Whitespace analysis is the mapping of an existing customer's buying centers against your products to find the combinations the customer does not buy from you yet.
Building the grid
The usual grid puts the account's buying centers (divisions, functions or regions that can buy independently) on one axis and your offerings on the other. Each filled cell is business you have. Each empty cell is whitespace, and the cells worth chasing are the ones where your offering fits that buying center and no competitor is in place.
- 1HypothesisAn empty cell on the grid
- 2OpportunityA named person describes a problem you solve
- 3DealThe owner of that problem has been on a call
An empty cell is a hypothesis. It turns into an opportunity when a named person in that buying center describes a problem your product solves, and into a deal when the owner of that problem has been on a call. Until then, a whitespace map is a list of guesses about other people's priorities. The grid belongs in the account plan, and each cell the account manager chooses to work becomes one expansion deal, staged by evidence as in our account expansion guide.
Example
This example is illustrative. A software vendor sells dispatch and route planning. Its customer Arrowmere, a fictional logistics company, has three buying centers.
| Buying center | Dispatch | Route planning |
|---|---|---|
| Dispatch team | Customer (80 seats) | Whitespace |
| Warehouse | Whitespace | Not a fit |
| Regional depots | Whitespace | Whitespace |
Four cells are empty. One has evidence: Dana, the VP of Operations, has said the warehouse team re-keys the same orders the dispatch team already handles. The warehouse and dispatch cell gets a conversation this quarter, and the question for Dana is who in the warehouse feels it most. The other three stay on the map until someone in those teams says something Sam, the account manager, can work with.
In the quarterly account review, Sam's manager points at each empty cell and asks, "Who in that team has told us about this problem, and when?" For the warehouse cell, Sam can quote Dana. For the depots, the honest answer is "nobody yet," and the cell stays a guess.
Related terms
- What is land and expand?: the strategy that whitespace feeds
- What is expansion revenue?: what a worked cell turns into
- How to spot an account ready to expand: the evidence that turns a cell into a deal
- What is net revenue retention?: the number it moves
FAQ
What is whitespace in sales? Whitespace is the business an existing customer could buy from you and does not yet: a team you have not sold to, or a product that team does not own. It is usually shown as the empty cells in a grid of buying centers against offerings.
How do you do a whitespace analysis? List the account's buying centers, list your offerings, mark what each center already buys, then rank the empty cells by fit and by evidence. A cell ranks highest when a named person in that buying center has described a problem your product solves.
Who owns whitespace analysis? The account manager usually owns it, with input from customer success and the sales manager. It belongs in the account plan as a section, reviewed each quarter, with one or two cells chosen as live expansion deals.