Okonkwo: Client leadership changes are massive upsell opportunities, not churn risks
Aneto Okonkwo · How We Grew ARR 3X by Upselling Existing Customers · Apr 25, 2023 · at 16:57
Chatdesk co-founder and CEO Aneto Okonkwo explains how account management teams can leverage executive turnover at client companies to pitch expanded contracts.
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“When there's a new champion, like a new head of customer service, that's an opportunity to upsell. Because we can reposition it, re-explain it. The new person doesn't even know what we were doing before. So we can say, oh, actually, yeah, we were about to start this pilot of social media. We've been talking about it. Like, oh, let me try that. So a new champion is a risk Moment, because you could get, ah, removed from the client, but it's also an opportunity to upsell, and some of our biggest wins have come when leadership changes in those types of situations.”
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“Because every person, when they're buying enterprise software, they're trying to get promoted, they're trying to spend more time with their family.”
Okonkwo: Multi-product SaaS footprint protects vendors from budget cuts
“In these current economic times, everyone's looking at their budgets, they're slashing, they're cutting their vendors, so the more solutions, the more footprint you have an organization with more solutions, the harder you are to kill, basically.”
Okonkwo: Never build requested features without budget and a signed contract
“The final thing is, people will tell you to solve all these things, But only solve the ones that they have budget for. Because I made all these mistakes where we said, oh, if we build this feature, then they'll buy, and they didn't buy. No. Pay me first. Sign …”
Okonkwo: Enterprise clients do not care if your service is manual
“Even if it's a person, a human doing it, the client doesn't know, and they don't care. They just want it solved. And that's a way for you to quickly upsell and, like, continue to grow those budgets.”
Okonkwo: Chatdesk does not charge for integrations, monetizing usage volume instead
“We don't charge for integrations because we know the volume is where we make the money, so we want as many integrations as possible, like, add everything, you know, and we'll figure out how to monetize it later.”
Okonkwo: Pre-contracting unbought solutions upfront removes friction for future upsells
“Even if we've only been negotiating and contracted on one of the solutions, we want to pre-contract ahead of time for all the other solutions, so that there's no future negotiation, and it's also a way to educate the customer.”