We experimentally demonstrate the influence of a high power continuous wave (CW) injection, as a holding beam (HB), into an SOA at the gain transparency wavelength, on the device's static and dynamic performances over a wide range of signal wavelength. Our experiments show that the holding beam injection into the SOA increases its 3-dB saturation output power and decreases its dynamic gain recovery time over a broadband of optical signal wavelength, without sacrificing its non-saturated gain neither changing its noise figure (NF). In addition, we demonstrate that the holding beam injection is a helpful technique for reducing the inter-channel crosstalk induced between signals due to the cross-gain modulation (XGM) effects in the SOA. By bit error rate (BER) measurements, we show that the crosstalk penalties imposed between two optical signals, modulated at 2.5 Gb/s and traveling through the SOA, can be considerably reduced by a holding beam power (of 19 dBm) injection at the gain transparency wavelength (1480 nm) inside the SOA cavity in counter-propagating direction.