Expand Sales - The Do's and the Don'ts

Expand sales. Everyone wants to do it; many think they are doing it. But very few know how to do it well. Having just come back from the TSIA Envision conference in Las Vegas where I had countless conversations about expansion with attendees, I'm finding that there's still a great deal of confusion on how to execute expand sales effectively.

But first off – what exactly is expand sales? It includes additional revenue opportunities that can be derived from your existing customer base once the initial sale is made. These could include opportunities for cross-sell, upsell, refresh or upgrade, that will create “stickiness” and extend the lifetime value of your customer.

Your existing customer base presents the greatest opportunity for cost-effective, profitable, revenue growth¹ . Yet despite this, expand sales strategies often stall and rarely progress from an initiative, campaign, or dare I say - an aspiration, to becoming a key driver of ongoing revenue growth.

I have identified some of the do’s and don’ts to achieving an effective, efficient expand sales model.

Do: Start with your data

Expansion is virtually impossible without the right data.

The key is to create a single data repository and implement mechanisms that enable automated consolidation, validation and rearrangement of your sales and product data, so that it is always up to date. It must be updated in real-time, leveraging data feeds from all data sources and systems - even from your partners/channel.

It’s also important that you can capture as much information as possible, because every piece of your installed base data could prove to be useful for identifying opportunities across the customer lifecycle.

Don’t: Rely on manual data analysis

Let’s assume you now have a single source of truth of your data. How will this data now be used? Is it up to your team to find the opportunities?

Manual data manipulation and analysis is counterproductive for expansion sales. Relying on staff to manually sift through installed base data to identify these upsell/cross-sell opportunities is far too risky. For example, it could:

- Delay the process, allowing your competitor to get the deal before you

- Increase your cost of sale due to the extra time/effort required by your staff
- Lead to missed opportunities because staff don’t know what to look for

Your expansion process must be smart, proactive, efficient and cost-effective, which is why hiring more customer success staff or data analysts isn’t the solution. All you need to do is invest in the right technology that will automatically provide the data insights and analytics your team requires.

Do: Automate and digitise the process

I touched on the need to automate data collection and analysis in my previous point. The good news is that the automation doesn’t need to end there.

To help make your expansion process completely streamlined, you can also automate the next step – quoting.

With the right technology in place (and I mean iasset.com of course), your quotes can be automatically generated and ready for customer/partner action or approval. Automating and expediting this part of the process means more quotes out the door, at a lower cost of sale.

Don’t: Be vague about ownership

Up until now, expand sales has often sat in a bit of a grey area, with limited ownership and accountability. Sales would do some upselling or cross-selling if it’s of a decent value and worthy of their time. Marketing might run some ad-hoc campaigns to help drive revenue amongst “low hanging fruit”.

Now, according to TSIA Customer Success Benchmark Data, 62% of Customer Success teams have an expansion charter, which is great news. But what about the remaining 38%?

If expansion is a key component of your long-term revenue strategy, then you must clearly define ownership and formalize this function. If it’s your customer success team who will be responsible, then consider how they will be compensated and what skills and tools they will need to make expansion successful.

Closing words

Maximising customer lifetime value via expansion strategies is critical for long term growth. Tech firms want to demonstrate additional value to their partners and customers, but often struggle to be able to do this at scale and with speed. But with the right people, processes and platforms in place, it’s easily achievable.

Please reach out to me or my team for a demo on how iasset.com can help digitise your expand sales motions.