How Your Sales Team Can Use PLG to Acquire and Expand New Customers Faster with Uday Chakravarth, Former Head of PLG at Atlassian

Product-led growth used to sound like a polite way of telling salespeople, “Thanks, but the product has this covered.” That was always too simple. In real life, especially in B2B SaaS, PLG does not eliminate sales. It changes when sales enters the conversation, what data sales uses, and how reps create value once the product has already done the first handshake.

That is why Uday Chakravarthi’s perspective matters. As a former product-led growth leader at Atlassian and founder of Clinch AGI, he has seen PLG from both the enterprise software giant side and the scrappy startup side. Atlassian helped make the product-led growth model famous by letting users discover, try, buy, and expand tools like Jira and Confluence with far less friction than traditional enterprise software. The lesson for modern revenue teams is not “fire the sales team and let a signup button run the company.” Please do not put that on a slide. The better lesson is this: when your product creates real usage, your sales team gets a warmer, smarter, faster path to revenue.

In a product-led sales motion, the product becomes the scout. It identifies who is interested, who is successful, who is stuck, who is inviting teammates, and who is quietly becoming a company-wide opportunity. Sales then steps in with context, timing, and a helpful point of view. That combination can reduce wasted outreach, improve conversion rates, and unlock expansion before competitors even know an account is active.

What PLG Really Means for Sales Teams

Product-led growth, or PLG, is a go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion. Users do not need to sit through a 47-slide demo to understand the value. They can try the product, experience an “aha moment,” and decide whether it solves a real problem.

For sales teams, PLG is not a threat. It is a better radar system. Instead of chasing cold leads based only on job title, company size, or whether someone downloaded a white paper called “The Future of Something,” sales can prioritize people and accounts that already show buying intent through behavior.

The Shift from MQLs to Product Signals

Traditional sales and marketing funnels rely heavily on marketing-qualified leads. A user attends a webinar, fills out a form, or opens emails, and suddenly they are “qualified.” Sometimes that works. Sometimes the lead only wanted the free template and has now returned to the cave from which they came.

PLG introduces a more useful signal: the product-qualified lead, or PQL. A PQL is a user who has experienced value inside the product and taken actions that suggest readiness to buy. Those actions might include inviting teammates, hitting a usage limit, creating multiple projects, connecting integrations, using advanced features, or returning consistently over several days.

Even better for B2B sales is the product-qualified account, or PQA. A PQA looks beyond one user and asks: Is there meaningful product activity across a company or domain? Are multiple teams adopting the product? Has an admin appeared? Are security, reporting, permissions, or collaboration needs becoming visible? When those signals show up, sales can enter with relevance instead of a megaphone.

The Atlassian Lesson: Let the Product Open the Door

Atlassian’s rise is often used as a PLG case study because the company built massive adoption through self-service, transparent pricing, product quality, and bottom-up usage. Teams could discover Jira, Confluence, Trello, or related tools, start solving problems quickly, and expand from a handful of users to larger groups. The product did not merely support the go-to-market motion. It was the front door.

That does not mean enterprise sales becomes irrelevant. As companies grow, the purchase becomes more complex. Legal teams want contract terms. IT wants security reviews. Finance wants procurement controls. Executives want consolidation. Department leaders want proof that adoption is real. In other words, the product may start the relationship, but sales helps turn scattered value into durable business impact.

Uday Chakravarthi’s Core PLG Insight

The practical idea behind Uday Chakravarthi’s PLG approach is simple: the customer should feel value before they are asked to make a bigger commitment. A freemium model, free trial, self-service signup, or low-friction product experience works because users can test-drive the software. Nobody buys a car because the brochure says the cup holders are emotionally transformative. They get in, drive, and feel the difference.

Sales teams should treat PLG the same way. Do not rush every signup into a generic pitch. First, observe what the user is trying to accomplish. Then help them remove friction, reach value faster, and understand what the next level of success could look like.

How Sales Can Use PLG to Acquire Customers Faster

Acquisition in a PLG motion starts before a rep ever speaks to a prospect. The product captures demand by making it easy to try, easy to understand, and easy to share. Sales accelerates that demand when product signals reveal a serious opportunity.

1. Prioritize Accounts Based on Behavior, Not Guesswork

A sales team using PLG should not treat all signups equally. A user who logs in once and vanishes is not the same as a team that invites eight coworkers, connects Slack, creates five dashboards, and bumps into a usage cap by Thursday. One is a curiosity. The other is a buying committee wearing a trench coat.

Useful acquisition signals include:

• Multiple users from the same company domain signing up
• Repeated weekly usage from key personas
• Invitations sent to teammates or external collaborators
• Activation milestones completed quickly
• Use of premium, admin, security, or reporting features
• Integration setup with core business systems
• Usage limits reached during a trial or freemium plan

These signals help sales focus on accounts that are already leaning forward. That means fewer awkward “just checking in” emails and more useful conversations like, “I noticed your team is building three workflows across two departments. Want to compare how similar teams structure permissions before rollout?”

2. Replace Generic Outreach with Product-Aware Messaging

PLG gives sales teams the gift of context. Instead of opening with “Would you like to see a demo?” reps can open with a specific observation. The difference is enormous.

A weak message says: “Hi, I saw you signed up. Do you have 30 minutes?”

A PLG-informed message says: “Hi, I noticed your team invited five collaborators and started using reporting. Teams at this stage usually run into questions around permissions, templates, and scaling usage. I can share a quick setup checklist if helpful.”

The second message respects the user’s journey. It also sounds like it came from a human being, not a toaster with a sales quota.

3. Use In-Product Moments to Support the Sales Conversation

Sales does not have to live only in email and calendar links. In PLG companies, the product itself becomes a communication channel. In-app prompts, upgrade nudges, onboarding checklists, usage alerts, and contextual help can guide users toward the next best action.

The key is restraint. In-app messaging should feel like help, not a pop-up ambush. A prompt that appears when a user hits a usage limit can be helpful. A prompt that appears every 90 seconds like a caffeinated raccoon is not PLG. It is harassment with branding.

How Sales Can Use PLG to Expand Customers Faster

PLG is especially powerful for expansion. Once a team is using the product, usage data can reveal where value is growing, where adoption is stuck, and where a larger commercial conversation makes sense.

1. Find Seat Expansion Before the Renewal

Traditional expansion often waits for renewal season. PLG sales teams do not have to wait. If more users are joining, more teams are collaborating, or admins are manually managing access, expansion signals are already visible.

For example, imagine a design operations tool adopted by one product team. Two months later, engineering starts commenting on projects, customer success uses templates, and leadership asks for reporting. That is not just “good usage.” It is an account expansion story. Sales can help package the value into a larger plan, better governance, and a roadmap for broader adoption.

2. Turn Support Questions into Expansion Clues

Support tickets are often treated as problems. In PLG, they can also be buying signals. When customers ask about permissions, audit logs, user management, billing consolidation, integrations, or advanced workflows, they may be telling you the account is outgrowing its current plan.

That does not mean every support ticket should trigger an upsell pitch. Nobody wants to report a bug and receive a contract amendment. But when support, customer success, and sales share product context, they can identify accounts that need a more strategic conversation.

3. Use Multi-Product Adoption as a Growth Lever

Atlassian’s ecosystem shows why multi-product expansion can be so powerful. A team may start with one tool for project tracking, then adopt documentation, service management, incident response, or planning tools as collaboration needs expand. The more connected the workflow, the more natural the expansion path becomes.

Sales teams should map common adjacency patterns. What product do teams usually adopt next? Which features predict a need for another module? Which customer outcomes become easier when two products work together? Expansion becomes faster when reps can connect the dots from actual workflow behavior instead of pushing a random bundle because the quarter ends soon. Customers can smell quarter-end desperation. It smells like stale coffee and discount approval forms.

Building a Product-Led Sales Motion Step by Step

Product-led sales works best when it is designed intentionally. It is not enough to buy an analytics tool, dump 4,000 events into a dashboard, and tell sales to “go be data-driven.” That is how dashboards become expensive wallpaper.

Step 1: Define the Aha Moment

The aha moment is the point where a user first experiences meaningful value. For a collaboration tool, it might be inviting teammates and completing a shared project. For a data platform, it might be connecting a data source and building the first useful report. For a sales automation tool, it might be launching the first sequence and receiving a qualified reply.

Sales, product, marketing, and customer success should agree on this moment. If the teams cannot define value clearly, they cannot route leads intelligently.

Step 2: Create a PQL and PQA Scoring Model

A strong scoring model combines three ingredients: fit, value, and intent. Fit tells you whether the user or company matches your ideal customer profile. Value tells you whether the product is actually helping them. Intent tells you whether behavior suggests a buying or expansion opportunity.

A basic model might score accounts based on company size, target industry, number of active users, activation milestone completion, feature depth, teammate invitations, integration usage, and pricing-page visits. Start simple. The goal is not to build a NASA launch panel. The goal is to help reps know whom to contact, when, and why.

Step 3: Route Leads Based on the Right Motion

Not every user needs a salesperson. Some should remain self-serve. Some need customer success. Some need technical help. Some are ready for an account executive. Routing matters because PLG breaks when every signup gets treated like an enterprise opportunity.

A simple routing structure might look like this:

• Low fit, low usage: nurture with lifecycle emails and self-serve education.
• Good fit, early usage: support activation with onboarding content or in-app guidance.
• Good fit, strong usage: route to sales with product context.
• Existing customer, rising usage: route to customer success or expansion sales.
• Enterprise account with multiple teams active: trigger strategic account planning.

Step 4: Train Reps to Sell Like Advisors

PLG selling is less about convincing someone that the product is useful and more about helping them scale the value they already found. Reps should ask questions like:

• What workflow are you trying to standardize?
• Which teams are likely to join next?
• What would make rollout easier?
• Do you need admin controls, reporting, security, or procurement support?
• What outcome would make this product impossible to remove six months from now?

That last question is especially useful. PLG creates adoption, but sales helps turn adoption into an outcome the business can defend.

Metrics That Matter in Product-Led Sales

PLG teams should measure more than top-line revenue. The magic is in the movement from user behavior to commercial outcome.

Acquisition Metrics

• Visitor-to-signup conversion rate
• Signup-to-activation conversion rate
• Time to value
• PQL volume and PQL-to-paid conversion
• PQA volume and account conversion rate
• Sales-assisted conversion rate

Expansion Metrics

• Product adoption by team, department, and account
• Seat growth rate
• Feature adoption depth
• Expansion pipeline sourced from product signals
• Net revenue retention
• Multi-product attach rate
• Renewal health score

The most important rule: do not reward sales for interrupting self-serve revenue that would have converted anyway. Measure assisted impact carefully. A good product-led sales team accelerates revenue, expands account value, and improves customer outcomes. It does not simply attach itself to every successful signup like a barnacle with a LinkedIn profile.

Common PLG Mistakes Sales Teams Should Avoid

Mistake 1: Contacting Users Too Early

If a user has not experienced value yet, a sales call may feel premature. Let the product do its job first. Use onboarding, lifecycle emails, and in-app guidance to help users activate before asking for a meeting.

Mistake 2: Treating Product Data as Surveillance

There is a fine line between helpful context and creepy detail. “I saw your team is exploring reporting” is useful. “I noticed you clicked the blue button at 2:13 p.m. while eating what I assume was a turkey sandwich” is not. Use product data to be relevant, not weird.

Mistake 3: Keeping Sales, Product, and CS in Separate Worlds

PLG is cross-functional by nature. Product designs the experience. Marketing drives awareness and education. Sales converts and expands the right accounts. Customer success protects adoption and outcomes. RevOps connects the data. If these teams do not share definitions and feedback loops, the PLG engine sputters.

Mistake 4: Copying Atlassian Without Understanding the Context

Atlassian’s model worked because its products solved urgent team collaboration problems, could spread organically, and offered clear self-service value. Not every product can copy that exactly. Highly regulated, deeply customized, or service-heavy products may need more sales involvement earlier. The smart move is not to mimic Atlassian’s surface tactics. It is to adopt the principle: reduce friction, create value early, and use sales where human help increases the customer’s success.

Practical Experiences: What PLG Looks Like Inside a Sales Team

Here is where the theory gets its shoes dirty. In real sales teams, PLG often begins with a little confusion. Reps are used to asking, “Who is the decision-maker?” Product-led selling adds new questions: “Who is already using the product? Who invited whom? Which team reached value first? What behavior predicts expansion?” At first, this can feel like sales has been handed a mystery novel and told to find revenue on page 212.

One common experience is the “quiet champion” account. A mid-level manager signs up with no sales conversation. Over a few weeks, she builds workflows, invites teammates, and starts using advanced features. In a traditional sales-led motion, she might never have been prioritized because she was not a C-level buyer. In a PLG motion, her behavior lights up the account. A smart rep reaches out with practical help, not pressure: templates, rollout advice, admin guidance, or a comparison of team plans. The conversation begins with momentum already in place.

Another experience is the “usage ceiling” moment. A team loves the product but hits a limit: seats, storage, automations, reports, integrations, or permissions. This is not just a billing event. It is a value event. The customer has done enough with the product to need more of it. Sales can step in to explain options, connect the upgrade to the team’s goals, and prevent the customer from duct-taping together a workaround that will later become everyone’s problem.

Sales managers also notice a cultural shift. Pipeline reviews become less theatrical and more diagnostic. Instead of asking only, “What did the prospect say?” managers ask, “What has the account done?” Reps bring product usage screenshots, activation data, team maps, and expansion indicators. The conversation becomes grounded in observable behavior. Forecasting improves because intent is not based only on verbal enthusiasm. As every experienced seller knows, “This looks great” can mean anything from “We are buying tomorrow” to “I am ending this call politely.”

There is also a learning curve for messaging. Reps have to stop acting like the product is a secret they must reveal. In PLG, users have already seen the product. They may know features better than the rep expects. The rep’s job is to connect usage to business impact. That means asking sharper questions and bringing more relevant examples. “Would you like a demo?” becomes “Would it help to map how your current workflow could scale from one team to three?” That is a very different conversation.

The best PLG sales teams also feed insights back to product. When reps repeatedly hear that users struggle before activation, product can improve onboarding. When expansion stalls because admins need better reporting, product can prioritize account-level analytics. When customers upgrade after adopting a specific integration, marketing can build campaigns around that workflow. PLG is not just a sales tactic. It is a company learning system.

The biggest experience-based lesson is this: product-led sales works when sales earns its place in the journey. The rep is not there to interrupt the product. The rep is there to help the customer turn early value into broader, stickier, more measurable value. When that happens, acquisition gets faster, expansion gets cleaner, and customers feel like the company understands them. That is the kind of growth engine Uday Chakravarthi’s Atlassian experience points toward: product first, data-informed, sales-assisted, and relentlessly focused on customer value.

Conclusion

Product-led growth gives sales teams a faster path to the right customers because it replaces guesswork with behavior. Users reveal intent through what they do: activating, inviting, integrating, expanding, and hitting limits. Sales teams that know how to read those signals can engage at the right moment with the right message.

The Atlassian lesson, reinforced by Uday Chakravarthi’s PLG experience, is not that sales should disappear. It is that sales should become more precise. The product creates demand, proves value, and shows where opportunity exists. Sales turns that opportunity into a bigger business outcome.

For SaaS companies, the winning model is increasingly hybrid: self-serve where the product can carry the journey, sales-assisted where human expertise accelerates conversion, and customer success where adoption needs to deepen. Done well, PLG helps your sales team acquire new customers faster, expand existing accounts sooner, and spend less time convincing people who were never going to buy anyway. And honestly, that is a beautiful thing. Somewhere, a CRM field just shed a tear.