Intent data can be bittersweet …
… especially when it reveals your biggest customer is looking elsewhere for products and services you sell. This should come as no surprise. When only a fraction of customer spend takes place in the first deal, there likely will be money left on the proverbial table.
Existing Customers are Your Best Customers
Selling to existing customers is not only good business, it’s easier and cheaper. Acquiring new customers costs five to 10 times more than selling to a current customer — and current customers spend 67 percent more on average than those who are new to your business.
Unfortunately, many companies fail to put upsell motions in play because they lack the bandwidth to manage a process they assume has to be manual. And, it’s not just a staffing or financial issue. Even companies with sophisticated tech stacks will miss upsell opportunities due to misaligned data, lack of automation or both.
And here’s why: Companies may receive several signals that there’s a potential to upsell into a customer account, such as product usage or marketing campaign interactions. However, they may not have a way to act on those signals as a repeatable upsell play.
Without a consistent upsell strategy in place, no doubt you’re missing out on potential revenue. To ensure maximum account penetration without adding a manual process, here are three easily-automated upsell plays you ought to try.
Play #1: Automate the Upsell with Intent Data Integrations
Your customers leave a trail of clues behind them when they visit your website, read a blog post, download an ebook or sign up for a webinar. Intent data providers deliver even more insights into your customer’s online research. Your tech stack is likely collecting these signals, so put that data to work with some automated plays specifically targeting your existing customers.
For example, G2, a peer-to-peer review site for software and technology, can uncover companies researching your product, category or competitor. When an existing customer conducts research on G2, the G2 Connector App within Salesforce identifies the visitor’s company information in a Buyer Intent report. By integrating G2 with LeanData, the upsell play can now be automated. LeanData uses its fuzzy matching algorithm to auto-match the identification information with an existing account in Salesforce.
The intent data is immediately synced, evaluated for interest or priority, and then actioned with customizable plays like: (1) trigger a Slack notification alerting a Customer Success team member to reach out, (2) automatically enroll that customer into a nurture campaign, or (3) decide no action is to be taken until a more advanced stage of interest is met.
If G2 is not your cup of tea, similar intent-data upsell plays can be made using a combination of LeanData with Clearbit, 6sense, Cognism or UserGems.
Play #2: Automate the Upsell from High Campaign Engagement or High Product Usage
You likely reach out to existing customers through email campaigns about new product announcements. Maybe you hold customer-facing events at conferences or host customer-focused webinars. Without proper tracking and analytics, or if these campaigns are managed by different departments, you may not see which customers are the most engaged and ready for an upsell. But, an automated process will.
To jump on an upsell opportunity tied to campaign engagement or product usage, you simply create the criteria and a matching and routing solution will automate the play. Here are a few examples:
- A customer opens your company’s email about an upcoming new product webinar, clicks through to the sign up page and completes a registration form. With a connected revenue tech stack, this action triggers an automated Slack alert to be sent to the appropriate account representative, notifying them of the customer interest and instructions for next steps. The registration action also places the customer in an email cadence specific to the campaign that interested them.
- Use product usage as a lead scoring model in your CRM. When a customer reaches your predefined level of high usage indicating the user is ready for an upsell, automatically route the product qualified lead (PQL) to the appropriate Sales rep for follow up. Sylvain Giuliani, Head of Growth & Operations at Census, explained this strategy in depth in his 2022 OpsStars session How to Use Your Product Usage Data to Drive More Revenue.
Play #3: Automate Lead-to-Account Matching
There’s nothing that leaves more egg on your company’s face than when a member of your Sales team reaches out to a new lead, only to find out they’re an existing customer with an established relationship with one of your account executives.
When leads are not matched to accounts, companies run the risk of assigning the wrong lead to the wrong representative, inaccurate scoring, poor nurturing and ultimately, decreased pipeline. No company can afford to lose valuable leads or potential buyers simply due to inefficient lead management.
The heart and soul of any account-based marketing (ABM) strategy is that all lead data in the CRM is accurately matched to accounts. A quality lead-to-account matching solution ensures that the right person is notified when a lead contacts your company. It’s an essential precursor to lead routing. Automating this process will free your Sales team to engage with accounts ready to buy.
Proactive Upsells
Too often, upsells happen as a result of planned conversations like quarterly account reviews or during renewal time. This reactive approach often puts your customers on the defense.
Matt Cove, Account Manager with SuperOffice recently shared this insight on LinkedIn: “Your upselling strategy can either boost your revenue significantly or scare your existing customers away. Before you reach out with an upsell message, take all the necessary efforts to make the need for an upgrade obvious.”
The right technology will turn upsell signals into plays so that companies can be proactive and more effective at generating revenue from their customer base. Automating your upsell motions will not only free up time to focus on revenue-generating activities, but will also make GTM motions scalable.
Kim Peterson
Kim Peterson is the Content Marketing Specialist at LeanData where she digs deep into all aspects of the revenue process and shares her findings through multiple content channels. Kim's writing experiences span tech companies, stunt blogging, education, and the real estate industry. Connect with Kim on LinkedIn.