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Prompt

Identify expansion signals on existing customers

Built by: Lusha
Time to build: 1 min
Difficulty: Easy
Tools: Claude ▪ Lusha

A Claude prompt that scans your customer book and surfaces which accounts are showing the signals that precede an expansion conversation. A customer surging hiring in the function you sold into needs more seats. A customer with a new CRO is rebuilding their vendor stack and your scope is open for review. A customer that closed a fresh round has unlocked budget for the next deployment.

The signals that make a prospect a buyer are the same signals that make an existing customer ready to expand. Built for CSMs and Account Managers running expansion plays and the QBR prep that precedes them.

Once Lusha is connected in Claude, the connector runs in the background — no special syntax needed. Just paste the customer list and run.

Images on this webpage are for illustrative purposes only. Any named individuals shown in live demo outputs are real, with last names abbreviated for privacy.

The prompt

Open in Claude Open in ChatGPT 
<context>
CSM or Account Manager. Scan my customer book and find which accounts are showing expansion signals: events that mean the customer's buying context just changed in a direction that creates upsell, cross-sell, or scope-expansion opportunity.

For each customer, I'll provide:
- Account name or domain
- Current spend with us (or product line)
- Function we sold into (Sales, Engineering, Marketing, etc.)
</context>

<task>
1. Customer list (one row per customer, with current spend area and function sold into):
   [PASTE CUSTOMER LIST]
2. For each customer, use Lusha's signals layer to scan the last 90 days for expansion triggers:
   - Hiring surge in the function we sold into (means more seats / more usage)
   - Hiring surge in adjacent function (means cross-sell opportunity)
   - New leadership in the buying group (new mandate, vendor scope under review)
   - Funding round, IPO, M&A (budget unlocked or stack consolidating)
   - Strategic investment in adjacent tech (direction of next spend)
   - Major product launch (new platform area where we could deepen scope)
   - Geographic expansion (new region rollout opportunity)
3. For each customer, return:
   - Customer name and current function/spend
   - Expansion trigger fired (or "stable: no signal")
   - Trigger date
   - Expansion angle: what conversation this opens
   - Recommended next step (QBR talking point, expansion proposal, multi-thread to new leader)
4. Rank customers by expansion-readiness:
   - READY: strong trigger fired in the last 60 days that maps cleanly to an expansion conversation
   - WARM: signal fired but the expansion angle requires more discovery
   - STABLE: no expansion-relevant signal in window (continue normal cadence)
</task>

<constraints>
- The expansion trigger has to map to an actual conversation you can have. A hiring surge in a function we don't sell into is interesting but doesn't drive expansion unless it opens cross-sell.
- New leadership is the strongest single expansion trigger when the new leader sits over the function we serve.
- Do not invent triggers. Surface only what Lusha returns.
- A customer with no triggers is not a failure. Surface them as STABLE for the next monthly scan.
</constraints>

What you'll get back

Input: 5-account customer book across enterprise SaaS (database, cloud data, cloud security, productivity, AI infrastructure). Each customer scoped with current spend area and function sold into. Window — last 90 days.

Output: 3 READY, 1 WARM, 1 STABLE. Below is the real result from running the prompt against the live Lusha connector.

Ready for expansion (strong signal in last 60 days)

[Database SaaS] — TRIGGER: NEW CRO arriving April 27, 2026

  • Current spend area: Sales productivity tooling for the corporate sales vertical
  • Trigger: Ryan M. appointed Chief Revenue Officer, effective April 27, 2026 — hired to “support next phase of growth”
  • Expansion angle: A new CRO inside their first 90 days will review every vendor in the GTM stack. The CSM’s job is to be on the calendar before the review starts, not after. Position the existing engagement as the foundation; tee up usage data and ROI metrics for the new CRO’s onboarding.
  • Recommended next step: Pre-empt the vendor review. Schedule a “new-leader briefing” with the original buyer and offer to co-present the impact summary to the incoming CRO in week 4-6 of their tenure.

[Cloud data platform] — TRIGGER: NEW CSTO + 3 ACQUISITIONS in AI data layer

  • Current spend area: Data platform tooling
  • Trigger: Brand-new Chief Security & Trust Officer (April 1, 2026), 3 acquisitions in 6 months (an agentic AI data engineering startup, a data catalog startup, an AI observability startup) — all AI-adjacent. Strategic investments in a decision intelligence startup and an agentic data trust startup.
  • Expansion angle: The account is publicly building an agentic AI data layer. Any product line that supports AI data quality, observability, or governance now has a direct connection to a stated strategic priority. The expansion conversation is no longer “more of what you bought” — it’s “how do we extend our scope into the AI data trust stack you’re publicly building.”
  • Recommended next step: Multi-thread to the new CSTO. Re-position the existing engagement as the entry point into a broader AI data trust scope.

[Cloud security SaaS] — TRIGGER: $5.8B FUNDING + EMEA expansion

  • Current spend area: Security platform deployment
  • Trigger: $5.8B valuation funding round (CapitalG-led, Dec 2025), new VP of EMEA (Feb 2026), new Head of Middle East with Dubai office opening (Jan 2026)
  • Expansion angle: Two expansion vectors firing simultaneously. The funding round unlocks budget for the next deployment phase. The EMEA and ME hires create geographic expansion opportunity if the current contract is US-only.
  • Recommended next step: Schedule a “post-round scope review” with the original buyer. If the current contract is US-only, request an introduction to the EMEA and ME leaders for regional rollout discussion.

Warm (signal fired, angle requires more discovery)

[Productivity SaaS] — TRIGGER: SALES HIRING SURGE +204%

  • Current spend area: Engineering productivity tooling
  • Trigger: Sales hiring +204% against a 16.7-job baseline (April 20, 2026)
  • Expansion angle: The trigger is real and intense, but the function surging (Sales) is not the function our engineering-tooling sale serves. Cross-sell opportunity exists if our product line extends into RevOps or sales enablement; if not, the signal is interesting but not directly actionable.
  • Recommended next step: If we have a relevant Sales-adjacent product, introduce. If not, monitor for an Engineering-side hiring surge as the expansion trigger we actually need.

Stable

[AI infrastructure SaaS] — no expansion-relevant trigger in the 90-day window

  • Current spend area: AI infrastructure deployment
  • Status: No trigger fired in the last 90 days. Funding negotiation in progress (covered in the prospecting gallery) but no closed event yet. Continue normal cadence.

Real signal data drawn across all 5 customers. Zero new credits consumed — reuses the signal scans already run earlier in the gallery.

Why use Lusha

Customer expansion fails when the CSM is the last person to know what changed at the account. Three patterns repeat across every CSM book.

New leadership in the buying group is the strongest expansion trigger. A new CRO, CTO, CMO, or CSTO has 90 days to review every vendor in scope. The CSM’s job is to be in the room during that review — ideally co-presenting the impact summary alongside the existing buyer, ideally before week 6 of the new leader’s tenure. A scheduled QBR three months after a new leader arrives is too late. The trigger has to surface in week 2 or 3 for the CSM to act in time. The database SaaS row above is the textbook case: incoming CRO with a public growth mandate is the expansion conversation the CSM should already be scheduling.

Strategic investments tell the CSM where to expand scope. When a customer invests in adjacent tech (for example, a cloud data platform investing in decision intelligence and data trust startups), the customer is publicly declaring direction of spend. Any CSM whose product line touches that adjacency has a clean expansion angle. Same when the customer acquires a company: the acquired tech is now in-scope and any complementary capability is in the expansion conversation.

Geographic and platform expansion creates new buying centers. A customer that opens an EMEA office and hires regional leadership has a new buying center the CSM’s current contract may not cover. The expansion conversation is structurally available — same product, new territory, new contract. A cloud security SaaS’s Dubai office plus an EMEA VP plus a new CSO is three different geographic expansion vectors in one account.

The STABLE customers are the validation. A CSM book where every account fires expansion triggers is unusual — most accounts move on quarterly or annual cycles. The prompt surfaces both ends so the CSM can prioritize the triggered accounts this month and trust that the stable accounts will surface on the next monthly scan when their triggers do fire.

Data drawn from Lusha’s signals layer, built on 300M+ verified contacts and millions of company records under GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2, ISO 27701, ISO 31700, and TRUSTe.

FAQ

  • How is this different from the closed-lost re-engagement prompt?

    The closed-lost prompt scans accounts where the rep already lost a deal — the trigger has to be material enough to re-open a conversation that ended. This prompt scans active customers where the relationship is open — the trigger has to be material enough to expand scope. Different starting points, different output framing. Same signal layer.

  • Why does the prompt ask for the function I sold into?

    A signal in the function the CSM serves is a direct expansion trigger. A signal in an adjacent function is a cross-sell opportunity. A signal in a completely unrelated function is interesting context but not directly actionable. The prompt uses the function input to filter the recommendation, not the signal scan itself.

  • How often should I run this against my book?

    Monthly is the right rhythm. Quarterly is too slow for the new-leader trigger (the 90-day window closes by then). Weekly is too noisy for expansion planning. Monthly aligns with QBR prep cycles and gives the CSM time to act before the trigger goes cold.

  • What if my customer's leadership change happened more than 90 days ago?

    The expansion window for a new leader is typically the first 90-120 days of tenure. After that, the leader has locked in their vendor list and is in execution mode rather than evaluation. The prompt focuses on the 60-90 day window for that reason — earlier triggers have a different conversation shape (you’ve missed the evaluation moment; lean into execution support instead).

  • Can I combine this with the buying group prompt?

    Yes. Once the CSM identifies a customer with a new leader trigger, the buying group prompt pulls the verified contacts at the account — including the new leader. The combined workflow is “customer book signal scan → buying group at READY customers → outreach to new leadership.”

  • Does the prompt cover renewal-risk signals?

    This prompt focuses on expansion-positive triggers. Renewal-risk signals — leadership departures, layoffs, headcount decreases, M&A as the acquired party — are a different scan and warrant their own prompt. For now, surface them manually when running the broader weekly digest: a dedicated renewal-risk prompt is a candidate for a future addition to the gallery.

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