Sales and Customer Success (CS) teams must work together to maximize upsell opportunities. Misalignment between these teams often leads to lost revenue, lower customer retention, and missed growth potential. Here's how to align Sales and CS for upsell success:
Set shared goals and track unified metrics like Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Expansion Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).
Improve communication through regular meetings, shared dashboards, and collaboration tools.
Leverage analytics to identify upsell signals from product usage data.
Segment customers to create tailored upsell strategies based on behavior, value, and timing.
When Sales and CS teams share insights and work toward common objectives, they can increase customer lifetime value, reduce churn, and drive sustainable revenue growth.
How to Get Sales and Customer Success to Work Together | Predictable Revenue Podcast
Set Shared Goals and Metrics for Both Teams
Bringing sales and customer success (CS) teams together starts with a shared sense of accountability. When both teams align on goals and metrics, collaboration becomes second nature, breaking down silos that often hinder upsell opportunities.
Create Common Objectives for Upsells and Retention
Instead of dividing responsibilities, focus on objectives that unite both teams. A shared commitment to account growth ensures everyone is working toward the same outcomes.
For instance, set joint revenue targets that combine growth from new deals and upsells. Making customer retention a shared priority benefits both teams: sales gains a better understanding of which customers are ripe for expansion, while CS sees how their efforts contribute to revenue growth.
This approach is especially effective in B2B SaaS settings, where account-based goals encourage clear communication. Assigning high-value accounts to both teams ensures consistent messaging and coordinated strategies. Once objectives are in place, progress can be tracked using unified key performance indicators (KPIs).
Track the Same KPIs Across Teams
Shared objectives need shared metrics to back them up. Unified KPIs not only hold both teams accountable but also spotlight upsell opportunities. Metrics like Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Expansion MRR reveal how each team contributes to growth.
Customer health scores are especially valuable, helping teams prioritize accounts that are most likely to expand. Healthier customers are often more open to premium features or upgrades, making them ideal candidates for upsell initiatives.
Metric | What It Measures | Why It Matters to Both Teams |
|---|---|---|
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) | Total revenue potential per customer | Focuses attention on high-value accounts ripe for expansion |
Expansion MRR | Monthly recurring revenue from upsells | Tracks the success of collaborative growth strategies |
Upsell Rate | Percentage of customers upgrading | Measures how well upsell efforts resonate with different segments |
Customer Health Score | Engagement and satisfaction levels | Highlights the best opportunities for account growth |
Additionally, tracking Average Order Value (AOV) trends can confirm whether teamwork is driving measurable improvements. These metrics not only assess performance but also provide insights for deeper analysis.
Review Metrics on a Regular Schedule
Regular reviews ensure that both teams stay aligned and can adapt as needed. Set up a cadence of meetings to keep the momentum going:
Weekly check-ins: Focus on immediate upsell opportunities and specific accounts requiring attention.
Monthly reviews: Dive into trends across shared metrics and evaluate which strategies are delivering results.
Quarterly strategy sessions: Use these longer meetings to refine goals, analyze customer feedback, and plan future campaigns.
To make collaboration seamless, create shared dashboards that both teams can access in real time. This transparency ensures everyone is working from the same data. Each review should result in actionable steps, helping both teams strengthen their partnership and drive better outcomes for customers.
Improve Communication and Data Sharing Between Teams
Effective communication and open data sharing are essential for seamless collaboration between sales and customer success teams. When these elements are missing, even well-aligned goals can falter as teams operate in silos. By fostering shared goals and transparent communication, every interaction can help strengthen alignment and uncover new upsell opportunities.
Schedule Regular Cross-Team Meetings
Holding regular meetings ensures teams stay connected and focused on shared objectives.
Bi-weekly account plan reviews are particularly useful for keeping everyone on the same page. Led by account teams, these sessions should address customer progress, potential risks, and upcoming opportunities. This is also the time to identify accounts showing signs of expansion or those needing immediate attention.
For broader alignment, revenue team meetings bring together representatives from all go-to-market functions. These meetings focus on setting objectives and assigning actionable tasks, ensuring that upsell strategies align with customer success and retention goals.
To keep these meetings productive, maintain a shared document that outlines responsibilities. Team leads should update their sections weekly, helping to keep discussions focused and actionable.
Quarterly business reviews provide an opportunity for deeper analysis. These longer sessions allow teams to evaluate what’s working, identify areas for improvement, and refine collaborative strategies.
Use Collaboration Tools for Better Teamwork
Collaboration tools play a key role in reducing friction and improving teamwork by providing shared, real-time information.
Platforms for shared documentation enable both sales and customer success teams to update customer insights instantly, minimizing the risk of miscommunication about account status.
Project management tools are another valuable resource, helping track upsell campaigns from the initial identification of opportunities through to closing. These tools streamline handoffs and ensure critical steps aren’t overlooked.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems should be accessible to both teams, with unified protocols for updating customer information. This shared visibility allows sales teams to understand the full customer journey while customer success teams see how their efforts impact revenue growth.
Real-time dashboard tools are also useful, displaying performance metrics that keep both teams aligned. These dashboards support more productive discussions and quicker decision-making.
Share Customer Feedback and Data Insights
Customer feedback is a goldmine for understanding needs and pain points that could lead to upsell opportunities. When both teams have access to this information, they can better identify customers who may be ready for expansion and tailor solutions to meet their needs.
Organize survey responses and feedback into categories like product satisfaction, feature requests, and complaints. This makes it easier to spot patterns and adjust strategies accordingly.
Pairing product usage data with purchase history is another powerful way to identify expansion opportunities. When customer success teams share insights about satisfaction and engagement, sales teams can time their outreach more effectively.
"If you don't ask your customers how they feel about your product or service, you'll never get the answer - and more importantly, you won't know if they're ready for another or bigger purchase. Perhaps a cross-selling opportunity awaits, and you are not aware of it?"
- Shelly Salomon, Marketing and Communications Specialist, Waypost Marketing
Ongoing surveys and live chats also provide valuable insights into customer needs. This data helps both teams craft personalized offers and create bundle deals tailored to specific customer segments.
For B2B SaaS companies, tools like Userlens can be particularly helpful. By analyzing detailed product usage data, these tools identify churn risks and upsell opportunities, ensuring both teams work from the same intelligence when planning their strategies.
Use Analytics to Find Upsell Opportunities
Analytics can transform customer data into actionable signals for upselling. By relying on shared data and consistent reviews, teams can quickly spot expansion opportunities. When sales and customer success teams operate from the same analytical foundation, they can time their upsell efforts more effectively, leading to measurable revenue growth.
Analyze Product Usage Data for Upsell Signals
Product usage data often provides some of the clearest signs of upsell readiness. Top-performing companies achieve Net Revenue Retention (NRR) rates of 120% or higher, but only 15% of organizations effectively track product usage signals that influence retention outcomes. This disconnect highlights a major opportunity for teams willing to dig deeper into their analytics.
Key metrics to monitor include usage frequency, feature adoption, and shifts in behavior. For example, setting alerts for accounts nearing usage limits or showing increased engagement can help identify customers ready for upgrades. By framing these upgrades as proactive solutions rather than restrictions, teams can position themselves as partners in the customer’s growth.
Behavioral patterns are another critical area to watch. Sudden spikes in usage, new user additions within an account, or the adoption of previously unused features often signal that a customer is relying more heavily on the platform and may be ready for a higher-tier plan. Combining this usage data with revenue insights can also reveal which features deliver the most value to customers.
Customer support interactions can also uncover upsell opportunities. When customers inquire about additional features or express frustration with current limitations, these conversations often pave the way for targeted expansion discussions.
Use Tools Like Userlens for Better Insights
Specialized analytics tools, such as Userlens, provide deeper insights tailored for B2B SaaS companies. Unlike generic platforms, Userlens is built to identify both churn risks and upsell opportunities through detailed product usage analysis.
Userlens offers features like health scoring and cohort creation to automatically flag high-engagement accounts and segment customers based on their usage behaviors. Visual tools, such as activity dots, make it easy to spot accounts with steady engagement or those showing concerning drops in activity. This allows teams to act quickly, whether by addressing risks or initiating upsell conversations.
The platform also tracks feature-level usage, offering granular insights into which capabilities resonate most with specific customer segments. This makes it easier to highlight relevant features during upsell pitches and recommend add-ons that align with a customer’s needs.
Additionally, Userlens integrates with tools like HubSpot and Slack, ensuring that usage insights are seamlessly incorporated into existing workflows. This simplifies the process for teams to act on emerging opportunities without disrupting their current operations.
Connect Analytics with CRM and CS Platforms
Integrating analytics with CRM and customer success (CS) platforms enhances customer insights across systems. By combining these tools, teams can streamline upsell efforts and make data-driven decisions.
For example, automated alerts within CRM systems can prompt timely outreach when usage patterns suggest upsell readiness or when customers approach plan limits. These workflows create tasks for account managers, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks.
With analytics and CRM data working together, teams can also track performance more effectively. Metrics like conversion rates from usage-based triggers, the time taken to close upsell deals, and the features driving the most expansion revenue help refine strategies over time.
This integration also enables more precise customer segmentation and personalization. By combining behavioral data from analytics platforms with demographic and firmographic data in CRM systems, teams can craft highly targeted campaigns tailored to specific customer needs and challenges.
However, for these systems to deliver results, proper training and adoption are crucial. Sales and customer success teams must know how to interpret the integrated data and act on it effectively. Even the best analytics tools won’t drive results if teams lack the skills to use them.
Regular audits of data quality and integration performance are essential to maintaining the reliability of insights. Establishing KPIs to measure the success of your analytics strategy and creating tailored dashboards for each team ensures everyone stays aligned. With a unified approach, teams can execute coordinated upsell strategies with confidence.
Create Targeted Upsell Strategies Through Customer Segmentation
Customer segmentation transforms upselling from a generic pitch into a tailored, strategic effort. When sales and customer success teams truly understand their customers' specific needs and behaviors, they can create personalized campaigns that feel relevant and helpful instead of pushy. This approach builds on earlier alignment efforts, allowing teams to target the right customers for upsell opportunities with precision.
Segment Customers for Targeted Upsell Approaches
Segmentation works by grouping customers based on demographics, usage patterns, and behavior. Just like shared metrics and cross-department meetings, segmentation helps align sales and customer success teams, making upselling efforts more effective.
Behavioral segmentation: This method focuses on how customers interact with your product. For instance, track data like feature adoption, session frequency, or time spent using the product. Customers who actively use advanced features but haven’t upgraded to premium plans are ideal candidates for upselling. Similarly, accounts showing increased activity or adding new team members might be ready for higher-tier plans.
Value-based segmentation: This approach groups customers by metrics like lifetime value (LTV) or monthly recurring revenue (MRR). High-value customers often benefit from personalized outreach, while automated campaigns with compelling offers might be a better fit for lower-value groups.
Usage pattern segmentation: By analyzing engagement levels and adoption stages, you can identify prime upsell opportunities. For example, power users might be ready for advanced features, while customers nearing usage limits could benefit from proactive outreach before they hit constraints.
For enterprise clients, messaging often needs to address specific compliance requirements or advanced features tailored to their industry.
Industry and company size segmentation: Different industries and business sizes require tailored messaging. For example, small businesses may prioritize cost-effective solutions, while enterprise clients often need features that address complex compliance or operational needs.
Tools like Userlens simplify segmentation by creating cohorts based on usage patterns or demographic data. Features like health scoring help categorize accounts by activity levels, while visual activity indicators make it easy to spot user engagement trends.
Timing-based segmentation: Timing matters. New customers may need time to see the product's value before being approached for an upgrade, while those nearing contract renewal are often more open to expansion discussions.
By combining these segmentation methods, you can create detailed customer profiles. For instance, a high-value healthcare client nearing renewal and showing increased usage presents a very different opportunity than a small business using only basic features for several months.
Analyze Campaign Performance to Improve Results
Once customer segments are defined, tracking and analyzing campaign performance is key to refining strategies. Here’s how:
Conversion rate analysis: Measure which segments are most responsive. Monitor email open rates, click-through rates, and upgrade conversions to fine-tune outreach. For example, enterprise clients might respond better to personalized calls, while small businesses could prefer automated email campaigns.
Revenue impact tracking: Go beyond conversion rates to measure the actual revenue generated by each segment. Even low-converting segments might bring in higher deal sizes, making them worth pursuing.
Channel performance evaluation: Different segments may prefer different communication channels. While some customers might favor in-app messages, others could respond better to email or direct sales calls.
Feature adoption monitoring: After upsells, track whether customers are using the features that were highlighted during the upgrade pitch. If they are, it confirms your segmentation and messaging strategies were on point.
Time-to-conversion analysis: Understand how long it takes different segments to move from the initial upsell approach to an actual upgrade. This can help set realistic expectations and improve follow-up processes.
Feedback collection: Surveys and customer feedback from both successful and unsuccessful upsell attempts can provide valuable insights into what motivates customers to upgrade - or what holds them back.
A/B testing: Experiment with different messages, offers, and strategies within the same segment. For example, test varying discount levels, feature highlights, or urgency in messaging to see what resonates most.
Regularly reviewing performance metrics by segment helps teams spot trends and identify areas for improvement. Sharing these insights across sales and customer success teams ensures everyone is aligned and benefits from lessons learned, leading to continuous improvement in upsell strategies.
Conclusion: Maintain Long-Term Sales and CS Alignment
Keeping Sales and Customer Success (CS) teams aligned isn’t a one-and-done task - it’s a continuous effort that demands attention and adaptability.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Chris Dishman, SVP of Global Customer Success at Totango, sums it up perfectly:
"If you have friction between Sales, CS, Marketing, and Product, you will have friction with your customer."
And that friction doesn’t just stay internal - it directly affects your revenue. In enterprise settings, where renewal and expansion decisions often involve more than 13 stakeholders, a lack of coordination can mean missed opportunities and lost deals.
To avoid this, consistent communication is key. Schedule regular check-ins - monthly or biweekly - to review shared metrics like upsell revenue, retention rates, and customer satisfaction. But don’t let these meetings become routine status updates. Use them to dig into gaps, share actionable customer feedback, and adjust strategies based on real-world performance data.
Another critical piece is clear documentation. As your business grows, so does the complexity of your processes. Defining roles and responsibilities at every stage of the customer journey - whether it’s identifying upsell opportunities or managing contract expansions - prevents duplicated efforts and ensures nothing slips through the cracks. A well-documented process also enables faster, more informed decision-making.
Speaking of decisions, data is your greatest ally. Advanced analytics tools can help both teams spot upsell opportunities and flag churn risks by analyzing actual customer behavior. When Sales and CS operate from the same data, they can act in unison, basing their strategies on evidence rather than guesswork.
Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of culture. A customer-first mindset, shared by both teams, can make all the difference. Focus on delivering long-term value instead of chasing quick wins. Celebrate joint achievements, align revenue goals, and design compensation plans that reward collaboration rather than competition. Building this kind of culture complements the operational strategies you’ve put in place.
When Sales and CS work together seamlessly, the results speak for themselves: stronger customer relationships, increased upsell opportunities, and a solid foundation for sustainable growth.