Last week, I shared a post about negative churn – when revenue from existing customers is greater than revenue lost from customers churning (see article). The relevant question, then, is how do companies achieve negative churn? Here are a few options:
- Additional licenses – This one is common in today’s SaaS companies – selling based on licenses or “seats”. As a team grows, more seats may be required to gain access to a product/ service.
- Cross-sell – This type of sale captures cross-functionally opportunities within an organization. For example, a CRM may first be sold to a sales team to manage pipeline. Then, marketing may buy access to the CRM to understand lead and prospect-flow. And so on…
- Up-sell –Many products and services have tiered business models (packages). Tiered packages allow for companies to address a market’s consumer surplus – sell packages that capitalize on differing price considerations, typically. Think: silver, gold, platinum packages with options that are locked for specific packages.
- Additional products/ services – Up-selling largely occurs with tiered packages. However, packages are typically within the same product. This sell-on type is about selling a different product/ service. These tend to be complementary offers. For example, a product seller may sell professional services. This can also include things like accessories or service plans (think: cellphone cases or insurance plans).
There are many ways for businesses to continue to sell to existing customers – plenty of latitude to supplement the company’s business model. These are the opportunities that give investors excitement to grow a market beyond its existing.