Is Expansion Part of Your 2025 GTM? It Should Be.

Deliver First, Expand Later.

You can’t grow an account without delivering on the first promise. Period.

Too many companies rush to expansion and renewals before ensuring the customer feels the full value of what they bought. Your first promise sets the stage for everything else.

If you’re serious about growth in 2025, you need to reimagine your post-purchase journey. Why? Because existing customer revenue is your future pipeline.

One of the most common challenges I get when talking about the post-purchase journey is the pushback on its linear nature.

Here’s the thing: I don’t care.

The journey isn’t perfectly linear - customers can (and will) jump between stages. But defining it as semi-linear helps us structure how we engage, deliver value, and support customers over time. Without structure, we’re just hoping customers see success. Hope doesn’t scale.

So, here’s how I think about it:

Customer Success Isn't Perfectly Linear -But it Start's Here

Adoption: Making Value Real

The first step to earning expansion is delivering on the first promise.

• Logic: Set customers up with systems, access, and support so they can use your solution.
• Emotion: Make customers feel confident, inspired, and successful with early wins.

📌 Key milestone: Time to Value (TTV) → The first “aha!” moment where customers see their investment pay off.

Expansion: Growing Together

Customers at this stage ask: “What else can you do for us?”

Here’s where trust meets anticipation. Expansion is cumulative - it builds on proven value.

• Proactive, Not Reactive: Don’t wait for customers to raise their hand.
• Think Amazon: Predict customer needs before they arise. Back in 2011, Amazon patented anticipatory shipping to ensure they had what you needed before you even knew you needed it.
• Extend Your Runway: Keep showing customers new ways to succeed.

💡 “You’ve seen X results-here’s how we can unlock even more value together.”

Renewal: More Than a Transaction

Renewals aren’t just about renting access to your solution. They’re about:

1. Renewing Relationships
2. Renewing Results
3. Renewing Trust in your ability to help them hit their next goals.

💡 Treat renewals like a value conversation, not a contract signature. Focus on:

“Here’s what we achieved together, and here’s the plan for what’s next.”

Advocacy: Turning Customers into Champions

Advocacy is the culmination of a successful journey. But it doesn’t happen by accident.

• Deliver on the First Promise: Without this, you can forget advocacy.
• Prompt Feedback: Don’t leave reviews, referrals, or case studies to chance. Ask.
• Incentivise Advocacy: Give your champions a reason to share their success - exclusive benefits, spotlight features, or referral programs.

📢 Happy customers amplify your story better than any marketing ever could.

A Real-World Example

When I worked with the CS team at a $2M ARR tech business, we found a gap:

• We didn’t teach CSMs how to sell.
• We didn’t focus on complex processes or “better demos.”

Instead, we started with the basics:

• We clarified what Customer Success means internally.
• We aligned CS to the customer’s needs and goals with extensive value mapping from the first interaction until referrals.

With this clarity, everything changed.

→ Expansion became easier because the CS team knew what to look for and how to approach it.

→ Renewals weren’t just contracts - they were milestones in delivering success.

The Bottom Line

Existing customer revenue is your future pipeline.

But here’s the kicker: It doesn’t count unless it’s renewed, expanded, and grown.

How confident are you in your organisation’s ability to drive 4x pipeline inside your customer base next year?

If you’re not clear on how to turn adoption into expansion, and renewals into advocacy, it’s time to rethink your post-purchase strategy. (I may know someone who can help... Revenue Funnel ) 😌

Drop your thoughts below - what’s the biggest opportunity for growth inside existing accounts?

TL;DR: We've built frameworks for every minute piece of the customer journey. We're more obsessed with your customers than you - that's why we study them - all day every day.

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