Land and Expand

We use a land and expand approach at our B2B SaaS company. We land them with a small $99/month offer, and within 1 month, expand our contract with them to $6,000 per year.

In this article, I will walk you through the following:

What is Land and Expand?
Benefits of the Land and Expand strategy
Setting up for Land and Expand success

What is Land and Expand?

Land and Expand is a sales strategy that lets you quickly gain hard-to-reach customers with an attractive initial offering that is easily extended with upsells, cross-sells, and other sales opportunities.

These deals are smaller in value than what is usually pitched all at once. Further, they are specially designed to delight the customer with a taste of what they will experience with your full suite of products or features. This makes closely tailored support an essential part of their strategic purpose.

Land and Expand is like the big brother of the foot-in-the-door sales tactic. Or it’s like taking a company out on a date, instead of straight up asking for their hand in marriage. Once they’re in love with your company and product, you move forward and expand the relationship into “something more”.

That something more can take the form of a larger subscription plan, extended support, custom features, or adjacent products that complement the original one. Overall, the strategy provides a foundation for making long-term headway into a new, uncertain, or difficult market.

To recap, the hallmarks of Land and Expand are:

Smaller, less complex deals with a higher chance of a quick close compared to large deals.
The deals have implicit or pre-planned opportunity value, meaning that they can be easily expanded on with cross-sells, upsells, and other extras.
A strong focus on early customer success and the ongoing nurturing of the customer account toward a more meaningful, trustful relationship.

Note that Land and Expand is not the same as a Proof of Concept (POC), although they do tend to overlap.

Benefits of the Land and Expand strategy

The benefits of Land and Expand are contrasted with more ambitious sales strategies and include:

Faster sales cycle: The larger and more complex the deal, the longer it takes to sign, especially for enterprise customers. Land and Expand deals can bypass the more bureaucratic processes involved for big deals. It also smooths the way through these processes over time.
Easier to implement for both parties: With a tighter, more focused offering, the solution you provide can be implemented with less potential for mistakes or the need for extensive upfront training. Essentially, there’s less pressure all round.
Access to new markets or territories: Gaining a customer base in an already saturated market or a territory dominated by competitors is more likely to succeed when you already have a foothold, however small.

Setting up for Land and Expand success

Though clearly defined, the Land and Expand growth model has broad possibilities for a company wishing to adopt it.

That said, here are some of the key factors in leading a successful Land and Expand strategy:

Combine sales with customer success. The sales team lands the deals and customer success nurtures them for expansion. Un-silo these teams, so they can work together.
Structure deals accordingly. A Land and Expand deal needs to solve a single problem well and be within budget for the target customer. Research required!
Collect as much feedback as possible. Every bit of feedback can potentially be the green light for an upsell or cross-sell.
Don’t underplay the nurture part. Once landed, expansion is all about nurturing the customer relationship. We’re talking white-glove treatment here.

For help with planning your overall market strategy and identifying which areas are suitable for Land and Expand, check out our Market Analysis Template.