Customer Renewal Tips for CS Teams

We sabotaged Customer Success by treating it like a support hotline—then acted surprised when ARR bled dry (2022-2024). The truth? CS is a revenue engine, just like sales. It deserves better. Fortunately, leaders like Harriet Shakked🎗 get it. Here are 7 ways she’s building Aligned’s CS like a top-class sales org: 1. Training Is About Value Extraction, NOT How To’s Similar to a great sales demo, you MUST focus on value, not features. You can’t expect people to care about How X works, before getting Why use X. We’ve just wrapped up a big update to our Aligned Onboarding Room and training. Instead of “click here”, it’s “Here’s how you access more stakeholders and save deals”. 2. GAP Selling Discovery (Yes, in CS) We’re training CSMs on GAP Selling. Harriet’s team runs discovery calls for every new customer. They question our sales team’s assumptions, confirm the ‘why’ behind the purchase, and go deeper so they can craft success plans that align with the business priorities and be true partners. 3. Keep a Real Forecast Pipeline Never assume a renewal. Harriet’s team tracks renewals and expansions like a sales pipeline. They use actual data (usage, milestones, multithreading levels, ROI) to forecast outcomes. No guesswork. No ‘set and forget’. They have a timeline, clear gates, and next moves—just like top AEs. 4. “Health” = Trackable Outcomes, Not Product Usage Your buyer's CFO doesn't care how many times someone logged in; they care about results. Harriet killed the weighted product ‘health score’ that nobody trusted. Her team measures actual business outcomes: deals accelerated, time saved. Show the CFO that metric. The renewal practically closes itself. 5. Commercial Skills > 'Happiness Management' Renewals are commercial events, not a ‘likability contest’. Harriet invests in sales training so her CSMs can handle pricing objections, negotiate renewals, and recognize red flags early. If you’re just making customers ‘happy’, you’re ignoring the real question: “Did we help them grow revenue?”. 6. Access to Power, Multithreading, and Exec Sponsorship One champion isn’t enough. The CFO or CEO can veto your renewal in a heartbeat. Harriet’s team builds multi-level relationships to ensure there’s exec buy-in. They target operational authorities, economic buyers, and build end-user champions. Value must be visible across the ENTIRE org. 7. Project-Manage Onboarding Like an Enterprise Deal Why would you wing onboarding if you’d never wing a 6-fig POC? Harriet’s team runs onboarding inside Aligned's Client Portal—1 shared URL with all resources, files, success plans, and more. Both sides track value, and no one's left out of the loop. The outcome? Less churn and expansions feel like a natural next step. —— If you want to stop the ARR bleed in 2025: Stop treating CS like a support hotline. Train them like a top-tier sales team. Watch churn turn into expansions. P.S. Aligned's Client Portal is free: https://lnkd.in/dwX_Zizk

Netflix doesn’t wait until month 12 to learn you’re gone. The platform knows by episode 3. B2B SaaS churn works the same way: 71% of cancellation intent surfaces in the first 30 days. Essentially, day 1 - 30 is the verdict window. - Only 28% of users who fail to reach first value inside two weeks renew a year later. - Accounts that activate three core features in month one renew at a 92% clip versus 58% for single-feature tourists (per Gainsight Pulse). - CS teams that run a 30-day “decision audit” see renewal forecast accuracy tighten from around 18% to +/- 7%. Yet most companies schedule the first serious check-in 90 days before renewal, which is LONG after the jury has left the building. Try doing this: 1. Map a Time-to-Impact SLA: first value <14 days, second value <30. 2. Treat early warning signals like pipeline slips. No daily log-ins by day 5? Auto-trigger a guided tour. 3. Escalate risk the same way sales escalates exec involvement. If NPS is < 6 in week three, drop an exec note rather than a generic survey. 4. Push product usage data to CS in hourly feeds, not weekly roll-ups. Retention is the delta between first-month reality and twelfth-month pricing. Nail the former and the latter becomes paperwork. Forecast renewals on behavior you can still change, not anniversaries you can only regret.

When customers say they’ll churn, most teams panic. And that panic shows up as activity. “Here’s a report.” “Can we meet?” “Want to talk to an executive?” It feels busy, but it’s not a plan. I see this all the time: a customer says they’re going to churn, and instead of building a formal save plan, CSMs throw everything at the wall, hoping something sticks. During a coaching session this week, I helped a team reframe that behavior into something structured and accountable, and a program both sides agree to. Here’s the exact approach we walked through, step by step: 1) Get a live commitment first, not later Book a call and open with a calm reset: “I want to align on a short plan to prove value in the next 30 days. If we do the work and you see the outcomes we agree on, will you continue with us instead of churning?” 𝙋𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙛𝙖𝙧 𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙖𝙮 𝙣𝙤 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙖𝙨𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚. 𝙂𝙚𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙗𝙖𝙡 𝙮𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡, 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙫𝙞𝙖 𝙚𝙢𝙖𝙞𝙡. 2) Name the problem in their words Summarize what they said is blocking renewal, then play it back. “You mentioned [X) as the reason- Did I miss anything?” 3) Propose a 30-day proof plan Replace scattered tasks with a simple, shared program. Use bullets, dates, and owners. *Week 1: deliver A, fix B, or show C *Week 2: validate with your stakeholders *Week 3: quantify impact and ROI deltas *Week 4: review, decide, and schedule go-forward 4) Make the commitment explicit Ask the decision question, clearly and directly: “If we do X by [date], and you see Y results and Z ROI, will you move forward with us rather than cancel?” 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐚 𝐲𝐞𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐦. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲. 5) Define how value will be shown, not just sent Agree on exactly what you will deliver and how they will validate it. 6) Assign owners on both sides Document who from their team will attend reviews, who gives final sign-off, and who you will avoid single-threading with. Ask for a backup contact. 7) Put it in writing, same day Email the one-pager plan with bullets, dates, and the previously captured “yes.” Reference that the next emails and reports are part of this plan, not random touches. This reframes every follow-up as progress against a shared program. 8) Run weekly proof reviews, live Short calls to show progress, remove blockers, and reaffirm the commitment. Keep artifacts tight: 1-page recap, 3 bullets, 1 decision. 9) Close with the agreed decision On week 4, ask the decision exactly as framed at the start: “We did X, you saw Y results and Z ROI, as agreed. Are we renewing and moving forward?” Because they already agreed to decide on these terms, the close is natural. Why this works: *Random actions feel like noise; a plan creates purpose and timeline. *Verbal commitment on a call reduces ghosting and creates accountability

My biggest priority at Junction is improving renewal conversations. Not by adding more touchpoints. By making every interaction count. Here are three tactics that actually moved retention: Tactic One: Segment Your Book Most CSMs treat all customers the same. Same cadence. Same agenda. Same deck. That's the fastest way to become background noise. Instead, segment your book by outcome they're driving: → Revenue growth customers → Cost savings customers → Efficiency/workflow customers When you group similar outcomes, you stop context switching between completely different value stories. You get in flow with relevant case studies, metrics that matter, and strategic conversations they actually care about. Tactic Two: Mine for Intelligence Not every customer call needs to drive immediate action. Sometimes you're gathering intelligence for the renewal conversation 90 days out. When you hear "gold nuggets" like: → Upcoming board priorities → Budget reallocation plans → New executive KPIs → Competitive pressure points You capture them. Then you use those insights to frame your value story around what their CFO actually cares about. Tactic Three: Outcomes, Not Features Your customer messages used to sound like this: "Checking in on adoption metrics and wanted to schedule our quarterly review..." Now they sound like this: "I noticed your team is focused on reducing time-to-market by 30% this quarter. Most ops leaders we work with are facing the same tension: pressure to move faster while maintaining quality and compliance." What's more likely: Your customer is thinking about the business outcome you impact? Or your customer is thinking about your product features? Message accordingly, and engagement increases. --- The shift isn't more customer touches. It's more intelligent customer touches. Stop optimizing for activity volume. Start optimizing for strategic relevance. How are you teaching your CS team to segment, mine intelligence, and lead with outcomes?

Your happiest customers are your worst advocates. I ran a customer marketing program where we hand-picked our highest NPS accounts for case studies, reference calls, and prospect dinners. These customers said all the right things. And prospects didn't believe any of it. The feedback from sales: "they sound like they're reading a script." Even when they weren't. A customer who's had zero problems isn't credible to a buyer sitting on twelve. Prospects would nod politely, then ghost the follow-up. We couldn't figure out what was broken until we accidentally put the wrong customer on a reference call. This account had a brutal onboarding. Almost churned at month four. Their ops lead had called our CSM furious on a Thurs afternoon. But they stayed, renewed, and expanded. When that customer got on the phone with a prospect, the conversation was completely different. They walked through what went wrong, how the team responded, and why they decided to stay anyway. That prospect closed in three weeks. So we kept going. Started specifically choosing customers who had been through something rough and come out the other side. Those conversations converted at nearly 3x the rate of our "perfect" references. Every prospect already assumes your product will have problems. What they're trying to figure out is what happens when something goes sideways and whether your team shows up or disappears. How to find your comeback-story customers this week 1. Pull your churn-risk list from the last 12 months. Ask your CSM team: which accounts almost left but didn't? You're looking for customers who hit a rough patch, escalated, got it resolved, and renewed. Most CS teams can name these off the top of their head. 2. Filter for expansion or renewal. An account that almost churned and then expanded is your strongest signal. They didn't just tolerate you after the problem. They bought more. That's a story a prospect can't ignore. 3. Ask the CSM to make the intro, not marketing. If marketing sends a cold email asking for a reference, the customer puts their corporate hat on. If the CSM who helped them through the fire says "would you be open to sharing your experience with someone in a similar evaluation," the answer is almost always yes. 4. Brief the customer differently. Don't give them talking points. Don't send a prep doc. Tell them: "Just tell them what happened. The good and the bad." The moment you coach them, you lose the thing that makes this work. 5. Put them in the room, not on a PDF. Reference calls, prospect dinners, small roundtables. The magic is the live conversation where a prospect can ask "what happened when it broke?" and your customer answers honestly. You can't script that and you shouldn't try. The filter for your reference program shouldn't be NPS score. It should be: which customers had a real problem, got it resolved, and chose to stay?

If you check your upcoming renewals right now, at least 20% of them have a new decision-maker who has never spoken to you. The KEY signal to halt renewal risk? When someone from the original buying group leaves. That person advocated for you internally, and whoever's inherited the account has no history with you and no reason to defend the renewal. The big problem: nobody noticed they'd left. Six moves to counter the churn: 1. Look at accounts due to renew this quarter Your own customer list, sorted by renewal date. Don't narrow it to the ones you already worry about; you're looking for risk across the board. 2. Find the ones that lost someone from the buying group Get job change alerts across every contact on those accounts. Someone moving teams inside the business counts as much as someone leaving it. Also, DON'T rank this by seniority. The person who ran the day-to-day setup can be a bigger loss than the VP who signed the contract and never logged in. 3. Rebuild the committee as it looks today Look hard for the replacement. If your champion has been backfilled, the most important person on that account has never heard from you. 4. Find everyone you've never spoken to Some are in your CRM with nothing recorded against them. Others aren't in there at all, because they arrived after the deal closed, but both matter. 5. Research the account How they're using the product, who they're hiring, and whether they're looking at alternatives. If they are investigating competitors, the renewal call becomes a fight to keep them, and you really want to know that beforehand. 6. Write to the person, not the account The budget holder is thinking about cost. Whoever inherited the work is thinking about whether this is about to land on them... that's two different emails. Run it a quarter ahead. Building a relationship with someone who's never spoken to you takes more than one email, and within 30 days you're not preventing anything; you're already at the negotiating phase. Full play in the comments.

If your GRR is under 90%, the problem usually isn’t churn. It’s neglect. Too many SaaS or services companies obsess over New ARR, then act surprised when revenue walks out the back door. Strong GRR isn’t a retention tactic. It’s an operating system. Here are 6 practices that separate the leaders from the leakers: 1. Map the "Economic Buyer" on Day 1 Don't confuse your Champion with the Decision Maker. Before the ink dries, identify who actually signs the renewal. If you spend all year talking to the daily user, you will be invisible when the CFO reviews the budget. 2. Send "Value Realized" Memos (Not Usage Reports) Usage is a vanity metric; outcomes are currency. Send a simple, monthly executive summary: What did we save? What did we accelerate? If your sponsor has to "guess the ROI," you’ve already lost. 3. Get on a plane (For the Top 20%) For your strategic accounts (High ACV), Zoom is insufficient. Zoom maintains relationships; dinners build political capital. Visit your top accounts annually. Problem-solving face-to-face builds trust that dashboards never will. 4. Onboarding is the First Renewal Customers churn in Month 12 because they failed in Month 2. A bad first 90 days is a death spiral that CSMs cannot save. Nail activation and hit "Time to First Value" immediately. 5. Stop using CSMs as "Support Agents" You cannot play offense (growth) when you are stuck playing defense (bugs). If your CSMs spend 80% of their time closing tickets, they aren't managing success—they are just expensive helpdesk staff. Specialized roles yield specialized results. 6. The "120-Day" Rule Start the renewal conversation 4 months out. This isn't a contract negotiation; it's a friction audit. 120 days gives you time to fix a problem. 30 days only gives you time to beg. The Summary: GRR rises when customers feel like partners. GRR collapses when customers feel like transactions. If you want higher renewals, stop thinking like a seller and start thinking like a shareholder in your customer’s success. Zinnov Amita Goyal Karthik Padmanabhan Ashveen Pai Hani Mukhey Kavita Chakravarthy Saurabh Mehta Namita Adavi Mohammed Faraz Khan ieswariya k

For one of my fractional clients, we’ve been building out their upsell and expansion engine, and it’s been a great reminder that expansion is fundamentally a growth lever - not a workflow, not a function, not a “nice to have.” It’s one of the cleanest, most efficient ways to grow revenue, especially heading into a year where every team is being asked to do more with less. 🫣 Here are a few of the principles we’ve been leaning on that might be helpful as you think about expansion in the new year. 🚀 1. Start with the success plan, not the SKU. Expansion lands when it’s tied to the customer’s stated goals and the outcomes they care about. 2. Make the “why now” obvious. Operationalize triggers: usage thresholds, new stakeholders, growing complexity, seasonality. When they hit, the conversation is about progress, not procurement. 3. Give CSMs narrative, not scripts. Equip them with a clear POV on where value comes from, where customers get stuck, and what “good” looks like. The best expansion moments feel like coaching, not selling. 4. Tighten cross-functional alignment. Marketing defines the value stories. Product defines unlock moments. CS brings them to life. When those teams move together, expansion becomes natural. 5. Remove friction. Simple packaging, transparent pricing, and a clean path to “yes.” If expansion requires a multi-week contracting cycle, it’s already broken. 6. Measure what matters. Track expansion alongside customer health: time-to-value, depth of adoption, multi-threading. Healthy accounts expand, unhealthy accounts don’t. The pattern is consistent: expansion is the outcome of trust, timing, and clarity. Build for those, and upsell stops feeling like selling, and instead - it becomes the next logical step. 📈 I've also been working on a library of templates - emails, slides, and visuals for teams to lean on, hoping to share more of those soon. 💪 #expansion #growth

I've had a few epiphanies in my first year as CRO of 6sense. One big one? There’s a #1, totally clear signal that a customer is planning to renew with you. They TELL you. I came to this shockingly simple realization after spending hours analyzing data science models, digging into all the signals, and trying to predict renewal likelihood. I read a report that said the No. 1 predicter of a renewal is customers tell you. My MIND was BLOWN, and Project “Just Ask” was born. Here’s what it looks like: Part 1. Salespeople are trained to draw out objections, but CSMs not so much. We started by enabling our CS team to explicitly ask customers about their renewal plans. They may not always hear what they want to hear, but knowing is key to a great path forward. We trained our CSMs "Sandler style” — we’ll take a yes, we’ll take a no, but not we will stop at, “I’ll think it over.” We really wanted them to get to the bottom of the situation. Part 2. At the advice of Insight Partners, we kicked off Project “Just Ask” with a bang — or, more accurately, a blitz. In one week, our CSMs called 90% of our customers to ask about their intentions, and we came away with a lot of yes’es whoop whoop and for the no/ maybe’s - all good we now had a plan to get to yes. Part 3. Based on what we learned, we designed mutual success plans with each of those customers using Gainsight. Part 4. Project “Just Ask” is now an ongoing part of our workflow — it's the first step in our 6-step renewal process. After this a-ha moment, things got SO MUCH simpler. We have achieved: ➡ Clarity in forecasting ➡ Direction for the team on starting renewal conversations early and often ➡ MOST importantly, alignment with customers on success. Do we still use data and signals to predict renewals? Of course. But this one proactive, simple, step is a super-powerful and effective tool to add to the toolbox. Would love to hear any and all customer success plays that have worked — please share your best tips/approaches in the comments!

Picture your CSM on a renewal call. The customer says the number is too high. What he says in the next ten seconds is worth more than everything he did in the previous eleven months. Most CSMs do one of two things. - They defend the price, which turns the call into an argument about value the customer has already made up her mind about. - Or they say they will see what they can do, which the customer correctly hears as yes. Both of those give away the discount. One of them just takes longer. Here is what to train instead. 1. Do not answer. Ask what number they were expecting. Most CSMs skip this because it feels confrontational. It is the highest value question in the entire conversation. A customer who says 15% is negotiating. A customer who says there is no budget at all is telling you something completely different, and you need to know which one you have. 2. Ask what changed. The price was acceptable last year. Either their situation changed or their view of the value changed. Those need opposite responses. If their budget got cut, you have a shape problem, not a price problem. 3. Never give a discount without taking something back. Term length. Payment schedule. A case study. A reference call. An earlier renewal date. The discount is not the problem. A discount for nothing is the problem, because it prices next year too. 4. Be able to say no. Your CSM needs to know, before the call, the number below which she is allowed to lose the account. If he does not have that number, he has no position, and the customer will work that out in about four minutes. Go back to that call and those ten seconds. Your CSM will have that moment about forty times this year. Decide now what he says.