Blog · Forecast and pipeline · SaaS
How a SaaS revenue team checks whether its expansion pipeline covers the whitespace the account data shows: expansion opportunities per account against the account's valued whitespace, the accounts with large gaps and no open opportunity, the opportunities on accounts with no gap, the share of whitespace value under active pursuit per rep, and the identity that ties expansion pipeline to the whitespace grid.
A revenue team has an expansion target, an expansion pipeline and a whitespace analysis, and the three are in three reports. Joined on the account, they show that the expansion pipeline is on the accounts reps like and the whitespace is somewhere else. This guide sets out the join, the two mismatch lists, the pursuit share per rep, and the identity.
Per account:
Whitespace value, from the grid: products and seats similar accounts hold, valued Open expansion pipeline value Pursued whitespace = min(pipeline, whitespace) Unpursued whitespace = whitespace − pursued
Per rep:
Pursuit share = Σ pursued ÷ Σ whitespace Accounts with whitespace and no opportunity, ranked by whitespace Opportunities on accounts with no whitespace
Account and rep identifiers only.
every expansion opportunity is on an account in the grid, or is listed as unmatched Σ pursued ≤ Σ whitespace, per rep
| Rep | Accounts | Whitespace | Expansion pipeline | Pursued | Pursuit share | Largest unpursued |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R-04 | 62 | $1.9m | $0.6m | $0.4m | 21% | Account 4471, $430,000, no opportunity |
| R-11 | 44 | $0.9m | $0.8m | $0.7m | 78% | Account 2207, $60,000 |
| R-17 | 18 | $0.4m | $0.5m | $0.3m | 75% |
Rep R-04 is pursuing a fifth of the expansion the data found, and the largest gap in the book has no opportunity on it. Rep R-17 has more expansion pipeline than whitespace, and two hundred thousand dollars of it is on accounts with no gap.
Whitespace, no opportunity. Per rep, ranked by value, with the products or seats missing. The expansion nobody is working.
Opportunity, no whitespace. Per rep, with the opportunity and the account's holdings. Either the grid is missing a product or the opportunity is optimistic; the rep says which.
| Rep R-17 | Opportunity | Value | Account whitespace | Rep's explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O-2210 | $120,000 | $0 | New module not in the grid: definition update | |
| O-9034 | $80,000 | $0 | Customer asked for a quote: keep, low probability |
Three reports, never joined. The target, the pipeline and the whitespace each look fine.
Pursued capped nowhere. A rep with pipeline above whitespace looks better than one with pipeline equal to it.
No-whitespace opportunities deleted. Some are the grid's gap, and deleting them loses the finding.
Pursuit share read alone. A rep can reach 100 percent with one opportunity on each account at a token value; read with the pipeline's stage and value.
Mapped once, the whitespace grid, the pipeline and the assignments produce pursuit share per rep, both lists and the identity every month. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The SaaS page describes the setup, and the whitespace as a number guide covers the grid this measure is checked against.
An open opportunity on an existing customer, flagged as expansion or upsell in the CRM, or identified by the account having ARR. New-logo opportunities are excluded. The flag or rule is stated.
Either the whitespace grid is missing a product the rep knows about, which is a definition finding, or the opportunity is optimistic, which is a forecast finding. The report lists them for the rep to say which, and both answers improve something.
For each account with whitespace, the open expansion opportunity value up to the whitespace value; summed per rep and divided by the rep's total whitespace. A rep at 20 percent has four fifths of the data's expansion opportunity untouched.