Upsell

The increase in revenue on a line the customer already bought, period against period, floored at zero. Downsell is the decrease. Where quantity is held, upsell splits into volume and price, because a price rise counted as upsell flatters the team.

DefinitionThe increase in revenue on a line the customer already bought, period against period, floored at zero. Downsell is the decrease. Where quantity is held, upsell splits into volume and price, because a price rise counted as upsell flatters the team.

Its gap

For lines the customer holds, the difference between its spend and what similar customers spend on that line.

Downsell beside it

Expansion of two percent can be fourteen points of new lines and eighteen points of shrinkage on old ones.

How it is computed

The increase in revenue on a line the customer already bought, period against period, floored at zero, with decreases reported separately as downsell.

Example

A customer's spend on fixings rose from $30,000 to $41,000: upsell of $11,000. Its spend on adhesives fell by $6,000, reported as downsell, not netted.

Where it goes wrong

Netted against downsell. A base with heavy movement in both directions looks static.

Articles that use this term

Wallet share and penetration

Cross-sell and upsell: measuring each from the ledger so they stop being one number

The difference between cross-sell and upsell, how each is computed from the ledger, cross-sell as new product lines at an existing customer and upsell as more of a line already bought, the norm each is measured against, the two lists they produce, and why blending them into one expansion figure hides which of the two a team is good at.

16 Sept 20262 min read Wallet share and penetration · Sports

From season ticket to hospitality: the members who bought once, and the ones who never were asked

How a sports organisation measures the path from its ticketing base to its hospitality and membership products, from the ticketing and hospitality ledgers joined on the customer: season ticket holders who have bought hospitality once, the ones who bought and did not return, the ones who fit the profile of hospitality buyers and were never offered it, the value at the norm of similar members, and the list per fixture of who to invite.

16 Sept 20262 min read Board and management reporting

Gross retention and net retention: the two tables that belong on one page

Why gross revenue retention and net revenue retention are computed on the same customers and answer different questions, gross capped at 100 percent as the leak, net with expansion as the growth from the base, the four combinations a cohort can show, leaking and growing, leaking and flat, tight and growing, tight and flat, what each means for where the next dollar comes from, the identity that ties both to the bridge, and why reporting either alone misleads.

16 Sept 20262 min read Coverage and territory · Sports

Hospitality yield per partner: seats used against seats held across the season

How a sports organisation measures whether each partner or box holder actually uses the hospitality they pay for, from the access control and booking data: seats used against seats held per fixture, the yield across the season, the partners whose usage fell before their renewal conversation did, the fixtures where empty seats concentrate, and the resale or reallocation that the empty seats support.

16 Sept 20262 min read Board and management reporting · SaaS

Net revenue retention by cohort, reconciled to ARR

How a SaaS finance or revenue team computes net revenue retention per signing cohort from the subscription ledger, the four movements that make it up, expansion, contraction, churn and reactivation, the identity that ties every cohort's movements back to the ARR bridge, and why a single company NRR figure hides the cohort that is quietly failing.

16 Sept 20262 min read Data quality and reconciliation

Product taxonomy for analytics: lines, families and SKUs, and which level each measure uses

Why a product list with four hundred SKUs produces whitespace everywhere and a concentration figure that means nothing, the three levels a product taxonomy needs, line, family and SKU, which measure is computed at which level, the rule that a SKU belongs to exactly one family and a family to exactly one line, the dated mapping that survives a range change, and the identity that revenue sums identically at every product level.

16 Sept 20263 min read