How to Pitch Cross-Department Expansion to a Budget Gatekeeper Who Thinks in Spreadsheets
Sarah from marketing has been your biggest fan for ten months. 92% weekly active users. Three case studies. A Slack message last month that said "honestly don't know how we worked without this." She referred you to Nina Castellano, Chief of Staff to the COO, and said: "Nina controls the budget. She's smart and she's careful. Good luck." Nina agreed to a call. But here is what you know that Sarah doesn't: Nina is not just evaluating your proposal. She is evaluating a competitor for the sales team. The company missed profitability targets last quarter and every discretionary dollar now requires a defense. Your expansion from $48K to $156K — a 3x increase — is exactly the kind of proposal that gets killed in budget review unless the business case is airtight. You have 30 minutes to turn one team's love into a company-wide commitment.
Why This Conversation Goes Wrong
You lead with enthusiasm instead of evidence. "Marketing absolutely loves us!" Nina has heard every vendor's customer claim to love them. Enthusiasm without metrics is the sound of a salesperson, and Nina's entire job is to filter salespeople. She needs numbers, not testimonials.
You pitch more seats instead of a bigger outcome. "We want to add 25 sales reps and 40 support agents." Nina hears: more cost. If the expansion sounds like incremental seat growth, she will do the math and decide the ROI is marginal. The pitch has to solve a problem bigger than "more people using the same thing."
You ignore the budget scrutiny context. The company just missed profitability targets. Proposing a 3x increase in spend without acknowledging the financial climate makes you look tone-deaf. Nina will politely end the call and move on to the competitor who understood the room.
The Concentric Proof
Expansion conversations fail when they are framed as "more of the same." The gatekeeper hears additional cost for additional users and does the unit economics in their head. The Concentric Proof reframes expansion as concentric circles of evidence — starting from proven departmental success and widening to a company-level strategic outcome that the executive team already wants. You are not adding seats. You are connecting dots that were already there.
Anchor in the proof that already exists
"Nina, here is what 10 months of marketing adoption produced: 92% weekly active usage, 31% reduction in content production cycle time, and $127K in attributable pipeline influence. These are not projections — they are actuals." Start with incontestable data from the department that already uses you. Nina cannot argue with results she can verify with one Slack message to Sarah.
Name the cross-functional gap they already feel
"One thing Sarah mentioned is that marketing generates qualified leads but has no visibility into what happens after handoff to sales. And your support team is resolving tickets without any feedback loop to the product team." You are not inventing a problem. You are naming one that already frustrates the COO — and you know it frustrates the COO because every COO at a growth-stage fintech has this problem.
Position expansion as the unifier, not the add-on
"What if the expansion was not about giving sales and support the same tool marketing has — but about creating a single visibility layer across all three departments? One dashboard for the COO that shows the full customer journey from acquisition through retention." This is the pivot. You are no longer selling seats. You are selling the thing the COO has been asking for.
Defuse the budget objection before it lands
"I know the company went through a cost review last quarter, and I want to be respectful of that. One option is a phased pilot: we start with the sales team for 90 days, measure impact, and use those results to justify support. That way the initial commitment is a third of the full expansion." Give Nina a way to say a smaller yes that leads to the bigger one.
Create the path to the decision-maker
"If this makes sense to you, I would love to put together a one-page business case with the marketing ROI data and the proposed pilot structure — something you could put in front of the COO without needing a full presentation." You are not asking Nina to sell for you. You are giving her a document she can hand upward in five minutes.
The moment that changes everything
Nina is not blocking expansion. She is looking for the argument she can champion.
Most CSMs misread gatekeepers as obstacles. Nina is not trying to say no. She is trying to find a justifiable yes. Her job is to bring the COO proposals that survive scrutiny — and in the last quarter, three vendor proposals died on her desk because the business case was soft. What Nina wants is to look smart. If your expansion pitch gives her a clean, data-backed narrative that connects to the COO's stated priorities — cross-functional visibility, operational efficiency, profitability — she will not just approve it. She will present it as her recommendation. The mistake is treating the gatekeeper as someone you have to get past. The opportunity is treating them as someone you can equip.
What to Say (and What Not To)
Instead of
"Marketing loves the product and we think sales and support would too."
Try this
"Here is what 10 months of data from marketing tells us about the opportunity across your other teams."
Instead of
"We want to expand to 65 more seats."
Try this
"What if the expansion gave your COO a single view across marketing, sales, and support — something you do not have today?"
Instead of
"The pricing is very competitive."
Try this
"I know budgets are tight. Let me propose a phased pilot that limits the initial commitment while we prove the cross-department thesis."
Instead of
"Can you introduce me to the COO?"
Try this
"I can put together a one-page business case you could share with the COO — built from your actual marketing data."
The Bigger Picture
Bain & Company's 2024 analysis of B2B SaaS expansion revenue found that multi-department accounts retain at 94% compared to 71% for single-department accounts. The retention lift is not because the product is stickier — it is because cross-department adoption creates internal dependencies that make rip-and-replace prohibitively disruptive. Every department you add is a structural barrier to churn.
A Gartner study on technology purchasing found that the average B2B buying decision now involves 11 stakeholders, up from 5.4 in 2015. The CSM who only talks to their champion is building on a single point of failure. The CSM who builds relationships with the budget gatekeeper, the department heads, and the executive sponsor has an account that survives any one person leaving.
The expansion from $48K to $156K is a 3.25x multiple. In SaaS economics, expanding an existing account costs roughly one-seventh of acquiring a new customer at equivalent ARR. Nina does not need to know this. But you should — because it means the company behind you has every incentive to support creative deal structures, phased pilots, and flexible terms. Use that leverage.
Practice This Conversation
10 minutes · AI voice roleplay with Nina Castellano
Reading about this is step one. Practicing it changes everything. Sonitura lets you rehearse this exact conversation with Nina Castellano, a realistic AI chief of staff to the coo at a mid-market fintech company who reacts to your words in real time. It takes 10 minutes. The next expansion conversation, you will walk in with proof, not a pitch.
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