Commercial Renewal Process
View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages.
A key part of the customer relationship lifecycle is the renewal phase. CSMs must proactively track the renewal dates of their customers and align with their Account Executive (AE) to ensure that a customer renewal takes place.
Timeframe
At the beginning of each month a CSM should review their list of accounts in Salesforce and note the renewal dates for their accounts. If a renewal date is within six months the CSM should schedule two “Renewal Review” meetings with the appropriate AE and Solutions Architect (SA). The first “Renewal Review” meeting should be scheduled five months out from the renewal date and the second should be scheduled three months out from the renewal date.
Renewal Review Meeting
A “Renewal Review” meeting should have the following attendees:
- Account Executive
- Solutions Architect
- Customer Success Manager
For strategic accounts (with a ACV over $100k) the following attendees should be added as well:
- Regional Sales Director
- CSM Regional Manager
The agenda of a “Renewal Review” meeting should include at least the following:
- Review of the customer health score and any changes over the past few months - changes can be seen in the Timeline in Gainsight.
- Review of support issues and the underlying reasons for any escalations.
- Review of high priority feature requests.
- Review of the customer’s utilization of the product.
- Review of any changes in customer’s budget or staffing.
From this meeting a set of action items should be created to improve customer utilization and satisfaction with the product. These items can include:
- Architecture review with Professional Services to address any underlying architectural weaknesses that could have contributed to an “Urgent” support escalation.
- Product utilization review to explore GitLab functionally that the customer is not using but could benefit from.
- Roadmap review to show the customer features that will be added to the product in the near term that may be valuable to them. This could include a discussion with Product Management for strategic customers.
Customer Cadence
The action items created from the “Renewal Review” meeting should be incorporated into the CSM customer cadence meetings and into any pending QBRs. The CSM should prioritize these reviews early in the renewal horizon.
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