Of course every business wants to close more deals, but the cold, hard truth is: gaining a customer you can’t keep isn’t scalable.
According to FirstPageSage, the average customer acquisition cost (CAC) for B2B tech companies is $720. And, if your organization leans heavily into PPC and SEM, it’s even higher at $841.
With the cost of new customer acquisition so high, it can take years to pay back the money you spent to acquire that customer.
That’s why the secret to sustainable revenue growth is customer-centric scaling.
And here’s a hint: it’s not just about selling more stuff.
Customer-centric scaling is all about squeezing the funnel post-sales. It focuses on what you can do to make it easy for your customers to scale and expand with your company.
With a customer-centric approach, you make it easy for your customers to stay with you long-term. Retention and renewal becomes your lifeblood.
A customer-centric organization:
And finally, with a customer-centric approach, you make it easy for your customers to tell everyone they know how great your product is. This way, their friends will want to buy from you too.
Most companies approach expansion revenue through quarterly business reviews (QBRs). Ideally, these meetings shed light on how customers are using your product and identify any potential areas for upselling or cross-selling.
However, QBRs have some potential downsides that may hurt the relationship more than help. Consider the following:
Given some of the inherent challenges, it’s time to think outside the QBR box and get creative with your expansion revenue strategies.
Consider how you are packaging and pricing your products. If you want to expand your footprint with current customers, package things in a way that meets your customers’ needs on their timeframe.
For example, can you make some of your add-on products self-serve? This removes the friction in purchasing that product. When a customer is ready to add a particular functionality, give them a self-serve option without having to contact an account rep. Let them get started right away.
Even a customer who submits a case is a potential lead. Inside each case is a valuable question, piece of feedback, or issue that could lead to expansion revenue. Case engagements create relationships and give your organization the opportunity to have an expansion conversation.
Rachel Godfrey, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at BambooHR, shared the following insight at a 2024 OpsStars session:
“We’ve actually seen through intent data that our most engaged customers are the ones that submit a lot of support tickets. It’s not because they can’t figure out our product. It’s because they’re pushing our product to the limits. They’re trying to figure out how to implement complicated use cases with your product.”
Adopt a “more tickets the better” attitude and you may uncover some lucrative expansion opportunities. In fact, some organizations incentivize support reps to send customers over to sales.
At the heart of churn is a customer who’s not finding value in your product in relation to the price they’re paying. Therefore, sellers have to figure out a way to continually provide value beyond just “here’s our product — we hope you get value out of it!”
You don’t have to meet with your customer to determine if they are using every functionality your product offers. You’ve got the data already in your hands. Look at customer usage data to determine if they may be a good fit for a particular add-on.
Rather than hit them with a sales pitch, trigger an outreach sequence sending them learning modules, webinar recordings or other relevant content pieces. Track engagement signals and reach out when the time is right.
Before you take a moment to sell more, take a moment to educate and teach.
As you monitor usage, pay close attention to any sudden changes in licensing. This is a signal to reach out, long before renewal, and understand what might be happening within your customer’s business. Consider the following:
If a customer’s usage is lower than expected, it may be time to reconsider their contract terms and meet them where they are. By doing this, you position yourself as a partner who is ready to support them when the economy rebounds, preserving future revenue rather than risking full churn.
In cases where customers face layoffs, proactively reach out to check in on them. Demonstrate that you are a true business partner, not just a vendor collecting payments. Offer thoughtful advice and solutions.
And, at the end of the day, don’t beat yourself up when a customer churns. The fact is, you can’t save everyone and breaking up is hard.
From an operations and data governance perspective, never underestimate the importance of clean and cohesive data in your customer-centric motions. In order for account managers and customer support teams to be effective, they need to have the right conversations at the right time.
Good customer communication relies on accurate buying group roles so that a customer is never sent irrelevant information.
Clean data ensures that customer interactions are informed, personalized, and effective, building trust and creating long-lasting relationships.
While clean data is the goal, CRMs will always have duplicates and inaccuracies. Just take it one step at a time and make small incremental improvements.
For example:
Having a customer champion who is enthusiastic about your product and advocates for it within their company is extremely valuable. Your customer champion helps with:
Customer champions play a key role in keeping your product successful within their company.
So what happens when your champion leaves? And how can you get in front of this challenge?
While you could task someone on your team to manually research job changes, this process is not only time-consuming, it won’t scale.
Here at LeanData, we partnered with UserGems, an application that supports repeat customer plays by alerting sales reps when opportunity contacts and former customers change jobs. LeanData’s RevOps team uses both platforms, working together, to drive pipeline growth.
It’s a four-step revenue operations play:
Step 1: The LeanData routing scheduler automatically creates or updates new records for new job changes detected by UserGems.
Step 2: LeanData matches new leads to accounts or updates existing contact records. Then, it converts new leads to a contact. The routing flow round robins unassigned accounts and sends different alerts for assigned accounts. This flow takes into consideration accounts or contacts that may already be active in an open deal cycle or Outreach sequence.
Step 3: LeanData automates Slack alerts to the appropriate account executive (AE) or sales development representative (SDR) with context and the appropriate call to action. The SDR researches the contact and account, strategizes with their AE, and follows up within 48 hours.
Step 4: LeanData automatically enrolls the prospect into a persona-based Outreach sequence.
Building a strategy around customer-centric scaling isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s essential for sustainable growth.
By focusing on retention, nurturing customer champions, and getting creative with expansion strategies, companies can deepen their relationships and stay agile in a competitive market.
Remember, sustainable growth isn’t just about gaining new customers; it’s about supporting and growing with the ones you already have.
Kim Peterson is the Manager of Content Strategy at LeanData where she digs deep into all aspects of the revenue process and shares her findings across multiple content channels. Kim's writing experiences span tech companies, stunt blogging, education, and the real estate industry. Connect with Kim on LinkedIn.
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