Ron Carson leads Thirdside, a customer insights agency specializing in win-loss analysis and SaaS churn analysis.
For many B2B executives, expansion feels like the logical next step. You’ve won the initial deal. You’ve delivered value. Your customer is happy. So, naturally, when it comes time to sell more—whether it’s an upsell, a cross-sell or an expansion into another division—the growth should be automatic. But that’s not what happens.
Instead, expansion opportunities stall. Promising discussions go dark. Deals that should close in a few months drag on for quarters. And in too many cases, the customer churns instead of expanding.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many companies hit an invisible wall when trying to grow existing accounts and the reason is simple: They misread the customer’s reality.
The Enterprise Growth Mirage: Common Pitfalls To Avoid
1. You’re selling expansion to the wrong person.
Your original champion—the person who fought to bring you in—doesn’t necessarily have the power to expand your footprint. Too many vendors assume their initial buyer will organically spread adoption across the organization. The reality? That champion often lacks the political capital, budget authority or even bandwidth to advocate for expansion. Without multi-threading into other teams early, your expansion deal is already on life support.
This is why it’s important to treat expansion like a net-new sale. Identify new stakeholders, learn their priorities and build relationships beyond your initial champion—before you need them.
2. Your customers don’t know what’s possible.
Most vendors assume their customers are fully aware of everything they offer. They’re not. In many cases, the team using your solution only knows a fraction of its capabilities. They may not realize that your platform solves problems beyond their current use case—or that you even have additional solutions available.
So, don’t wait for your customers to ask about expansion. Conduct regular “customer health checks” to understand what they actually know—and then proactively educate them on the solutions they didn’t realize they needed.
3. Your misaligned metrics are killing expansion before it starts.
Expansion pitches often fail because they’re framed around product features instead of financial impact. Your end users may love your solution, but procurement and finance teams care about measurable ROI. If they can’t see the bottom-line impact, your expansion proposal will never make it past their filters.
Reframe your expansion conversation around business impact. Translate usage data into financial outcomes. Show how your solution drives efficiency, revenue, cost savings or other specific terms your customer’s executives care about.
4. You’re experiencing “invisible churn.”
Many vendors mistake silence for satisfaction. If a customer isn’t actively complaining, they must be happy—right? Wrong. Customers who are disengaged or minimally using your solution aren’t thinking about expansion. They’re more likely drifting toward non-renewal.
The solution for reducing invisible churn? Regularly check in on usage, engagement and strategic alignment—not just at renewal time, but throughout the customer lifecycle. Identify potential risks before they turn into churn.
5. You only have a sales mindset, not a research mindset.
Most expansion strategies operate like an extended sales cycle. But the companies that succeed in growing existing accounts treat expansion as a research exercise. They don’t just push offers—they uncover what’s blocking growth and remove those obstacles.
The key here is to run qualitative customer research to understand what’s stopping expansion. Are there missing integrations? Budget constraints? Internal politics? The sooner you surface these issues, the better you can position expansion as the obvious choice.
The Real Expansion Playbook: How To Unlock Growth In Existing Accounts
If you want to scale revenue from your existing customer base, you need to stop assuming expansion will happen naturally. The best companies proactively identify and remove friction points long before they start the expansion conversation.
To recap, if you’re thinking about expansion, you should:
• Map out the full buying group early. Ensure you have relationships beyond your initial champion.
• Run ongoing customer health checks. Don’t assume your customers know what’s possible—actively educate them.
• Speak their language of ROI. Align expansion proposals to their desired outcomes, not just product capabilities. (Hint: It isn’t always purely financial ROI.)
• Track engagement signals. If a customer isn’t using your solution fully, they’re not expanding.
• Make research your secret weapon. Metrics only tell you what is happening. Customer insights will tell you why it is happening—and how to fix it.
Expansion isn’t automatic. But with the right strategy, it can become one of your biggest growth levers. The question is—are you paying attention to what’s really holding it back?
Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Read the full article here
