## TL;DR
Expansion revenue falls silently when the signals that fed it stop firing: usage-limit alerts, seat-growth triggers, or new-team detection. Customers do not announce they outgrew their plan. Compare this period's signal volume against the period when expansion was healthy; a signal that fell off a cliff while usage grew is the broken feeder.

```text
expansion revenue dropped: upsell signal detection failed
```

## Use this when
- Expansion revenue is down while product usage is flat or growing
- Accounts are hitting plan limits without anyone being alerted
- An analytics, billing, or CRM change touched the signal path

## Not for this skill when
- Expansion fell in line with a budget freeze across your market
- Pricing changes made expansion deliberately less attractive

## Steps
1. List the signals that historically triggered expansion plays and count them per month for a year. Verify: the signal whose volume broke is visible on the timeline
2. Check accounts currently over plan limits or at high utilisation and see whether any signal fired for them. Verify: live proof of missed signals is gathered
3. Trace the broken signal from product event to CRM task or alert. Verify: the failing hop (event, sync, or rule) is located
4. Repair it and run the missed-signal accounts through the expansion play with honest, evidence-based outreach. Verify: the backlog of genuine expansion candidates reaches AEs
5. Report signal volume beside expansion revenue monthly so a feeder break shows before the revenue does. Verify: the leading indicator is watched, not just the lagging revenue

## Variant phrasings
### expansion revenue down signals not firing
A related phrasing for the same underlying problem.
### usage limit alerts stopped
A related phrasing for the same underlying problem.
### upsell detection broken
A related phrasing for the same underlying problem.

Compatibility: Compatibility: usage-based expansion signals across billing limits, product analytics, and CRM task automation, current versions.

## Why it happens
Expansion pipelines are fed by detection, not demand creation: the demand is usage growth, and it continues whether or not anyone is notified. A drop in expansion with healthy usage therefore points at detection first, and signal-volume history is the detection system's own health chart.

## Edge cases / pitfalls
- Over-limit accounts may be deliberately tolerated for strategic reasons. Check the account list before treating every miss as a sales failure.
- Signals that fire too often get ignored into uselessness. Tune thresholds on precision from AE feedback, not just on volume.
- Backlog outreach must reference the customer's actual usage growth, not a generic upsell script, or it reads as a quota grab.

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_Qsi483ozAtfjM52kS7vbnw