Expansion Signal to PQL Handoff Playbook 2026
Your customers who upgraded showed you what ready looks like before they asked. This play checks every account against them each week, confirms the records before anyone calls it ready, and puts the move on the account in your CRM: an upgrade conversation for your AE, an in-app prompt your team chose to automate – or no move, with the reason noted.
An account can hit the ceiling of its plan, explore the tier above, and never say a word. Someone has to be paying attention.
Your customers who already upgraded show you exactly what that looks like – in usage and in revenue. An account that now matches them is ready for a conversation about the next plan. Some teams call that a product-qualified lead, or PQL. A new department is the second-department play; one add-on or a seat true-up is the seat and add-on play. The weekly check decides which of them runs this week.
Each match ends with a move your team decides on, or a note on why there isn't one. Measure it on the share of matched accounts that upgrade, expansion revenue from plan upgrades, and how many of those upgrades are still on the plan at renewal.
How it works9 steps
01SignalCompare every account with the customers who upgraded
Build the benchmark once per plan, refresh it quarterly:
- Comparison customers: accounts that moved up from this plan in the last two years and are still on the new one. Aim for 20; with fewer, label it low confidence.
- Their eight weeks before upgrading: plan-limit hits (projects, records, API calls – whatever your pricing meters), next-plan features tried (trials, locked-feature clicks), and seats used against the plan. Take the median of each, and their ARR before and after.
- What a match is: default, at or above the upgraders' median on two of the three usage measures, in three of the last four weeks. Your CS or sales lead approves it.
ARR is the comparison, not a match rule. Say an account pays $9,000 on your mid plan, and customers like it who moved up pay $18,000. The $9,000 gap is a comparison, not a forecast. (The numbers are illustrative.)
Under about a hundred accounts, do it by hand in a spreadsheet.
02ScoreCheck the records before calling it ready
- Open deal or quote? If someone is already talking about the upgrade, don't start a second thread.
- Buyer & power user: who signs (the CRM contact on the last deal) and who hits the limits most (your usage events). Record both now.
- Renewal date & terms: an upgrade inside 60 days of renewal (default) belongs in the renewal.
- Budget or org changes: 90 days of CRM notes and tickets. Check limit hits aren't a bug or a one-off import.
If one add-on would lift the limit they keep hitting, use the seat and add-on play instead.
03DecisionDecide whether there's a move worth making now
Leave it alone if the limit hits came from a bug or an import, a deal is already open, renewal is inside 60 days, or the check found a cut or a departed buyer. Everything else picks a move.
04ActionLeave it alone, and write down why
Set Recommended move to No move, write the reason in one line, and set Review date to when it could change. Don't pitch the upgrade before the account has felt the ceiling. When you do, lead with the specific limit they're hitting and what the next plan would change for them. More on writing the reason down in the leave-it-alone play.
05DecisionPick sales-led or self-serve
- Sales-led: the next plan needs a contract change or the buyer's sign-off, or it's above your self-serve ceiling (default: the largest plan you sell by card).
- Self-serve: the account can buy the next plan in the product and already pays that way.
06ActionOpen an upgrade deal with the evidence
Create the deal on the HubSpot record: current plan to next plan in the name, the price difference as the amount, the buyer as contact, and the three usage measures against the upgraders' in the description. It lands in the AE's pipeline with a task.
07ActionLet the product make the offer
An Intercom prompt at the moment the account hits its limit. Replies flow back to the HubSpot record through Intercom's HubSpot app, but a prompt nobody responds to doesn't. Note on the record that the prompt is live, so the owner knows what the account saw. Until your team has seen its matches hold up over a few weeks, the owner approves each one by ticking Prompt approved on the company record. The prompt only appears to approved accounts. After that, your team can choose to let it run without manual sign-off. Sync Recommended move, Prompt approved and Number of open deals from the HubSpot company to Intercom with HubSpot's Data Sync app, and exclude accounts whose Number of open deals is above 0, so a self-serve offer never lands mid-deal.
08Human stepThe AE decides and runs the conversation
The AE reads the evidence and runs it as drafted, changes it, or passes. Start with the power user – they feel the limit daily – then the buyer. The ask is arithmetic: what they hit, what the next plan adds, what it costs. Before acting, record the success measure and the review date: a call booked is progress; a paid upgrade is the result.
09OutcomeReview what changed, then sharpen the benchmark
On the review date, record three answers: did they upgrade, is the new plan being used, and what else played a part (a price change, a new hire, a competitor)? A prompt shown is activity, not progress. If nothing moved, change the move, stop it, or give it time. Each quarter, add the new upgraders to the benchmark and check which moves worked for which accounts. Where practical, randomize the timing of moves across equally eligible accounts. Otherwise, compare similar matched accounts over the same window and label the result observational.
Setup and templates
Sources: usage events from PostHog, Amplitude or Mixpanel (limit hits, locked-feature clicks, active users) as a weekly saved query; plan, seats and ARR from billing or the CRM; deals, contacts and notes from the CRM; tickets from your help desk. Account-level numbers need your analytics tool's account add-on (group analytics in PostHog, Accounts in Amplitude, Group Analytics in Mixpanel) and a group call in your app. Save the query, then subscribe to it (in Amplitude, add it to a dashboard and subscribe to that) so the result lands in your inbox or Slack on the schedule you set. By hand: export the three usage measures per account each Monday into a sheet beside plan and ARR, and mark the matches.
Company properties in HubSpot (Starter or above; free HubSpot allows 10 custom properties in total), or your CRM's account object:
| Property | Type | Filled by |
|---|---|---|
| Upgrade match | Number (0–3 measures) | Weekly check |
| Benchmark plan | Single-line text | Weekly check |
| Gap value | Number (currency) | Weekly check |
| Recommended move | Dropdown select: Upgrade deal · In-app prompt · No move | Weekly check |
| Move reason | Single-line text | Weekly check |
| Success measure | Single-line text | Account owner |
| Review date | Date picker | Weekly check, then account owner |
| Review result | Dropdown select: Upgraded, in use · Upgraded, not in use yet · Didn't upgrade · Stopped | Account owner |
| Prompt approved | Single checkbox | Account owner |
The automation here uses HubSpot workflows (any Professional hub). On Free or Starter, run the same saved view and create the tasks by hand. The weekly list is a saved view: Recommended move is known and Review date is this week or overdue. In HubSpot that's two filter groups: Review date is This week, or Review date is before Today. Each move creates a task for the owner, "Plan upgrade: [move]", with the draft in the body.
Intercom: the prompt fires on a "limit reached" event you send to Intercom. Event-triggered messages need Intercom's Proactive Support Plus add-on. Data Sync's custom mappings need Data Hub Starter or higher, and Number of open deals counts every pipeline. On Salesforce, put Recommended move, Prompt approved and an open-deal flag on the contact, since Intercom's Salesforce app syncs contact and lead fields. On Pipedrive, send them to Intercom from your product data or Segment.
Deal note to the power user (Sales-led):
Hi [name] – your team hit the [limit] limit [n] times this month, and [n] people have tried [next-plan feature]. Teams like yours usually move to [plan] about here. Worth fifteen minutes to see if it fits, and what it would cost?
Use this peer claim only if your records support the specific comparison, including any timing or plan choice. Otherwise describe this account's activity.
In-app prompt (Self-serve):
You've used [n] of [limit] [units]. [Plan] adds [what it adds]. [See plans] or [talk to owner name].
No move: "No move – [reason]. Recheck [date]."
How Accoil fits
Accoil is a customer-success consultancy with our own tooling, and this is a play we run with you, not for you. We build the benchmark with your team, and you approve it. Every week we check every account in the agreed segment, and the recommended move and its evidence land on the account record in your CRM – we recommend HubSpot – at a pace your team can actually run. Your team makes every call, including which moves run on their own. Nobody from Accoil contacts your customers. After the agreed window we review what changed together, and you keep the playbook, the benchmark and the analysis.
Running it yourself? Swap HubSpot for Salesforce or Pipedrive, and Intercom for Appcues. The play stays the same. On Salesforce, the field writes need API access (Enterprise and up, or an add-on on Professional). On Pipedrive, automations and date triggers need the Growth plan.
Thirty minutes with Kate, Simon or Peter on one example segment: what a successful customer looks like, where the gaps are, and whether there's work worth doing this quarter.
Talk to a founder →Keep reading
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