Last Wednesday started with an early train from Manchester to London, an oat vanilla latte, comfy shoes and one final run-through of my slides. I was more excited about a work event than I had been for a very long time.
I was heading to the BGF Go-to-Market Forum to lead a breakout session on a subject I've spent much of my career thinking about:
How do we protect and grow the revenue we've already won?
The theme for the day was The Predictable Growth Engine, bringing together commercial leaders from across the BGF portfolio to explore what it really takes to build more predictable, scalable growth.
After a lively conversation with my London taxi driver about our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, I arrived just in time for the opening keynote from Andrew Taylor, BGF’s new Head of GTM.
I spent the morning listening to some brilliant speakers and conversations covering ICP, sales, marketing, AI and the systems and processes that sit behind an effective go-to-market strategy.
After a spot of lunch and the chance to meet some of the other speakers and organisers, it was my turn.
Around 15 growth leaders joined my breakout session, representing different industries, different stages of growth and very different business models.
But we had one challenge in common:
How do we protect and unlock more revenue from the customers we've already won?
I wanted the session to be a conversation rather than 50 minutes of me presenting, so I started with a question:
Are we putting as much rigour into growing our existing customers as we are into winning new ones?
Think about the discipline most businesses apply to new business.
We define our ICP. We build pipeline. We track conversion. We scrutinise deal stages. We forecast revenue. We know which opportunities are moving and which are stuck.
But could we answer the same questions about our existing customer base with the same level of confidence?
That question opened up a brilliant discussion because despite the different businesses and commercial models in the room, many of the challenges were remarkably similar.
Your existing customers are part of your growth engine
I've spent much of my career building and leading Customer Success functions in scaling businesses, and one thing I've learned is that there is rarely one perfect Customer Success model.
Different customers, products and commercial models require different approaches.
But the questions we need to answer are remarkably consistent.
And we started with a big one.
Expansion doesn't begin at the expansion conversation
This became one of the strongest themes of the session.
We often talk about expansion as though it starts when somebody identifies an upsell or cross-sell opportunity.
It doesn't.
Expansion starts much earlier in the customer journey.
By the time we ask a customer to renew, expand or buy something else, much of the outcome has already been determined.
So before asking “What else can we sell this customer?”, I think there are four better questions to ask:
1. Did we win the right customer?
Was there genuine ICP fit?
Do they have a problem we're well placed to solve?
Or have we won revenue that was always going to be difficult to retain?
2. Did we set them up for success?
Good onboarding isn't about completing our implementation checklist.
It's about getting the customer to value as quickly as possible and establishing what success actually looks like.
3. Can we demonstrate measurable value?
Customers don't renew because we've completed lots of activities.
They renew because what they've bought is delivering an outcome that matters to them.
If neither we nor the customer can clearly articulate that value, the renewal and certainly the expansion becomes harder.
4. Can we see the signals early enough to act?
Are we able to identify risk before it becomes a churn conversation?
And equally, can we identify the behaviours and outcomes that indicate a customer might be ready to grow?
This is where customer health becomes incredibly powerful. When it drives action rather than simply producing another dashboard.
Customer health should tell you what to do next
I've seen some incredibly sophisticated customer health scores.
I've also seen spreadsheets and simple red, amber and green ratings that resulted in much better conversations.
The complexity isn't the point.
A useful view of customer health should help you answer questions such as:
Where is revenue at risk?
Which customers aren't achieving the value they expected?
Which relationships need attention?
Where could there be an opportunity to grow?
What should we do next?
Product adoption and usage can be important signals, but they're rarely the whole picture.
Customer sentiment, engagement, support experience, stakeholder relationships, commercial position and most importantly outcomes achieved can all tell us something different.
The aim isn't to create the cleverest health score. It's to know what's happening early enough to do something about it.
Retention and expansion can't operate in isolation
Another important part of the conversation was ownership.
Customer Success owns retention.
Sales owns expansion.
Account Management owns the commercial relationship.
Perhaps renewals sit somewhere in between.
There are lots of models, and plenty of them work.
The model can vary. The ownership can't be ambiguous.
Because your customer doesn't care how your organisation chart works.
They experience one relationship with your business.
That's why I think of existing-customer growth as a connected system built around three outcomes:
Retention. Expansion. Advocacy.
First, protect the revenue you've already earned.
Then understand where you can genuinely solve more problems or create more value for the customer.
And when you've delivered that value, create advocates who strengthen the relationship further and help you win more of the right customers.
It's a cycle, rather than a collection of separate activities.
Put as much rigour into growing customers as winning them
This is probably the challenge I'd leave with any leadership team.
Most companies can tell me exactly what is happening in their new-business pipeline.
So could you answer the equivalent questions about your existing customers?
How much revenue is currently at risk?
Where is your expansion pipeline coming from?
Which customers have the strongest potential to grow and why?
Which customers haven't yet achieved the value they expected?
Who owns the next action?
How confident are you in the number?
If customer growth is sitting somewhere in your revenue plan, it deserves the same level of discipline as new business.
That means segmentation, clear ownership, measurable customer outcomes, useful health signals, defined growth plays and an operating cadence around the customer base.
And it means measuring the commercial outcomes that matter.
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) tells us how effectively we're protecting the recurring revenue we've already won.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) goes a step further and tells us what happens to that revenue once expansion is included.
For leadership teams and investors, those metrics can tell a powerful story about the quality and predictability of growth.
👉 If you want to understand where the biggest opportunities sit across your own customer base, a Customer Success Audit can provide an independent view of what’s working, what isn’t and where to focus next.
Technology is changing Customer Success. The fundamentals aren't.
AI was understandably a huge part of the conversation throughout the day. I am genuinely excited about what it can do for Customer Success.
We can analyse more customer data.
Identify patterns earlier.
Surface risk.
Spot opportunities.
Automate repetitive activity.
Give teams better insight into where they should spend their time.
But technology doesn't remove the need to understand the customer.
If anything, it makes getting the fundamentals right even more important.
On the train back to Manchester, that was probably my biggest reflection from the day.
Predictable customer growth still starts with some surprisingly simple things:
Win customers you can genuinely help.
Get them to value quickly.
Understand what success means to them.
Measure whether they're achieving it.
Spot risk early.
Recognise when there's an opportunity to create more value.
And only then:
Earn the right to ask them to grow with you.
A huge thank you to Andrew Taylor, Tracy Bownes and the BGF team for inviting me to be part of the GTM Forum, and to everyone who contributed so openly to the session.
There were lots of opinions, plenty of challenge and some brilliant conversations.
Exactly how a peer-led session should be.
How healthy is your Customer Success function?
If you're reading this and wondering how confidently you could answer some of those questions about your own customer base, that's exactly why I created the Elevate Customer Success Health Check.
It's a free two-minute assessment covering the key areas that influence your ability to retain and grow customer revenue.
You'll receive a Customer Success score out of 100, along with three areas to focus on next.
👉 Take the free Customer Success Health Check
👉 Learn more about our Customer Success Services