Issue 1: I Used to Block Growth in My Own Accounts
Early in my career, an account manager walked up to me and said, “Hey, I’m reaching out to one of your customers.” Nobody asked what I knew about the account or how I could help. It was a courtesy heads-up that they were going in to talk about growth.
I was an enterprise CSM, and I freaked out, mostly on the inside. “What are you talking about? They have tickets open. They’ve asked for things on the roadmap. They just brought in a new leader, and I’ve been working this account.” I rattled off every reason they shouldn’t.
And I actually thought I had the say to tell them, “No, you can’t.”
So I took my laundry list to my boss. In my head, if a customer wasn’t 100% happy and using every single thing they bought, a commercial conversation would put the renewal at risk, and the renewal was mine.
My leader sat me down and walked me through it. Growth mattered to the business, and it mattered to our customers. Those customers were the pipeline for all that new revenue, and by standing in the way of it, I was standing in the way of their success and ours.
So I went back to that account manager and said, “Okay, listen, I get what you’re trying to do. I have goals in this account too. Can we sit down and talk this through together?” We went to the customer as a united front with one account plan, and it was a really wonderful conversation. It was also the first time I learned what selling actually looks like.
I figured out that growth would tell me more about how successful my customers were than any renewal ever could.
Now I watch companies make my old mistake at the company level. They have nothing new to sell, sales packaged everything into the first deal, or most of their customers sit on one tier that already includes everything. Nobody designed for growth on day one, and now the board wants it. Guess what? Your best growth channel already pays you. You just never built it a plan.
The move: run a growth diagnostic on the customers you already have
I worked with a company recently whose new-logo deals took forever to close. If they wanted new revenue faster, the only place to get it was their own customer base. So we pulled their contracts, and not one of them had a price increase written in.
That became the first win. Every new contract and every renewal now says the next term is subject to a 10% increase, with some room to negotiate. Then we did the rest of the work.
Before the steps, please don’t decide that only your green accounts are eligible. I had a customer who was flaming red and told us flat out they weren’t renewing. When I dug in, their priorities had changed and the product they were on wasn’t scoped for the new work, so they were out shopping. We had a product that solved it. We ripped up their contract and rewrote it with the product they actually needed, and it was more money than they had been spending with us.
Not every conversation will close, and none of this works if your customers aren’t getting value. That part is on the company. It also changes as you grow. What you packaged at Series A won’t hold at Series B, and whether you sell licenses, consumption or now tokens changes which levers you have. If you’re early, design for growth now and revisit it every stage. If you’re later, start here.
Profile your customers. What they bought, what they actually use, and the value they get from it, mapped back to what they pay you.
Figure out what you can sell. If the first deal was all-inclusive, break the product apart. Sit with product to decide what stays in the core and what becomes something new.
Check licenses or usage. How many customers have every license assigned, and how many of those seats are active? A customer at 100% is a conversation about which new teams should have access.
Sort the base into tranches. Group customers by ICP fit, the value they’re getting and their renewal date, so you know where each level of growth can come from.
Go in as a united front. CS and whoever owns expansion build one account plan before anyone calls the customer.
Say it at kickoff. “We’re in a commercial relationship, and that’s day one. If you get value from what you bought, my expectation is that you’ll stay and grow with us over time.”
When you say it on day one, your customers expect the growth conversation, and it stops feeling self-serving because it’s tied to the value you help them get.
Steal this: the customer revenue health check
Take this to your next leadership meeting. Give yourselves a point for every statement that’s true today.
Our contracts include a built-in price increase at renewal.
If a customer asked to spend more tomorrow, we’d know exactly what to sell them.
Our packaging leaves room to grow, so the first deal doesn’t include everything.
Our most popular tier still leaves customers something to buy next.
We know which customers are at 100% of their licenses or usage, and how much of it is active.
We can name each top account’s biggest priority this year, and how our product maps to it.
CS and whoever owns expansion build the account plan together before anyone calls the customer.
Every customer is eligible for a growth conversation, including the ones in the red.
We tell every customer at kickoff that this is a commercial relationship.
Product and CS decide together what stays in the core product and what becomes something new to sell.
8 to 10: you’ve built a growth machine. 5 to 7: the revenue is there, and you’re leaving it on the table. 4 or fewer: your growth plan is new logos and hope.
The number: 103%
That’s the median net revenue retention for bootstrapped B2B SaaS companies with $3M to $20M in ARR, with gross retention at 91%. Both are basically flat from last year. In plain terms, the typical company loses 9 cents of every customer dollar and wins back 12 through expansion. The top 10% are at 117.9%, and that gap is a growth plan.
Say this in your next exec meeting: “Our customers are our fastest pipeline, so I want a growth plan for them that we hold to the same standard as our new-logo plan.”
Built with AI: a growth plan for every single customer
What it does for revenue: For one of my clients, we gave AI every customer’s contract, usage and adoption, their goals and the full product list. It built a profile of each account (industry, stage, ICP fit, value, and whether they had a parent company, subsidiaries or franchises that change the play), then suggested a growth plan for every one. The CS team finally knew the direction and the conversation to have.
What it got wrong: It doesn’t know what’s going on inside the account. It can’t see where the customer is in their process, what projects they’re working on or what their priorities are right now, and that’s where the CSMs come in. It’s a great first pass, and the people who know the account turn it into the plan. We would never let it run on its own or send recommendations to customers.
Steal the workflow: Put contracts, usage, customer goals and your product list in one place. Then ask: “For each customer, build a profile: industry, stage, ICP fit, adoption, value and company structure. Compare what they own to everything we sell, and suggest a growth plan with the next product and why it fits their goals.”
From the mic
“Happy ears do not renew. They don’t grow.”
From “Your Existing Customers Are Your Growth Plan (Maybe),” the story of a cross-sell that made it into the forecast before one call showed the customer was at risk. Listen to the episode
Overheard
“If the customer success team can’t grow these accounts, then what are they here for?”A CEO of a B2B SaaS company
My take: They’re half right. Growing accounts is absolutely part of the job, and I learned that the hard way. But before you ask that question, look at what your CS team has to work with. Is there anything new to sell? Did sales already package everything into the first deal? Is there a price increase in the contract? If the answer is no, your team can’t grow those accounts because there’s nothing for them to grow into, and that one sits with leadership. Put together a strategy. Don’t just put out a number.
Want the next one in your inbox?
This is the web version of Issue 1 of After the Close, my customer revenue newsletter. Subscribers get it first, every other Tuesday, and every issue comes with a new Steal This tool you can take straight into your next leadership meeting, The Number with the exact line to say to your CEO, what I’m actually building with AI (including what it gets wrong), a line from the podcast, and my take on what CEOs and CS leaders are really asking. At the bottom there’s After Hours, a little note about what’s going on in my life, and that part only lives in the inbox.
It’s free, and it’s read by 20,000+ customer revenue leaders. Subscribe to After the Close
