Growing Your Customer Accounts To Increase Revenue

44% of companies prioritize new customer acquisition over existing customer expansion and retention, often missing the huge potential in growing their revenue using their existing customer base. 

Have you considered that your current customers might hold the key to increasing your revenue? 

Don’t just take it from us, according to Forbes, acquiring a new customer can cost 5-7x more than retaining an existing one. Depending on the nature of your business, this could mean you are burning through cash at an alarming rate to acquire new customers.

In this post, we’ll explore how utilizing pre-established relationships can be the most cost-effective way to grow.

Growing Existing Accounts Is More Effective 

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to sell to someone who already trusts you? Building trust takes time and effort, but once you have this trust, it’s far easier to sell more to an existing customer. 

Let’s break down exactly why growing your current customers is more effective than constantly chasing new ones.

Cost-Efficiency

It’s a well known fact that it’s significantly cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

Studies show the median customer acquisition cost per $1 of upsells was $0.28, about 24% of the cost to acquire each new customer dollar. The payback period for upsell revenue is only about one quarter, almost an entire year less than for new customers. 

The groundwork is already laid. You’ve solved their initial pain points, and now you’re in a prime position to offer additional value. 

While customer acquisition often involves high marketing and sales costs, growing existing accounts allows you to save resources while increasing revenue. No brainer. 

Higher Success Rate

Selling to an existing customer is more successful. 

Your customers already know your product and understand its value. Whether you’re offering an upgrade (upselling) or suggesting a complementary product (cross-selling), they’re far more likely to say yes. 

Again, you don’t have to believe us, take it from the studies. 

The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. 

Trust 

Trust is a powerful driver of revenue growth. 

When customers already have a positive experience with your product or service, they’re more open to trying something new from you. Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products, because they have already found success with your product! 

They trust that you understand their needs and will deliver on your promises, making it easier to introduce new products or expand your services. 

This relationship puts you in a great position to grow revenue organically.

Practical Steps to Grow Your Customer Accounts

Let’s get into the actionable strategies you can start using right now to grow your existing accounts. 

1. Account Insights

We all know that understanding your customers is the foundation of any good business relationship. 

But it’s not enough to just know their industry or their basic pain points, needs and challenges. 

You need to dive deep into their specific goals, and understand how your products or service can help them reach their goals. 

• Take Salesforce for example, they sell a multitude of products and services, but they usually start by selling Sales Cloud or Service Cloud, their core products. 
• Once customers find value in these tools, Salesforce start to look at adding on other products like Salesforce CPQ, RLM, Marketing Cloud, Mulesoft and more. 
• Salesforce wouldn’t be able to do this effectively without truly understanding their customer’s unique needs and pain points. 

This level of insight lets you position yourself as a trusted partner who helps them achieve their broader objectives.

How to Do It: Start by using a tool like Plan2Prosper to create dynamic, detailed account plans that go beyond the surface-level information. These plans should include:

• Customer Strategic Initiatives: Identify their short-term and long-term business goals. Are they entering new markets? Launching new products? Scaling operations? By understanding these initiatives, you can tailor your solutions to align directly with their objectives.
  
• Key Stakeholders: Map out the decision-makers, influencers, and gatekeepers within the organization. Knowing who drives decisions can help you navigate the internal politics of the organization and build stronger relationships with the right people.
  
  This is often needed in larger organizations, where you may have sold into one department, but there are numerous divisions and/or departments which could find value in your product or service.
  
  Using a tool like Plan2Prosper ensures your sales reps are making the most of their larger, more strategic customers.
  
• Gaps in Current Solutions: Regularly assess where your offerings can fill gaps in their business.
  • Are there inefficiencies in their current processes which your tools could solve? 
  • Can your product solve a problem they haven’t fully addressed yet?
  • Are there other tools you offer that your customers could address pain points with?

This is where you can demonstrate the value of expanding the relationship.

Tip: Don’t wait for the customer to come to you with their problems. Proactively schedule regular check-ins to discuss their upcoming projects or challenges, as well as to find out more about their overall strategic goals. 

Example: During a quarterly check-in, you learn they’re expanding into a new market. By getting ahead of this initiative, you can position your products or services to meet their new needs, ensuring you remain their go-to partner as they grow.

2. Targeted Account Development

Many businesses make the mistake of focusing only on the initial sale, assuming the job is done once the contract is signed. 

There are often untapped opportunities within existing accounts that can lead to revenue growth. 

These hidden opportunities are incremental, and they often go unnoticed without a proactive, structured approach to account development.

How to Do It: To uncover these opportunities, encourage your sales team to:

• Segment Accounts: Not all accounts are equal. Use data to segment your accounts based on their potential for growth. Accounts showing high engagement with your product, or expanding teams may signal opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.
  
  You can also segment accounts in other ways such as by industry, Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), size, or by how much revenue they generate, or a combination of these.
  
  Understanding how to target your existing customers based on various segmentation details is critical to succeeding in expanding your revenue through your customer base.
  
• Track Changes: Changes within a company often signal opportunities for expansion. Make sure your team is actively monitoring these shifts and reaching out to explore how you can help the customer in their situation.
  
  Use tools to visualize these changes such as OrgChartPlus from SalesMethods. Your sales reps will be able to clearly see who they need to target to make the most impact.
  
• Introduce Solutions: Once you’ve identified growth potential, ensure your sales team is trained to present upsell or cross-sell opportunities in a way that aligns with the customer’s specific needs. The goal isn’t to push more products, but to provide solutions that will deliver real value.

Example: Let’s say your sales team notices that one of your customers has just acquired a new subsidiary. This opens up an opportunity to offer additional products or services across multiple business units, deepening your relationship and expanding your revenue from this account. With Plan2Prosper, you can easily track these developments and move quickly to capitalize on the opportunity.

3. Collaborate 

No one can manage account growth alone, especially when it comes to complex, high-value accounts. 

Growth comes from collaboration across different teams.

Each team brings a unique perspective to the table, helping you unlock more value from your customer relationships.

How to Do It: Build a collaborative culture within your organization that prioritizes regular review and coaching. Plan2Prosper can facilitate this by enabling real-time collaboration across your account teams.

• Account Growth Goals: Establish growth targets for each account based on their potential. These goals should be specific, whether it’s increasing product adoption by X% or expanding to additional departments within the organization.
  
  Clearly understand the “whitespace” in your accounts. What products do they currently have and which ones could they have? If you have a large amount of products, you may need to track this on a product by product basis, to understand if your customers use any of your competitors and if so, when their contracts are up for renewal, so that you can get in touch with them well in advance and secure their business.
  
• Cross-Department Collaboration: Involve your product and customer success teams in the account review process. They can provide valuable insights on how customers are using your product and suggest areas for improvement or expansion.
  
• Coaching and Mentorship: Regular coaching sessions with your sales team ensure they stay focused on the growth opportunities within each account. Use the data from Plan2Prosper to guide these discussions, focusing on actionable insights that can drive real results.

Tip: Implement a formal review process where account managers, product teams, and leadership meet quarterly to discuss account status and map out growth strategies. Ensure the meeting agenda includes actionable steps, and hold each team accountable for their contributions.

Example: One of your account managers spots a new opportunity within a large account but needs input from the product team to address a specific need. Using real-time collaboration tools in Plan2Prosper, the entire team can weigh in, adjust the approach, and work together to close the deal faster.

Where Does Plan2Prosper Come In?

When it comes to growing customer accounts, the challenge often lies in knowing where to start, how to prioritize, and how to ensure your efforts lead to measurable results. 

Plan2Prosper simplifies these challenges, helping you take a strategic, data-driven approach to growing your existing accounts.

Here’s how our tool adds real value to your account management process.

Actionable Insights

It’s easy to feel like you have all the data but no clear direction on how to act on it. One of the biggest hurdles in account growth is translating information into actionable steps. Plan2Prosper provides you with clear insights into each account’s growth potential by giving you access to real-time analytics and account activity tracking within Salesforce.

Instead of sorting through endless data points, you get a clear picture of what matters. 

You’ll know which accounts are ready for upselling, where there are untapped opportunities, and what specific actions will drive progress. 

Save time, and ensure your team is focused on the right opportunities.

A Clear Path 

To build stronger relationships with customers, you have to do more than just check-in occasionally, you need to understand their needs. 

With Plan2Prosper, you gain deeper visibility into customer goals and pain points, making it easier to proactively offer solutions that resonate.

Stay one step ahead so you can align your offerings with their goals before they even ask. This kind of foresight strengthens trust and opens doors to more meaningful, long-term growth.

Collaborative Account Management

Account growth is a team effort, and miscommunication or lack of collaboration can slow progress. Plan2Prosper helps teams stay aligned, ensuring that key insights are shared across departments and that everyone is working toward the same goals.

With everyone on the same page, you can move faster. 

The entire team has access to the same information, reducing friction and eliminating delays in pursuing new opportunities. 

Scalable Growth 

Managing multiple accounts often feels overwhelming, especially when there’s no consistent process in place. Plan2Prosper helps you bring order to the chaos by embedding a repeatable, scalable account management process that ensures consistency across your team.

By standardizing your approach to account growth, you eliminate the unpredictability that comes from ad-hoc management. Instead of scrambling to keep up with account needs, you’ll have a clear, structured plan for every customer. No missed opportunities, more predictable results, and scalable success as your customer base grows.

Summary

As we’ve seen, growing your existing accounts is not only more cost-effective, it’s also more successful. By investing in the relationships you’ve already built, you can strengthen loyalty, and open up new revenue streams.

Whether it’s upselling, cross-selling, or just staying ahead of their next move, the opportunities within your existing accounts are there, you just need the right strategy to uncover them.

If you’re looking for a smarter way to grow your customer accounts, Plan2Prosper can make it easier. 

Start a free trial today!