Renewal Process and Forecast

Adam Ince · 2023-05-16T16:18:33+00:00

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Adam Ince

Hey all. Would love to understand your renewal process and forecast. Specifically...

How early are you reaching out to negotiate the renewal?
What stages do you use in your pipeline?
Who is responsible for executing the renewal?
In what system are you reporting net dollar retention?
What metrics do you use to automate your forecast?

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Comments

Adam Ince

Thanks for the quick response Rich!

Would love to get some more details. I'll reach out on LinkedIn.

Rich Rans

Hey Adam, I'll share some quick thoughts. Message me directly if you'd like to setup time to discuss and i can share in more detail.

1) How early depends on the product. Using ARR as a proxy, 100 days for high ARR, down to 15 days for low transactional product.

2) Stages are something like: Not Started, Proposed (shared some kind of pricing offer with customer, negotiations start here. More transactional renewals can skip this stage), Quoted (customer has something they could sign), Closed

3) For transactional, a renewal manager who mostly communicates via email. mid-tier is more toward a CSM, Strategic accounts with a cross-sell or upsell motion probably need a dedicated Account Manager.

4) SFDC

5) For forecasting I use:

Product - sets a baseline for retention. Some products historically renew at 95%, some at 60%...
CSM Sentiment - subject evaluation of customer tracking versus not getting value
Buyer Renewal Sentiment - have we asked them if they are going to renew and what is the answer. We then capture this as data on the renewal opp
Days to Renewal - as we get closer, buyer sentiment gets a higher weight. Further out, product baseline gets a higher weight.
Finally, depending on number of accounts, can you do a bottom up analysis and actually flag individual accounts as renewing and not renewing. Compare this to your algorithm driven forecast.
There is a lot of nuance in this, and other factors can be added in, but build a model that represents your business.