Most companies I work with use the phrase “land and expand.” Land means to win more new customers. Expand means getting your current customers to pay more in the future. (These are Win and Grow from my book, Win, Keep, Grow.) Every company puts significant resources behind land. Yet few put much emphasis on expand.
I just witnessed a fantastic example of a commitment to expand. This week I was at the PROS Outperform conference in Denver and had a chance to hear the executives discuss some of their strategies. Every executive in the room, including their CEO Andres Reiner, discussed land and expand. And it wasn’t just talk.
PROS has intentionally stopped trying to sell its complete solutions to new customers. Instead, they only take orders for one product. That way, implementation goes faster. Time to Value is greatly reduced. Then, once they demonstrate a margin increase, they can return to that customer and sell other products.
Think about this commitment. They intentionally will NOT take orders for their full suite of products. Of course, this isn’t just some trick so they can talk about future products. Instead, their customers have much better experiences because they get one solution running quickly. This likely drives a higher lifetime value of the customer too.
This strategy is only feasible because PROS delivers on its commitments. They pitch higher margins and then deliver them quickly. This strategy wouldn’t make sense if they couldn’t deliver quick time to value (higher margins).
What about your company? You probably hear “land and expand” throughout. What specifically are you doing to grow your customers? Be like PROS. Commit. Deliver real value quickly. Invest in expansion.
Do you know of any other great examples of companies that focus on expand? Please share your comments on the LinkedIn post.
Now, go make an impact!
