Moving from Disjointed to Seamless Customer Renewals

In the modern world of B2B business, renewing your existing customers is essential. 

Customer renewals are often more than half of a companies yearly revenue stream. With so much on the line, it's crucial to review accounts in depth and take those customer renewal dates seriously. Customer renewals are not always guaranteed.

Many companies go through an end of year or new year process where they essentially “trim the fat” . What products are we currently paying for and which ones can we afford to lose? If your product provides immediate and future value, it’s likely your product will fall into the “need to have” category.

Providing your customers with the history of success (QBRs) and future opportunities by using your product is necessary in order to provide value and pave the way to customer renewals. 

Problems with the Customer Renewal Process

Lack of Consistency: Companies need to understand that customer renewals are never guaranteed, you have to earn them. If you are reaching out to your customers, days before the renewal date, you’re too late. Many businesses have this “ad hoc” mentality where they only reach out to a customer if there is a problem or we will send one email and hope they engage with you. This often results in customers not feeling supported, which they will remember when it comes time to renew.

Companies often forget that the work doesn’t stop after you sign a new customer. What often happens is that the “work” of the customer renewal is not well defined. What do we need to do to guarantee that the customer signs on for another year? Customer renewals in general are a “gray” area where the type of relationship with the customer dictates the path to success. The ownership of those relationships could fall under many purviews on both your side and the side of the customer.  A disjointed process makes these “to-dos” difficult to keep track of and execute well. This causes engagement to fall by the wayside. When engagement goes, so do your chances of renewing that customer.

Lack of Process: Communication with the customer can be dependent on a lot of factors, how does that customer best communicate? What is the main problem they are trying to solve by using our product? When was the last time we reached out on their progress? What have they engaged with in the past, ect. Therefore, having a guided process for customer renewals can be tricky. If you don’t reach out enough, the customer could feel undervalued. If you reach out too much, but the context of the reach out provides no value, the customer might put their resources towards better things. 

Solutions

Centralized Workspace: Whether it's annual account reviews, strategic plans, invoices, contracts, or expansions, keeping all customer communication in a centralized environment ensures the consistency between all stakeholders. Communication and collaboration is the key to unlock healthy conversations and new opportunities for cross sell and up-sell.

Real-Time Monitoring: Analytics are crucial to determining the health of the customer. For example, if a customer has not interacted with your past 3 outreach attempts, they can be flagged as “unhealthy.” If the customer has not been responsive or engaged leading up to the renewal, they can be flagged as “unhealthy” and initiate more attention or leadership intervention. 

Repeatable, Automated Processes: Based on customer renewal health, you can assess what kind of activities are needed for that customer's renewal. Identifying those stages maps your outreach (steps, tasks, emails, ect) and sets automation in motion to execute. This streamlines your team time and efficiency. 

Seamless Integration with CRM: Your CRM is great for tracking information, but you need to be able to take that data and make it more meaningful by engaging with the customers. Using a process that comes into your CRM so that it can connect seamlessly into your 90-120 day customer renewal process allows you to see important progress, or just as importantly, lack thereof, to allow you to have good visibility to what is going on with each customer renewal. 

Moving Forward

Renewable services are the heartbeat of today’s world of business. Smooth processes will make things convenient for teams and customers. It will ensure that customers stick with your business long-term. 

We recommend looking for a tool that will improve your customer renewal process for best results. Using a centralized workspace that keeps customers and internal teams on the same page when it comes to collaboration, communication, and the sharing of documents is key. Having this in place allows companies to create repeatable workflows to ensure everything is moving forward as it should be.
You know the great risk that losing a renewing customer can have to your bottom line. If the cost is so great, why are we leaving it to chance?