Renewals Are Revenue

Let’s talk about one of the biggest missed opportunities in SaaS:

Treating renewals like a formality instead of a forecastable revenue event.

Most Customer Success teams spend a lot of time working accounts, but not enough time reviewing them with the same rigor as a sales pipeline. That’s a problem.

Because here’s the truth:

If you want to drive Net Revenue Retention (NRR), then you need to treat renewals with the same operational discipline and structure as new business deals.

Why Renewal Pipeline Reviews Matter

In most SaaS companies, 60–80% of your revenue next year will come from existing customers. That’s not just retention. That’s your growth engine, land and expand only works if the land sticks.

Yet here’s what happens all too often:

• Renewals get tracked in spreadsheets or vague CRM stages

• Forecasts are based on “gut feel” from the CSM

• Leaders are flying blind because insights are locked in 1:1 convos, not systems

If Sales ran this way, we’d all get fired.

But because CS isn’t always seen as a revenue function, the structure isn’t there.

It’s time to fix that.

The Modern Renewal Review Framework

Here’s a checklist I’ve used to drive structured, strategic renewal reviews, built on real data, not assumptions:

1. Multi-threading

• Are we engaged beyond just one champion?

• Do we have alignment with power users and business stakeholders?

2. Economic Buyer Access

• Have we had any conversations with the budget holder?

• Do they understand the value we’re delivering?

3. Email Sentiment

• Are recent email responses showing engagement or risk?

• Are they short, transactional, or escalating?

4. Engagement Activity

• Have there been regular meetings?

• Is there a healthy mix of inbound/outbound touchpoints?

5. Next Steps

• Are the CSM’s next steps clear and time-bound?

• Are internal blockers being flagged and resolved?

6. Competitors

• Have any competitors been mentioned recently?

• Are they evaluating alternatives?

7. Pain Points & Use Cases

• What’s top-of-mind for them right now?

• Are we solving the problem they bought us for?

8. Business Goals / Value Realization

• Have we tied our product to measurable business outcomes?

• Can we clearly articulate ROI?

9. Health Score

• Are we using a meaningful score or just activity-based signals?

• Does the score reflect leading indicators?

10. Adoption & Value Metrics

• Are usage and adoption trending up or down?

• Are we tracking the specific metrics they care about?
  

  Pro Tip:

Use a conversational intelligence tool many of these can be very easily tracked in a deal board that you can leverage to run your weekly pipeline reviews. You can easily tie in email sentiment, CRM data, and meeting data all into one view to centralize these insights

To recap, Renewals Deserve More Respect

The best CS leaders don’t just ask “Will this customer renew?”

They ask:

🔍 “What signals give us confidence?”

📉 “What risks are we ignoring?”

📈 “What’s the actual revenue posture of this account?”

If your renewal forecast review doesn’t feel like a sales forecast call, you’re missing a major opportunity to drive revenue predictability.

How structured are your renewal reviews today? What key signals do you track?

Hit reply or comment, I’d love to learn how your team approaches it.