Product Specialists Are the New SDRs

This shift means the winning PLG companies are no longer just great at getting signups, they are great at noticing when a user is stuck and stepping in before momentum dies. The new rep is less a cold caller and more a live guide inside the product journey. They watch usage signals, like teammates invited, features touched, or a team hitting a limit, then help with setup, adoption, and handoff to sales only when the account is already showing real pull.

• This is a continuous journey, not two separate funnels. Self service gets a team in the door, then sales assist helps them move past the point where a credit card and help docs are no longer enough.
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• Airtable shows what this looks like in practice. It watched product signals, then customer success and implementation teams stepped in with training, schema design, and rollout help to turn small team usage into wider deployment.
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• The role also sits between sales, support, and success. In PLG companies, teams often use product specialists or sales assist reps who work from usage dashboards and alerts instead of lead lists, reaching out when behavior suggests expansion potential.
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Going forward, this becomes standard PLG infrastructure. The best companies will pair self serve entry with product aware human help, then gradually automate more of that work with AI, leaving account executives to focus on larger rollouts once product usage has already made the case.