What is White Space?

Every business seeks the holy grail: Increasing revenue without increasing expenses. Fortunately, there are ways to achieve this vital goal. By learning what white space is and investing in the appropriate tools, your business can increase its revenue with your existing customers. 

To achieve this, you’ll need the right data to identify white space and know how to use this information to increase your bottom line. Read on as we explore everything you need to know about white space.

What is the Definition of White Space?

White space is the area that you can potentially expand your business into with already existing customers. In essence, it represents uncharted potential.

Let’s say you run an office supply store and have an account to whom you sell pens and pencils. In this hypothetical example, let’s also say you also sell office furniture. If you could identify that the customer in question was moving and needed to furnish their new office space, you could try to sell furniture to them. This would be an example of utilizing white space. If you had this data and knew who to pitch to and what to set your price levels at, you could fill this white space and make a sale. 

White space targets already existing customers. It does require an investment in time, money, and the appropriate technology. However, as it doesn’t involve new customers, you don’t have to spend major sums on marketing to new customers or identifying new leads. This means finding white space can enable you to increase your revenue with minimal expenses. 

How Can My Business Use White Space?

You may make more money if your business can use white space to identify opportunities to sell more products or services properly.

Using white space requires a complete understanding of where these unmet needs exist and where you can meet them. Again, consider the above example. In that scenario, you would need to know many pieces of information and the answer to questions, including:

  • That the customer was moving, where they were moving to, and what furniture they needed.
  • Are there other decision-makers within the company with whom you would need to build relationships?
  • Who the customer planned on buying furniture from, how much they would spend, and where you could adjust your prices to make a sale.

Gathering this information requires your business to acquire the right tools to gather this data, input it correctly, and calibrate your proposal. All of this means you’d need to conduct a white space analysis. Doing so would enable you to understand your customers better and identify additional opportunities. 

What Tools Do I Need To Capture White Space?

The need to invest in the appropriate tools is regularly cited by sales teams as a major challenge when advancing their business interests. Fortunately, some solutions will allow you to capture this critical data better.

In addition to a robust CRM — such as Salesforce to house and manage all account and contact data, you need an AI-based solution that can work with your existing data right in your CRM to enrich insights and show you where white space opportunities exist. This combination of solutions can help your sales team uncover hidden growth potential with upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

At Next Quarter, data should be the sole source of business truth. In other words, the various departments in your business — including accounting, sales, and revenue — must access the same data. Only by sharing data access and using instantaneously-updated data can business units come together to properly strategize how to sell customers more products and increase their bottom line. 

In many cases, existing CRMs may manage these needs for you – to an extent. However, you may also benefit from a more advanced CRM or adding additional features to your existing CRM. Your business may want to consider a CRM upgrade. By doing so, you can better answer the vital question, “What is white space?” and determine how to increase it within your operations.

Consider Next Quarter For Your White Space Needs

Next Quarter’s White Space identifies the next best product or service to sell to drive incremental revenue.  Our AI-based recommendations suggest top products or services based on our proprietary AI combined with buyer intent to help sales teams uncover unmet customer needs. Then, the platform uses these insights to recommend a guided path for sales teams to convert an idea into a true opportunity.

In addition to helping capture white space, Next Quarter, powered by Salesforce, can assist with your account planning and revenue forecasting tools, helping you achieve account growth, revenue intelligence, and financial clarity. 

Are you ready to learn more about how Next Quarter can help you capture data to enhance your understanding of white space? Contact us today to schedule a demo and learn more about how Next Quarter can improve your business.