B2B Expansion
Post-Sale Journey Interviews for B2B Expansion
You Can’t Expand What You Don’t Understand: The Case for Post-Sale Journey Interviews
If your expansion strategy isn’t landing, it’s likely because you don’t know what’s actually going on inside your customer accounts. Post-sale journey interviews are one of the most overlooked tools for diagnosing what’s broken, what’s unclear, and what your customers aren’t saying out loud.
Expansion Isn’t About More Features — It’s About More Fit
Ask any B2B revenue leader where growth should come from this year, and they’ll probably say the same thing:
“We need to grow our existing accounts.”
Logical. Less expensive than net-new. Higher probability of success. But here’s the problem:
Most expansion strategies are built on assumptions — not customer truth.
You can’t grow what you don’t understand. And you won’t uncover the truth by guessing.
This is where post-sale journey interviews come in.
What Is a Post-Sale Journey Interview?
It’s a structured, one-on-one conversation with a current customer designed to:
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- Surface value gaps (the delta between what was sold and what was delivered)
- Understand what’s working and what’s not
- Map out adoption, engagement, and ownership blindspots
- Identify expansion blockers before the QBR pitch fails
These are not customer satisfaction calls. And they’re not disguised upsell attempts. They’re neutral, exploratory conversations — run by a third party — that help companies see what CRM data, NPS scores, and feature usage dashboards never reveal.
Why CRM and NPS Can’t Give You This
Most systems tell you what’s happening:
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- Who’s logging in
- What features are (or aren’t) being used
- What CS thinks the customer sentiment is
But they don’t tell you why:
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- Why is adoption stalled?
- Why is the champion unresponsive?
- Why did the stakeholder seem disengaged at the last QBR?
- Why didn’t they act on the expansion proposal?
A customer might give a surface answer like “timing,” but that’s rarely the root cause. Post-sale interviews go beneath the surface to understand motivation, confusion, misalignment, or internal obstacles.
What These Interviews Uncover
At Thirdside, we’ve done thousands of these conversations.
Here are some of the real quotes we’ve heard:
“We like the product, but it’s just sitting there. No one really owns it now.”
“I’m not sure we ever got full onboarding. We’re using about 20% of what we bought.”
“I didn’t even know that module existed — I would’ve used it last quarter.”
“The CS team is great, but I have to dig to find anything that applies to our use case.”
Each of these insights signals a lost opportunity — and none of them showed up in CRM fields.
Who Should Be Doing These Interviews?
Not Sales. Not CS. Not Marketing.
Why? Because customers are wary of sales pitches. They tailor their answers to avoid being sold to. They protect relationships. They don’t want to rock the boat.
To get the truth, you need:
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- A neutral third party
- A safe, disarming approach
- A commitment to listening — not defending
Thirdside plays that role for our clients. We don’t just ask better questions — we create a space where the real story can surface.
When to Use Post-Sale Interviews
- Before a major expansion push
- When NPS is positive but engagement is low
- When accounts are going quiet but haven’t churned
- After onboarding is complete but before renewal
- When internal teams disagree on what’s going on with a customer