Creating White Space Records

What is Whitespace?

White space analysis is critical for identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities with existing customers.

Salespeople and account managers create white space records to represent the products and services the customer already buys; the analysis reveals gaps, representing your upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

You can learn more about white space analysis in our dedicated blog post.

How To Use White Space Analysis In Salesforce To Drive New Opportunities

How to create white space records in Salesforce

Before using white space for the first time, your Salesforce system administrator should follow some simple getting-started steps. Please ensure these have been done before attempting to create Whitespace records

Here’s how salespeople and account managers create Whitespace records in Salesforce.

• Create a Key Account Plan.
• The app automatically creates white space records for each value on the Offering picklist.
• Manually edit the records, adding more white space records as appropriate.

Here’s what that looks like in action:

Next, see how to edit and update your white space records.

How to edit white space records

To update the white space records:

• Click the Manage Account Plan button on the Key Account Plan Page:

• Click the Edit Whitespace tile on the Pop-Up:

• Adjust the existing white space fields. There’s a list of the fields and a description below.
• Where appropriate, add more white space records by clicking the Add New Row button:

• Click Save.

White space field description

Here’s a description of the fields on the page for editing the white space records.

• Year. The year for which the white space records are being created.
• Offering. The category of products and services. Your system administrator controls these values.
• Spend. The amount of money the customer spends on that offering.
• With. How the money is spent. For example, with your organization, a competitor, or the customer internally delivering the product or service.
• Competitor. Allows you to link the white space record with another Account (only relevant if your competitors are Accounts in Salesforce).
• Contract End Date. The date any agreement with your or other organizations ends.
• Comments. Any additional information you believe is appropriate.
• Key Account Plan. Automatically Populated Lookup from the Account Plan to the Whitespace record.

Remember, you can have multiple white-space records for the same Offering. For example, for a specific offering, your customer may purchase from you and a competitor. They may even also do some of the work inhouse.

Here’s how to change the Offering picklist values.