Why ‘Land & Expand’ analysis of your sales data is a goldmine

There is so much you can learn from the ‘land and expand’ analysis of your sales history. It can help you sharpen your go-to-market execution, increase ACV (Average Contract Value) and create more effective customer marketing programs, among other benefits.

What is land and expand data analysis?

You start with extracting sales transaction history into Excel from your financial system. To get a comprehensive overview, it’s a good idea to include every sales transaction for each customer from the last five years. Avoid using CRM data due to its tendency to be dirty or incomplete. Once you have this data, you can quickly analyze it using tools like Excel pivot tables. This analysis provides insights into the products each customer initially purchased and what new products they subsequently added in which year of their relationship with you.  You can also see how their usage of each product evolved year-over-year. This includes factors like adding new users or adjusting product quantities. Filtering this view by sub-segments and regions gives you a clear understanding of:

• Which products customers in specific segments or geographic areas typically start with
• How they grow their relationship by expanding product usage (upsell) or buying additional products (cross-sell).

This information is invaluable for refining your go-to-market strategy, increasing Average Contract Value (ACV), and enhancing the effectiveness of customer marketing programs.

How does it improve your GTM execution?

Wondering how the land and expand analysis boosts your GTM execution? Easy! It lets you figure out the perfect product combo you should be selling into any customer group or region. Just check out the new accounts you snagged in the past year. By comparing what they bought with what they ideally should’ve (thanks to land and expand analysis), you can spot:

• Any sales enablement gaps—maybe certain AEs or regions need a bit more support.
• Whether your sales methodology, from customer discovery to the final sale, is consistently being followed.
• Products that could use a better pitch/value proposition from the product marketing team.
• Any mix-ups in territory mapping, like assigning mid-market accounts to enterprise reps.

How does it help you increase ACV?  

You can see that some AEs are not closing what a typical customer buys from you in that segment/geo combination.  This may be an issue of

• Sales Enablement: Ensure your sales team is well-equipped with the right tools and resources to close deals effectively.
• Product Bundles: Consider creating product bundles to simplify the sales process and offer customers the right combination of products.
• Win-Loss Analysis: Have your marketing teams conduct targeted win-loss analysis on accounts that haven’t purchased the typical suite of products. Understand why they chose not to buy and learn from it.
• Discount Analysis: Examine recent discounts on ‘expand’ products. Ideally, as customers increase their commitment, the discounts should be lower than those on ‘land’ products. High discounts on ‘expand’ products could indicate a potential issue that needs attention.

By addressing these aspects, you can potentially increase the Average Contract Value (ACV) and improve overall sales performance.

How does it help you improve customer marketing? 

This analysis can also help you identify ‘white space’ in every customer – what they have bought so far and based on ‘land and expand’ trends in that segment/geo, what they could be buying next.  Your customer success team can clue you in on common triggers for expansion. With this knowledge, your marketing team can craft targeted drip campaigns for upselling and cross-selling to customers. I will talk more about this topic in my next blog post.

It all begins with the right land-and-expand data analysis.  If you need help with land-and-expand analysis or discount patterns with your land and expand products, or with your overall pricing & packaging strategy, please reach out to me via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/applicationsmarketing/