Insights From The RevOps Manual

When managing your client base, it’s easy to get stuck in the weeds and not get the full potential out of your current list of paying customers. But that’s where RevOps comes in—helping you step back and categorize your clients strategically so you can focus your efforts where they matter most. The key is to understand two things: engagement and expansion potential.

Why are these two metrics so important? Let’s break it down. Engagement refers to how much a client is interacting with your productor service—are they logging in, attending meetings, using features, or asking questions? High engagement means they’re getting value, and that’s always a good sign. On the flip side, expansion potential is how much room you have to grow with a client. Are they using one of your solutions but could benefit from more? Do they have budget to spend, or are they in a growth phase where they’ll need more from you?

Understanding these two metrics isn’t just useful for customer success; it’s a blueprint for revenue growth. And when you overlay RevOps into this, you start to see where the real magic happens.

The Four Client Categories

Let’s dive into how to categorize your clients and what each group means for your business.

Step 1: Define Key Metrics

Customer  Engagement Score (CES): This score measures how actively customers are     engaging with your product or service. You can track this using various     metrics, such as:

 
1. Product Usage Frequency
2. Logins per week/month
3. Support Ticket Activity
4. Event Participation
5. NPS Feedback Frequency
  

Expansion  Potential (EP): This metric estimates how much more revenue you could     gain from an existing customer. It’s based on factors like:

 
1. Additional services/products they haven’t adopted yet
2. Size of the company (is there room to grow your footprint?
3. Revenue from similar clients in the same industry
4. Upsell/cross-sell opportunities based on prior purchase history

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Step 2: Plot Your Clients

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Create a 2x2 matrix with Customer Engagement Score on one axis and Expansion Potential on the other. Divide the quadrants based on high/low engagement and high/low expansion potential.

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Step 3: Classify Your Clients

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High Engagement, High Expansion Potential:

‍These are your prime growth clients. They’re highly engaged, which means they’re finding value in what you offer, and they’ve got room to grow with you. These are the clients you want to focus on for upsells, cross-sells, and building deeper partnerships.

Think of it like this: They’re already "in the door" and see your value, but you can offer them more. Maybe they’re using just one part of your service, but could benefit from additional features, services, or products. This is where you focus on deepening the relationship—beta testing new features with them, offering special deals, or co-developing solutions.

RevOps' Role: RevOps should be tracking every interaction with these clients—how are they engaging with your sales team, customer success team, and even product support? RevOps can provide the data and insights that allow you to double down on these clients by highlighting which features are driving the most engagement and what their future needs might be.

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High Engagement, Low Expansion Potential:

These clients are steady and loyal, but they might not have a lot of room to grow. Maybe they’re maxed out on budget or are already using everything you offer. And that’s okay. These are the clients you want to keep happy, because they’ll stick around and keep paying their bills—but you don’t need to go overboard trying to upsell them.

Your strategy here is to maintain engagement and ensure they’re getting the best possible service. These are also the clients that are perfect for testimonials, case studies, or referrals. They love you—so leverage that loyalty to help attract new business.

RevOps' Role: This is where RevOps helps you be efficient. By tracking and optimizing your customer success efforts, RevOps ensures these clients continue to feel supported without eating up too much bandwidth. Automation tools can streamline communications and reporting so you don’t have to pour excessive resources into maintaining these relationships.

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Low Engagement, High Expansion Potential:

These clients are a bit of a wildcard. They have significant potential for growth, but they aren’t as engaged with your product or service as they could be. That’s a red flag—because if they’re not seeing the value now, why would they buy more? But there’s hope. The trick here is to re-engage them.

This is where your customer success team really needs to roll up their sleeves. Focus on re-engagement strategies—maybe it’s additional product training, maybe it’s personalized outreach, or maybe they need to see a different use case for your solution. This is a make-or-break segment: If you can re-engage them, you could unlock significant revenue. If not, they may churn.

RevOps' Role: RevOps can be your secret weapon here. You need a clear understanding of why these clients aren’t engaging. RevOps should be diving into the data—when did they last log in? How much of the product are they using? What’s their communication frequency with your team? RevOps should help you develop targeted re-engagement campaigns by providing personalized data on usage patterns and account history. With the right insight, you can show them exactly how they’re missing out and reignite that relationship.

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Low Engagement, Low Expansion Potential:

‍Let’s face it—some clients just aren’t a fit. These clients aren’t engaging, and they don’t have much room to grow. They’re at risk of churning, and honestly, that might not be the worst thing. You’ll want to reduce your resource allocation here and maybe move them to a lower-touch model—automated support, self-service, or churn prevention efforts focused on keeping them around without too much effort.

RevOps' Role: This is where RevOps really shines. With the right automations and reporting, RevOps can help you keep these clients on the books with minimal effort. Think about email automation, triggered outreach, and monitoring customer health scores. RevOps can help you assess if it’s worth the effort to keep these clients engaged, or if you should cut your losses and move on.

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Step 4: Developing Targeted Strategies

Once you’ve categorized your clients into these four groups, the real work begins—developing targeted strategies for each segment. And this is where RevOps is invaluable. By providing insights into how each segment behaves and what they need, RevOps helps you focus your resources more effectively.

For your high engagement, high expansion potential clients, the strategy is all about partnership and growth. RevOps can help you track their journey and identify the perfect moments for upsell opportunities, turning a good relationship into a great one.

For high engagement, low expansion potential clients, it’s all about efficiency. Keep them happy, but don’t overinvest. RevOps can automate much of the ongoing support for these clients so that you can keep them engaged without stretching your resources thin.

For your low engagement, high expansion potential clients, RevOps should be flagging these accounts for immediate attention. They have significant potential, but if they aren’t engaging, you’re leaving money on the table. RevOps can guide you toward the right strategies—whether it’s more training, new use cases, or personalized outreach—to reignite interest and drive growth.

And for the low engagement, low expansion potential clients? Sometimes it’s better to let go. RevOps can help you streamline support and monitor their health score, but these clients likely won’t be your focus moving forward.

How does RevOps play into all of this?

RevOps isn’t just about making things run smoothly—it’s about making smarter decisions. By providing detailed data and analysis on each of these client segments, RevOps helps you allocate resources where they’ll make the most impact. That’s how you drive real growth, prevent churn, and ultimately boost profitability.

And that’s the beauty of RevOps. It doesn’t just streamline processes or reduce friction. It gives you the clarity you need to prioritize effectively, whether it’s nurturing your top clients or knowing when to cutback on those who aren’t delivering value. RevOps puts you in control of your revenue engine—allowing you to see exactly where the biggest opportunities lie, and how to capitalize on them.

If you want to take your client management strategy to the next level, start by categorizing your clients based on their engagement and expansion potential. Then let RevOps guide your efforts to maximize growth, reduce churn, and optimize your resources. That’s how you win.

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