Where do you already sell? What is still unconfirmed?

Define white space as a question you can verify.

For account expansion, white space is a possible gap between what a customer group could use and what it already buys or has access to. It is not simply a company missing from the CRM. Separate three questions: is the entity relevant, is the offering already covered, and is there a credible reason to investigate demand?

• Analyse a named offering or use case, not “everything we sell”.
• Choose a territory and the operating entities relevant to it.
• Use “unknown” until your team checks commercial coverage.

Build an entity-by-offering worksheet.

Start with the legal entity on the existing agreement, then explore its available parents, subsidiaries and sister companies. Record one row for each entity and offering under review. Keep the relationship, registration, country, source and retrieval date next to the commercial fields so a reviewer can understand both the connection and its limits.

• Export the currently filtered company view from the explorer where permitted.
• Add CRM account identifiers and agreement references in your internal working file.
• Use separate fields for relationship evidence, fit judgement and agreement coverage.

Reconcile the agreement before counting a gap.

A central agreement may cover several entities, while a local purchase may cover only one. Ask the account owner to check named parties, eligible affiliates, geography, product scope and adoption with the people responsible for the agreement. A tree cannot answer those questions. In the fictional matrix above, France initially looks absent but is already covered by the group agreement.

• Resolve trading-name and legal-name differences before marking an entity as absent.
• Distinguish an unserved entity from a covered entity with low adoption.
• When the scope remains uncertain, keep the decision as “investigate”.

Prioritise candidates with explicit reasons.

Use territory fit, operating activity and a plausible problem as screening criteria. Then record the question that could disqualify the candidate. Germany remains on the illustrative shortlist because it appears relevant, but its contract coverage and operational need remain unknown. The US business is excluded from this European review; that is not a claim that it has no need.

• Keep an exclusion reason so rejected entities are not repeatedly researched.
• Treat a holding company as ownership context unless you have evidence of a relevant buying role.
• Avoid a numerical opportunity score that implies more certainty than the evidence supports.

Find a role and an introduction route.

Open a shortlisted entity and inspect available business contacts. Filter titles on the current results page, check other pages or local-language titles, and add an appropriate returned contact to the company plan. A role match does not establish purchasing authority. Your existing customer may be better placed to confirm the right team and whether an introduction is welcome.

Give the review an output and a next check.

For each accepted candidate, save an owner, the evidence, the unresolved coverage question and a specific next action. Measure reviewed candidates and useful introductions separately from qualified opportunities or revenue. Revisit the plan when a relevant company update is returned or your commercial knowledge changes; a newly returned entity is not necessarily newly formed or acquired.

Know what is automated and what is your judgement.

EntityReach supports company-group exploration, contact lookup, manual review labels, saved company plans, CSV exports and supported monitoring. The downloadable entity-by-offering worksheet is a manual planning aid. The application does not automatically reconcile your CRM, interpret agreements, generate product-level white-space scores or establish buying intent.