Context & challenge: Implement a Product-Led Sales motion to generate a regular flow of highly qualified demos with ICPs

Rayon, a next-gen design tool for interior designers and architects where I was working as a Senior Growth Manager, had decided to launch a hybrid growth model:

1. Product-Led Growth (PLG): Most users signed up, activated, and monetized without human intervention. A fully self-serve funnel.

2. Product-Led Sales (PLS): High-value leads (ICPs, larger teams, bigger contract potential) required personalized human interaction to maximize their activation and monetization potential.

The challenge was to distinguish these two groups in an automated way and push the right users into the right funnel. The goal was to:

• Let self-serve users activate on their own (PLG).

• Identify high-value leads early and proactively engage them through sales touchpoints (PLS).

• Book more high-quality demos, knowing that demo attendance significantly increased both activation and monetization.

My Role: Building a segmented flow of communications & automating Product-Led Sales

As Growth Manager, I led the end-to-end implementation, from defining the scoring logic to setting up automated CRM flows in Customer.io. My work included:

• Developing a data-driven PQL scoring model to split users into PLG (self-serve) vs. PLS (sales-driven).

• Implementing CRM automation to drive demo bookings with top-tier leads.

• A/B testing messaging, targets, and timing to maximize performances.

The approach: Build a lead scoring and segmentation system to power the hybrid growth model

1. Identify high-value and low-value leads

To route users into the right funnel, I designed a PQL scoring system (1-100) based on two key dimensions:

A/ Demographic data → Who they are

To qualify high-value leads for PLS, we focused on:

• Job title (interior designer, architect, filtering out non-professionals).

• Team size (larger teams = higher ACV, better retention).

• Email type (business domain = strong buying intent, personal emails = low-value).

These signals filtered out hobbyists, students, and non-revenue-generating users, allowing us to focus on ICPs with the highest monetization potential.

B/ Product usage data → How they use the product

For better qualifying leads, I analyzed product behavior:

• Project creation & editing (early engagement signals).

• Exporting work (a strong proxy for real business usage).

• Feature usage intensity (predictive of monetization likelihood).

Depending on their demographics and product usage, users were routed to different segments, between PLG (fully self-serve) and PLS (sales-assisted) motions.

2. Feed the Product-led sales funnel with automated CRM sequences

Once users were scored and categorized, I automated targeted email chains using Customer.io.

📩 PLG (Self-Serve) users → Standard onboarding, light-touch email sequences, targeting students, hobbyists, and low-value ICPs.

🧑‍💻 PLS (Highly qualified ICPs) → Automated demo booking campaigns with personalized sales touchpoints.

• Sales-assisted demos helped showcase pricing, answer objections, and personalize onboarding.

• Demo attendees were significantly more likely to engage and monetize, reinforcing the PLS strategy.

Results: Scaling demo bookings & monetization

• 📊 5-6 high-quality demo bookings per week—fully automated.

• 🎯 More precise targeting of ICPs, leading to better retention & higher ACV.

• ⚙️ Efficient hybrid funnel, balancing PLG scalability with PLS revenue impact.

By combining an automated lead qualification with a structured Product-Led Sales approach, this system ensured that the right users received the right communications at the right time, maximizing activation and monetization.