Expansion and Upsell Manager | Job Description

Key Responsibilities: What Does an Expansion and Upsell Manager Do?

An expansion and upsell manager is in charge of growing client relationships and evolving them by upselling and cross-selling in a data-led approach. The function has many job titles, but the responsibilities are essentially the same: scanning for opportunities to grow accounts and then setting calls, making offers, achieving growth, and monitoring and reporting on that growth.

The job of an expansion manager often falls outside the Customer Success department, being more commonly associated with the Sales department. Regardless, the primary duties of the job are influenced by the customer success mindset and heavily reliant on customer success tools.

Some businesses merge this role and the Retention Manager into a single Retention and Upsell Manager.

Key Responsibilities:

• Monitoring accounts and identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Creating automation playbooks based on account activity triggers that indicate customers who might need a higher plan or added features.
• Understanding customers and their setup.
• Understanding upsell & cross-sell opportunities and their context.
• Presenting informed offers that take into account customers’ goals, needs, and recent activity.
• Tracking, analyzing, and creating reports based on account activity such as license utilization, product and product feature usage rates, and customer effort score.
• Working with the Customer Retention Manager and the rest of the CS team to mitigate churn risks and improve upsell or cross-sell chances.

Here are the necessary skills to be a good Expansion and Upsell Manager:

• Minimum 2 years of experience in Sales, Customer Success, or Customer Support. Relevant courses / training are nice-to-have but only required by some job postings.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to transform customer conversations into business-driving relationships.
• Sales skills and the ability to analyze and cross-reference customer goals, usage, and product setup to create custom offers that work in their favor.
• High emotional intelligence and empathy skills.
• Customer service skills.
• Strong analytical and goal-oriented mindset backed by basic-to-advanced project management knowledge.
• Advanced IT&C knowledge and capabilities, experience with automation, and ability to learn new software tools on the job.