How do I stop sales and the self-serve funnel from fighting over the same accounts?
Write the rules of engagement down before the first conflict, and make them about the account rather than about the person. Pick a clear line, usually company size or spend threshold, above which an account is owned by a rep and below which it stays self-serve forever, and publish it. Then decide the harder question: when a self-serve user inside a named account upgrades on their own, does the rep get credit. Say yes, because the alternative is reps quietly discouraging self-serve adoption in their territory, which costs you far more than the commission does. Review the threshold every two quarters, since a line drawn at 50 seats stops making sense once your average deal doubles.
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Kazanjy is blunt that almost every bottom-up company eventually adds sales, so the only questions are when and how. He covers the sequencing, the data plumbing, and the mistakes, including delegating the first sales conversations too early.
The clearest breakdown of the three PQL types (hand-raiser, usage-based, needs-help) and the playbook each one deserves, which is the difference between a useful signal and a list nobody works.
Verna lists the seven things founders wrongly believe PLG means, including that it replaces sales. Reading it early saves you from building a motion around a misunderstanding.
The later chapter of the same story: how Postman layered enterprise sales onto a developer flywheel without breaking it. This is the transition most Indian PLG companies get wrong.
Hila Qu added the self-serve motion at GitLab, a sales-led company, and this episode is the step by step order she would do it in again, plus the pitfalls of layering PLG on top of an existing sales team.
