Product-led and sales-led growth get framed as rivals. In practice the best motion is one pipeline where usage signals decide when a human enters — and the human never interrupts a happy self-serve buyer.

Designing the handoff

  1. Let everyone start self-serve. Friction-free signup builds the top of funnel and the usage data.
  2. Define a product-qualified signal — team invites, hitting a usage ceiling, touching an enterprise feature. That, not a form fill, triggers sales.
  3. Arm the rep with the usage story. They should open knowing exactly what the account has done, not asking discovery questions the product already answered.
  4. Don't gate value behind a demo. If a buyer wants to self-serve to a paid plan, let them; reserve reps for accounts that need them.

Bottom line: make usage the qualifier — humans should accelerate accounts that are already succeeding, not stand between buyers and value.