If your renewal strategy starts 90 days before the contract expires, you’re already late.

I’ve seen this happen over and over.

The renewal date gets closer.

The CSM starts looking at usage.

A renewal opportunity gets created in the CRM.

Someone schedules an executive business review.

The team starts asking:

“Are they going to renew?”

That’s the wrong question.

By the time you’re asking it, the customer has probably already made up their mind.

Maybe they haven’t told you yet.

But they’re forming an opinion.

Was the product valuable?

Did we accomplish what we bought it for?

Did the business actually change?

Would we miss this if it disappeared tomorrow?

And perhaps most importantly:

Can the person who owns the budget clearly explain why we should keep spending money on this?

That decision isn’t made in the final 30 days.

It’s built over the previous six months.

One of the biggest mistakes in Customer Success is treating renewal like a date on a calendar.

Renewal is not an event.

Renewal is the result of the customer lifecycle.

If the customer has achieved meaningful outcomes, understands the value, has executive alignment, and sees a clear path forward, the commercial conversation becomes much easier.

If they haven’t?

No amount of renewal-stage activity is going to magically create value.

You can’t PowerPoint your way out of six months of mediocre customer outcomes.

You can’t schedule your way out of weak executive alignment.

And you certainly can’t discount your way out of a customer who doesn’t believe they need your product.

The renewal should be the culmination of the work you’ve already done.

The renewal event really starts at day 1 but let’s talk about the last half of the year. 

Six months out, don’t ask:

“Are you happy with the product?”

Ask:

“Are we delivering the business outcomes you expected when you bought?”

Go back to the original reason they purchased.

What problem were they trying to solve?

What did they expect to change?

What metrics were supposed to improve?

What did success look like?

This is where you reconnect the product to the business case.

For example:

Instead of:

“Adoption is up 30%.”

You want:

“Your managers are now coaching consistently across the team, which has helped reduce ramp time by X weeks.”

One is an activity.

The other is an outcome.

And outcomes are what create renewal value.

“If we were sitting here six months from now and you said this was an incredibly successful partnership, what would have happened?”

Write down the answer.

Then build toward it.

Once you know what success looks like, determine what’s preventing you from getting there.

This is where great CSMs become business partners.

Maybe adoption is low.

Maybe the wrong users are engaging.

Maybe managers aren’t reinforcing the behavior.

Maybe the executive sponsor disappeared.

Maybe the original business problem changed.

Maybe your product isn’t being used in the workflow where it could create the most value.

Don’t hide these problems.

Surface them.

A renewal conversation should never be the first time the customer hears about a risk.

At 150 days, you still have time to do something about it.

“What’s preventing us from getting the outcome we agreed on?”

Then build a plan around the gaps.

This is where many CS teams wait too long.

The CSM has a great relationship with the day-to-day users.

The users love the product.

But the economic buyer hasn’t heard from the CSM in six months.

That’s dangerous.

Your champion may support you.

But your champion isn’t necessarily the person signing the renewal.

You need executive alignment around:

The goal isn’t to “get an executive meeting.”

The goal is to make sure the executive understands why the partnership matters to the business.

“If your executive team asked why we’re continuing this investment, what would you want them to know?”

If your customer can’t answer that question, you have work to do.

Once you do have that answer you need to build your executive relationship and ensure that they are aligned with the business value that you are creating and you have a solid understanding of any business priorities that might be changing for them. 

Now it’s time to prove the value.

Not with a giant 50-slide QBR.

With evidence.

Show the customer what changed because of the partnership.

Depending on your product, that might include:

The exact metric doesn’t matter.

The connection between your product and the business outcome does.

This is where you want the customer saying:

“Yes. This is actually making a difference.”

Because the best renewal conversation isn’t:

“Would you like to renew?”

It’s:

“Here’s what we accomplished together. Here’s what we still need to accomplish. Here’s where we can go next.”

That’s a completely different conversation.

Now we can talk about money.

Notice where this happens.

60 days.

Not six months.

Not 90 days.

The commercial conversation should come after the value conversation has already happened.

At this point, the customer should understand:

Now you can talk about the commercial structure.

Renewal.

Expansion.

New products.

Additional users.

Additional services.

Or potentially a change in scope.

The important thing is that you’re not introducing the commercial conversation as a surprise.

The final 30 days should be about execution.

Paperwork.

Procurement.

Legal.

Security.

Signatures.

Final approvals.

Not discovering that your champion left.

Not finding out the customer never saw the value.

Not realizing the CFO thinks the product is too expensive.

Those are 180-day problems, not 30-day problems.

The final month should feel boring.

And that’s a good thing.

Because boring renewals are usually healthy renewals.

Here’s where renewal processes often go wrong.

Teams measure:

These can all be useful.

But they aren’t the renewal.

The real question is:

Has the customer’s perception of value increased?

That’s the metric underneath everything else.

A customer can attend every QBR and still churn.

A customer can have 90% product adoption and still churn.

A customer can have a great relationship with their CSM and still churn.

Because relationships aren’t the business case.

Value is the business case.

Here’s the standard I’d want every CSM to operate against:

A renewal should never surprise you.

If the customer is going to renew, you should know why.

If they’re at risk, you should know why.

If they’re considering downsizing, you should know why.

If the champion left, you should know.

If the budget changed, you should know.

If the product isn’t delivering the expected outcome, you should know.

And ideally, you should know months before the contract expires.

That’s the difference between managing renewals and managing customer outcomes.

This is ultimately what Customer Success is supposed to create:

Customer investment → Adoption → Outcomes → Business value → Executive confidence → Renewal → Expansion

Then the loop starts again.

The mistake is thinking the renewal is the end of the loop.

It isn’t.

The renewal is the proof that the loop is working.

So if your team is scrambling 60 or 90 days before expiration trying to “save” renewals, don’t just ask:

“What can we do differently during renewal?”

Ask:

“What should have happened six months earlier?”

Because the renewal isn’t won in the final month.

It’s earned throughout the customer lifecycle.

And if your team gets that right, renewal becomes less of an event you manage…

…and more of an outcome you create.

That’s the Profit Loop.

Question, thoughts, reply to this email anytime

Onwards,
Mark