF-SERVE MOTION ISN’T WORKING

Users sign up but never reach the value moment

“We see hundreds of signups a month. But when I look at how many of them actually do the thing the product is designed to do — use the core feature, get the output — it’s a fraction. They just leave before they get there.”

Head of Product — Series A B2B SaaS

Sales carries all the revenue — the product can’t close on its own

“Every conversion still involves a demo, a rep, and a proposal. We wanted self-serve two years ago. But the product experience isn’t good enough to get a user from trial to paid without someone holding their hand through it.”

CEO — B2B SaaS, Series B

Users activate but don’t stick — churn starts inside 60 days

“The onboarding looks fine. Users get through it. But 60 days later half of them are gone and we can’t explain why. The product is doing enough to get them through the door. It’s not doing enough to make them stay.”

VP Growth — B2B SaaS

WHAT’S INCLUDED

16 deliverables that turn product-led growth from theory into an operating system.

Deliverable 01
Activation Funnel Audit from Signup to Value Moment

Every step between a new signup and the moment they first experience genuine value is mapped against your real data — revealing exactly where users are dropping out and what's causing it, so your team knows where to focus before writing a single line of code.

Deliverable 02
Instrumentation and Analytics Foundation Review

Your current analytics setup is assessed against what a functioning PLG motion actually needs to measure — identifying the specific gaps that are making your activation and retention data unreliable or incomplete.

Deliverable 03
Value Moment Definition Against Retention Data

The specific in-product action that most strongly predicts whether a user will still be retained months later is identified from your data — giving your product team one clear, evidence-backed target to engineer toward rather than debating proxies.

Deliverable 04
Experiment Prioritisation Framework Development

A structured system for deciding which activation improvements to test first is built around your specific funnel data — so your team is always working on the highest-leverage fix rather than the loudest internal request.

Deliverable 05
Weekly Review Rhythm Design

The cadence, format, and agenda for your ongoing PLG review meetings is designed from the ground up — so your team spends time making decisions rather than arguing about metrics or sitting through status updates.

Deliverable 06
Activation Funnel Audit Report

A written report documenting your full activation funnel with conversion rates at every step, annotated with the highest-priority drop-off points and the likely causes behind each one.

Deliverable 07
Instrumentation and Analytics Foundation Setup

The critical gaps in your analytics setup are resolved — so your team is measuring activation, retention, and conversion against real data rather than approximations and best guesses.

Deliverable 08
Onboarding Redesign Around Value Moment

Your onboarding flow is restructured to lead users directly toward the value moment your retention data has validated — removing friction, reducing time-to-value, and increasing the proportion of new users who actually make it through.

Deliverable 09
Experiment Setup and Prioritised Fix List

Your highest-leverage activation improvements are documented as ready-to-run experiments, scored and sequenced — so your team can start testing immediately without spending weeks in planning.

Deliverable 10
Weekly Review Rhythm Template

A repeatable meeting template your team uses every week to review activation metrics, assess live experiments, and decide what to focus on next — without the meeting drifting into discussion that doesn't produce a decision.

Deliverable 11
Self-Serve Motion Measurement System

A measurement framework that gives you a continuous, real-time view of how your self-serve motion is performing — so leadership can see PLG health at a glance and your team always knows what the numbers are saying.

Deliverable 12
Tracking Plan Documentation

Every event your product tracks is documented with its name, trigger, properties, and purpose — so new engineers and analysts can understand your data model without needing to reverse-engineer it from the codebase.

Deliverable 13
Onboarding Redesign Specifications

The full specification for your revised onboarding flow is written up so that product and engineering can implement it without ambiguity — covering copy, step sequence, logic, and edge cases.

Deliverable 14
Experiment Design Templates

Reusable templates for structuring new experiments so your team can design tests that are statistically sound and clearly documented, without starting from scratch every time.

Deliverable 15
Weekly Review Agenda Template

A written agenda that keeps your weekly PLG review on track — with a defined structure for reviewing metrics, discussing experiment results, and locking in the next priority before the meeting ends.

Deliverable 16
Team Training Session (Recorded) + 30-Day Implementation Support + Weekly Review Facilitation + Experiment Design Guidance

A structured session covering your full PLG framework, recorded for any new team member who joins. A month of direct access for implementation questions. Weekly review facilitation during the engagement so your team learns the rhythm by doing it. Each new experiment designed during the engagement is reviewed and refined before it runs.

Everything above for $3,497. No hourly billing. No scope creep. Everything stays with your team.

HOW IT WORKS

Audit first, then build — so implementation is pointed at the right problems.

PHASE 1

Audit

Funnel mapped from event data. Instrumentation gaps flagged. Activation breakpoints confirmed. Priority fixes scoped by impact and effort.

PHASE 2

Build

Tracking plan implemented. Onboarding rebuilt around the value moment. Dashboards live. Experiment designs drafted and ready to run.

PHASE 3

Run

Weekly review cadence installed. Ownership made explicit. Monthly prioritisation in place. Team keeps improving without outside input.

Audit only · or audit + build · or full ongoing advisory — choose the scope that matches where you are.

FIT CHECK

The work is strongest once the product creates real value and the constraint is scaling it cleanly.

GOOD FIT
Series A or B with a working product and a self-serve gap
Founder · CPO · Head of Growth

You have a product customers pay for. You either have a self-serve trial that isn’t converting well enough, or you’re building one and want to get it right before it goes live. Sales is closing deals but you want the product to carry more of the load — fewer demos, more users who get there on their own.

  • The exact activation breakpoints confirmed with your data
  • Onboarding rebuilt around the moment users get real value
  • A data layer the team trusts and acts on
  • A weekly review loop that runs without consultant input

The product does more of the acquiring and retaining — sales effort goes where it actually matters.

NOT A FIT
Pre-PMF, no product analytics, or no self-serve motion planned
Wrong stage or wrong problem

If you haven’t validated that the product creates value for customers, PLG work is premature — the thing that needs fixing is the product itself. If you have no event data at all, the audit won’t produce reliable results. And if you’re enterprise-only with no intention to build a self-serve motion, this engagement isn’t the right fit.

For instrumentation setup before any analysis sprint, or for a focused look at churn rather than activation, get in touch and we’ll point you at the right place to start.

Jake McMahon

Jake McMahon — ProductQuant

Jake McMahon
8+ years B2B SaaS · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data (Masters)

I run this work myself. The funnel mapping, the instrumentation review, the onboarding redesign, the weekly cadence install — all of it. PLG is not a feature or a campaign. It’s a set of conditions that have to be true at the same time: users can find value without a rep, the data layer shows what’s working, and the team reviews and iterates on a regular basis. When one of those is missing, the others don’t compensate.

My background is in the behavioural and quantitative side: understanding why users make the choices they do inside a product, and building the measurement layer that makes those choices visible. Every deliverable from this engagement is formatted for the person who needs to use it — the funnel map for your PM, the tracking plan for your engineer, the experiment designs for your growth team.

I won’t do this:
  • Define your value moment without checking it against retention data
  • Recommend onboarding changes without looking at where the funnel actually breaks
  • Deliver a ranked fix list without quantifying the expected impact per fix
  • Install a weekly cadence and leave without documenting who runs what
What if your analytics are a mess?
Start with the audit. Poor instrumentation is the most common reason PLG work stalls — teams can’t see where activation breaks because the event layer doesn’t track it. The audit identifies exactly what’s missing and produces a tracking plan that fixes it. If the data is genuinely too sparse to support a funnel analysis, I’ll tell you in week one and we’ll scope what’s possible instead.

Teams Jake has worked with

Gainify
Guardio
monday.com
Payoneer
thirdweb
Canary Mail

PRICING

Start with the audit or move straight into implementation.

Full engagement

PLG Implementation

$15K–$25K
fixed scope · 4–6 weeks
  • Everything in the audit
  • Event taxonomy built and instrumentation implemented
  • Onboarding redesigned around the value moment
  • Activation, retention, and expansion dashboards live
  • Experiment designs per fix, ready to run
  • Weekly operating cadence installed with full documentation
Book a Call →

Scope confirmed after the audit. Monthly advisory also available for teams that want ongoing support.

On the audit: if we cannot identify and rank the activation breakpoints from your data, we will scope what's possible at no additional cost before you decide to continue. The deliverable is a clear diagnosis or a clear path forward.

Questions.

Or book a call →
What is product-led growth, exactly? +
PLG is a go-to-market approach where the product itself does part of the acquiring, activating, and retaining — through free trials, self-serve onboarding, and in-product expansion paths. Instead of every new user needing a sales rep to close them, the product is designed to take users from sign-up to real value on their own. Most B2B SaaS companies are somewhere on the spectrum: some PLG, some sales-assisted. This engagement helps you build or improve the product-led side of that motion.
Do we need to shut down sales-assisted to do PLG? +
No. The goal is not to replace sales — it’s to let the product carry users who can get there on their own, so sales can focus on accounts where human involvement genuinely changes the outcome. Most teams that engage in this work end up with both motions running in parallel: a self-serve track for users who activate without help, and a sales-assisted track for accounts that need it. PLG and sales work together when each is pointed at the right users.
What if we don’t have a self-serve motion yet? +
That’s a valid starting point. Some teams engage to build a self-serve trial from scratch rather than to fix a broken one. In that case the audit scopes what needs to be true before self-serve can work — onboarding flow, instrumentation, activation definition — and the implementation builds it. The outcome is the same: a product experience that can convert users without requiring a rep at every step.
What does my team need to provide? +
Read-only access to your analytics tool — PostHog, Mixpanel, Amplitude, or similar — and view access to session recordings if you have them. For the implementation phase, you’ll need an engineer available to instrument events and ship onboarding changes. The audit requires no engineering time from your team. Implementation scope is confirmed after the audit, so you know exactly what’s required before committing.
Is there an ongoing advisory option? +
Yes. After the implementation sprint, some teams continue with a monthly advisory engagement. That covers the weekly operating cadence review, experiment prioritisation, and continued iteration as the product and user base evolve. Pricing for ongoing advisory is discussed after the implementation scope is agreed and depends on the level of involvement required.
How is this different from hiring a PLG consultant through an agency? +
Agencies typically staff multiple consultants across accounts, which means the person you meet in the sales process is rarely the person doing the work. This engagement is done by me directly — the funnel analysis, the instrumentation review, the onboarding redesign, the documentation. You get one person who understands your product end-to-end and produces work formatted for your team to act on, not a generalised framework delivered via slide deck.

Build the motion where your product acquires and retains users without a rep in every conversation.

Start with a two-week audit that shows exactly where sign-ups stop becoming active users — confirmed by your data, not assumptions. Then decide whether to build from there.