There is a huge focus on land and expand these days.
New customers are harder to come by.
So leaders are looking to their existing customers for growth.
But, it’s not that simple.
And it’s way harder than it sounds.
I was talking to a team of leaders this week about land and expand.
I shared a story of when I was VP CS at a growing tech company.
One of the new hotshot salespeople sold a deal to McDonalds.
The CEO was ecstatic.
“This is going to be our first $1M client!”
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
First, the salesperson was so desperate for the logo, they heavily discounted the deal.
(a logo we were never allowed to use btw)
McDonalds was paying $8K for a $60K solution.
It was nothing to them.
We were stuck 6 levels below the decision makers we needed to reach.
Even our main contact didn’t care that much.
We weren’t strategic.
We were one of thousands of small suppliers.
And there was no plan, no traction and no path to $1M.
I’ve seen this story play out time and time again.
Here are some things you need to make your land and expand real.
1️⃣ Align on the vision with the customer – Share your vision for the partnership and the roadmap to get there. Yes, you’re only asking them to commit to the first piece now. But set the stage early, so it’s a natural conversation later. If they’re not open to it, you’re probably kidding yourself.
2️⃣ Qualify the expansion opportunity up front – Have a rigorous qualification process not just for the initial deal, but for expansion. Before investing a huge amount of effort, you need assurance the future opportunities are real.
3️⃣ Develop your expansion strategy first – Know how decisions are made and the path to the next deal. What’s next for upsell and cross-sell? If the company’s units/locations operate autonomously, cross-sell will be slow. You might as well try selling to 50 new companies.
Hope is not a strategy.
Put these foundational pieces in place first, and you’re halfway there.
