Somebody put this to me the other day, and it's the most reasonable-sounding wrong idea in expansion right now:
Most expansion motions should happen later than companies want. Some customers need six quiet months before they hear another pitch. Quarterly targets wreck that.
Every part of that is a real observation, and the conclusion is still wrong. It's the same mistake as pushing, with a longer fuse.
Push and Wait Are the Same Move
Look at what both positions have in common.
Pushing says: I've decided now is the moment. Waiting says: I've decided six months from now is the moment. Different answers to the same question, and it's the wrong question, because in both versions you're the one holding the calendar.
The customer's situation doesn't appear anywhere in either decision. You either sent it early or you sent it late, and which one you did was about your quarter, your discipline, or your discomfort.
Waiting isn't restraint. It's the same offer, timed off the same calendar, delivered by someone who feels better about it.
And the six months of patience buys nothing on its own, which is the part that stings. The customer is not more ready in month seven because you were quiet in months one through six. They're just further away from having met you.
The Timing Was Never Yours
There's a third option and it isn't a compromise between the other two.
The customer's readiness sets the timing. Something observable happens, they arrive somewhere real, and the next thing becomes relevant because their situation changed rather than because your quarter did.
That moment isn't a mystery and it isn't a feel. If you've defined the milestones, you can count who's approaching one right now. A specific customer, a specific signal, a rough month.
Which means the question stops being when should I reach out and becomes when will they get there. You don't decide that. You observe it.
The Quiet Months Should Not Be Quiet
This is where the patient version does real damage, and I don't think people see it.
If you go dark for six months and then show up with an offer, you've produced exactly the reaction you were trying to avoid. From the customer's side nothing has changed. They didn't ask for this, they weren't thinking about it, and now a vendor is in their inbox with something to sell. That it arrived in month seven instead of month two makes no difference to how it lands.
Those months are not a waiting room. They're the orchestration window, and they're the only chance you get to make the eventual conversation feel like continuity.
You tell them early what's coming. What it costs. What has to be true before it makes sense for them. You tell them they're not ready yet, which is the part that makes the rest of it credible, because you just declined to sell them something.
Then when they arrive, you're not pitching. They're ready, and they're also willing and able, because they've had months to want it and months to budget for it. The conversation is the last step of something they've been walking toward, not the first step of something you decided to start.
What Quiet Actually Costs
Run the two versions side by side over the same six months.
In the patient version, nothing happens, and at the end of it you make an ask to someone who is hearing about this for the first time. If they're ready, some of them buy. Most don't, because ready was the only one of the three conditions you had.
In the orchestrated version, the same six months contain two or three short conversations that don't ask for anything. By the end, the customer has been thinking about this, has some idea what it costs, and has possibly told their own boss it's coming.
Same elapsed time. Same customer. One of those ends in a decision and the other ends in a surprise.
The Target Problem Is Real, and It's a Different Problem
The last part of the objection deserves a straight answer, because it's the one with teeth.
Quarterly targets do wreck this. But not because targets are wrong. Because a target applied to a motion with no readiness gate leaves pressure as the only available lever. If nobody can tell you who's approaching a milestone, then hitting the number means asking more people more often, and that's the behavior everybody correctly hates.
Build the gate and the target changes character. You're no longer setting a number and hoping. You're counting who will be ready inside the period and forecasting from that. A count of named accounts, not a percentage applied to a base.
The target didn't wreck the motion. The missing gate did, and the target just made the damage visible.
Two Sentences
If you're pitching, you're doing it wrong.
And waiting to deliver the pitch after an arbitrary quiet period is the same mistake with a longer fuse, because the timing was never yours to pick.
Lincoln Murphy formally named and popularized Customer Success starting in 2010 and has spent 15 years connecting it to expansion revenue and commercial outcomes. Read The Premise.