If you’ve been in SaaS long enough, you know this moment all too well: your growth charts are trending up, your pipeline looks healthy, and your acquisition costs are (finally) under control.
But then you dig into your SaaS renewals dashboard — and that’s where the red starts flashing.
Customers are churning. Contracts are quietly not being renewed. And the recurring revenue you were banking on to hit your targets? It’s slipping through the cracks.
I’ve seen this happen inside Series A startups and $50M ARR scaleups alike. And I’ll be blunt: most SaaS brands treat renewals like an afterthought, when they should be treating them like a core growth engine.
If you’re a SaaS founder or CXO, this post is for you.
I’m going to show you what most of you get wrong about SaaS renewals, and more importantly, what you can start doing today to fix it.
Why SaaS Renewals Matter More Than Ever
Let’s start with some hard truth: if you’re not actively working to retain every customer, you’re silently losing revenue every month.
According to Bain & Company, increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by up to 95%. That’s not a typo. Why? Because retained customers:
- Cost less to serve
- Spend more over time (hello, expansion revenue)
- Refer new business
But wait, you have read (and I have written) that statistic more often than I’d like to. Yet many SaaS leaders still focus almost exclusively on acquisition.
I get it — new logos are sexy. They make for great board slides. But if your renewal rate is shaky, your revenue is basically built on sand.
“You don’t build ARR by signing contracts. You build it by keeping promises.”
That’s the mindset I help SaaS sales teams adopt — and it’s what separates high-retention brands from the ones constantly scrambling to fill a leaky funnel.
#TCCRecommends: Old school sales tactics you should get rid of
The Real Reasons Customers Don’t Renew (And What to Do About it)
Before we jump into strategies, let’s unpack why customers leave in the first place.
It’s rarely because of price or competition. Most of the time, it’s due to one (or more) of the following:
1. Weak Onboarding and Adoption
If your users aren’t seeing value in the first 30-60 days, you’re already fighting an uphill battle. A clunky handoff from sales to CS? That’s a renewal killer. So is a one-size-fits-all onboarding flow.
What to do: Create role-specific onboarding journeys and assign accountability for adoption metrics. Hint: it shouldn’t just be Customer Success. Sales needs skin in the game too.
#TCCRecommends: How to Build Your SaaS Onboarding Program?
2. Misaligned Value Perception
Ever heard a customer say, “We’re not really using it enough”? That’s code for “we don’t see why this tool matters anymore.”
What to do: Tie usage to ROI early and often. During the sales cycle, set clear success metrics. At renewal, show them how far they’ve come — in their language, not just yours.
3. Reactive Renewal Management
If your CS team starts thinking about SaaS renewals 30 days before the contract ends, you’ve already lost. Renewals need to be forecasted, managed, and proactively owned.
What to do: Treat renewals like a sales pipeline. Forecast it. Review it in weekly sales meetings. Give it the same rigor you give new deals.
4. No Clear Owner
When SaaS renewals fall in the gray area between Sales and CS, things slip. There’s no urgency, no accountability, and no coordinated outreach.
What to do: Define who owns the renewal, who supports it, and what the handoff looks like. Better yet, have a revenue leader oversee the whole lifecycle.
Why SaaS Renewals Shouldn’t Be Left to Customer Success Alone
Here’s something most founders get wrong: renewals are not just a Customer Success problem.
Sure, customer success managers build the relationship, but they’re often under-equipped — or under-incentivized — to lead commercial conversations. That’s not a knock on CS. It’s just reality.
If you want to drive higher renewals, sales needs to play a bigger role. Here’s how:
1. Set the Stage During the Initial Sale
Every renewal is shaped by how you sell the original deal. Did you promise results or just features? Did you price based on value or discount to close?
I always coach SaaS sales teams to sell the renewal during the sale. Set clear expectations. Identify potential expansion. Plant the seed of a long-term partnership, not just a short-term fix.
#TCCRecommends: Consider using these prospecting tips to close your deals
2. Create Sales-CS Alignment Around Outcomes
It’s not enough to hand off the customer post-sale.
The best teams create a shared success plan with Sales and CS both owning parts of the journey.
When that happens, you don’t just reduce churn — you create natural moments to upsell and cross-sell.
Building a Proactive SaaS Subscription Renewal Playbook
Let’s get tactical. If you want to move from reactive to proactive, you need a repeatable renewal playbook. Here’s what I recommend:
Step 1: Start 90 Days Out
Track contract end dates and segment your accounts. High-risk accounts? Start even earlier. Use health scores, usage data, and relationship signals to assess risk.
Step 2: Segment by Renewal Risk and Opportunity
Not all renewals are equal. Flag accounts with low engagement or recent support issues. Likewise, highlight accounts that are ripe for expansion and plan for that motion.
Step 3: Automate Workflows, Personalize Touchpoints
Use automation to trigger internal alerts and workflows — but humanize your customer communication. Nobody wants to get a robotic email saying, “Your subscription is up for renewal.”
Instead, reach out with insights, usage milestones, or a quick video message. Remind them of the value they’re getting.
Step 4: Make Renewal a Team Sport
Bring in RevOps to ensure clean data. Loop in Product for feedback loops. And have Sales lead the commercial strategy. When the whole org is invested in renewals, success follows.
What Metrics Actually Matter for Renewals?
Let’s cut through the noise. These are the four metrics every SaaS founder should obsess over:
- Net Revenue Retention (NRR): The gold standard. Includes expansion and contraction.
- Gross Revenue Retention (GRR): Strips out upsells — shows your true retention.
- Logo Churn: Are you keeping customers or just growing accounts?
- Renewal Forecast Accuracy: Can your team predict what will renew and when?
Set quarterly goals. Review them in leadership meetings. And don’t just look at the numbers — understand the why behind them.
“What gets measured gets managed.” – Peter Drucker
SaaS Renewals Are a Culture, Not a Campaign
Here’s the part that most playbooks skip: renewals aren’t a task. They’re a mindset.
When I step in as a fractional Chief Sales Officer for SaaS brands, one of the first things I look at is how the company talks about renewals internally.
Is it just a CS KPI? Or is it seen as a reflection of product-market fit, sales quality, and customer alignment?
High-retention SaaS companies don’t just do renewals — they build them into their DNA. Their sales decks highlight long-term outcomes. Their CS teams are trained in value selling. Their leadership teams obsess over NRR like it’s a religion.
This isn’t something that gets solved with a better email template. It takes orchestration across teams, consistent messaging, and executive ownership.
Sometimes that means bringing in an outside lens — someone who can connect the dots between sales, success, and strategy.
Final Thoughts: You Don’t Have a Churn Problem — You Have a Renewal Strategy Problem
If you’ve made it this far, here’s what I want you to take away:
- Renewals are just as important as acquisitions (arguably more)
- You need to start thinking about renewals way earlier in the customer lifecycle
- Sales has a massive role to play in retention, not just customer success
- A proactive, cross-functional approach is the only way to build scalable renewal systems
This isn’t just theory. I’ve implemented these strategies inside SaaS companies ranging from scrappy startups to post-Series B scaleups. The results? Measurable increases in NRR, more predictable revenue, and — let’s be honest — a lot less stress at quarter-end.
If you’re ready to turn renewals from a blind spot into a growth driver, maybe it’s time we talk.
P.S. Whether or not you bring on a fractional CSO, the key is leadership. Someone needs to own this. Not as a project — but as a priority.