Renewals and expansion
How to manage your renewal pipeline, identify expansion signals, and hand off with sales.
Renewals are the moment of truth in Customer Success. This page covers how LealUp helps you avoid losing accounts and find expansion that would otherwise slip through.
Renewal pipeline
Head to Renewals (left menu). You see all your accounts ordered by renewal date, grouped as:
- This month — urgent action, close now or escalate.
- Next 90 days — active work.
- Next 180 days — planning.
- Historical — renewals closed in the last 12 months.
Each row shows:
- Customer name + current ARR.
- Renewal date + days remaining.
- Forecast — the category the CSM assigns to this renewal:
- Commit — will close, no doubt.
- Probable — high likelihood, requires follow-up.
- Best case — possible but not guaranteed.
- At risk — could slip.
- Proposed delta — ARR of the renewal vs. current ARR (expansion, flat, downsell).
- Next action — the next task from the renewal playbook.
- Last activity — to spot "abandoned" accounts.
Classifying a renewal
Each week, review your pipeline and update the forecast:
- Click the customer's row → side panel with detail.
- Forecast dropdown → change category.
- Proposed delta field → enter estimated renewal ARR.
- Reason field (required if you changed category) — brief explanation.
The reason goes to the audit log and feeds the director's view.
Signals LealUp surfaces
LealUp works with a bounded set of named risk signals, detected by the AI reading the account's activity. They are not fixed numeric rules: there is no exact threshold that fires them, so read them as a reading of the context rather than a calibrated alarm.
Risk signals (possible churn)
| Signal | What raises it |
|---|---|
| Low adoption | The account is not reaching the usage expected for its stage |
| Usage degradation | Usage was fine and is now falling |
| Feature underutilization | They use the product, but only part of it |
| Declining engagement | Fewer replies, fewer meetings, less back and forth |
| Champion turnover | The contact who was your champion left the company |
| Support escalation | Tickets are climbing in severity |
| Negative sentiment | The tone of the conversation is bad |
| Sentiment deterioration | The tone is getting worse, even if it is not bad yet |
| Payment delays | Overdue invoices or partial payments |
| Competitive threat | Mentions of a competitor start appearing |
| Renewal risk | The combination of the above near the date |
| High churn risk | The aggregate reading of the account |
The difference between negative sentiment and sentiment deterioration is the most useful one in practice: the first tells you they are unhappy today, the second that they are cooling off while still being polite. The second is the one that gives you time to react.
Opportunity signals (expansion indicators)
| Signal | What raises it |
|---|---|
| Upsell potential | There is room to grow within what they already have |
| Expansion ready | The account is mature and healthy enough to widen |
| Cross-sell ready | It fits another product in your catalog |
| Power user emerged | Someone inside the customer started using it in depth |
| Feature adoption surge | They are using things they never touched before |
| Advocacy candidate | A good moment to ask for a case study or a referral |
Both types show in the right panel of Customer 360 and in the My day feed.
Renewal playbook — in detail
When 60 days are left until renewal_date, the Renewal playbook triggers (see Playbooks). The 4 suggested tasks can be adjusted to your sales cycle:
| Task | When | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Confirm champion | day 0 | Verify the champion is still active, their role, their decision-making power. |
| Prepare proposal | day 7 | Align with pricing, sales, legal. Define proposed delta. |
| Renewal conversation | day 14 | Call with champion + exec stakeholder. Review value delivered + roadmap. |
| Send proposal | day 30 | PDF/DocuSign/whatever you use. Target: close 15 days before renewal_date. |
Expansion — how to spot and run it
If you see a green flag (growing usage, high engagement), you have two paths:
Path 1 — Expansion playbook
For consistently healthy customers (health ≥80 for 30+ days with growing usage), the Expansion playbook triggers. The tasks guide you to:
- Identify an additional stakeholder (not just the champion) with upsell approval power.
- Prepare a specific proposal (additional module, extra seats, higher tier).
- Schedule demo/conversation.
Path 2 — Natural conversation
Sometimes expansion comes up during the renewal conversation. When prepping the proposal, the AI can suggest:
⌘ + / → "Alfred, what expansion signals do you see in Acme in the last 90 days?"The AI reviews the timeline, usage metrics, and signals, and gives you a summary. Useful to not leave money on the table.
Handoff with sales
If your organization has a separate sales team, the ideal handoff:
- CSM spots the opportunity (expansion or complex renewal).
- CSM creates a note in Customer 360 → the AI can generate the briefing.
- CSM changes forecast to "Best case" + tag
sales_handoff. - AE (sales) gets a Slack notification (configurable in integrations).
- AE and CSM run a joint call with the customer.
- Post-close — the account goes back to being assigned to the CSM. If the AE needs to keep seeing it, that comes from their role's data scope, not from assigning them the account.
Renewals at risk — when to escalate
Mark a renewal as At risk when:
- There are 2+ simultaneous red flags.
- Fewer than 30 days remain and you haven't aligned with the champion.
- The customer has explicitly mentioned evaluating competition.
When you flag it, a notice fires to the director/manager and optionally a "Save" session is created with the broader team.
Metrics you'll see as a CSM
- GRR (Gross Revenue Retention) for your book — ideally >95%.
- NRR (Net Revenue Retention) — GRR + expansion. >110% signals a healthy team.
- % of renewals closed 15+ days early — benchmark: 60%+.
- Expansion ratio — expansion achieved vs. target.
See the full dashboard at Director → Performance (if your role allows).
When you lose a renewal
- Log churn_reason — required, dropdown with standard reasons (price, competition, strategy shift, product, executive churn, other).
- Timeline freezes but remains queryable.
- Win-Back playbook triggers at day 7.
- If it's a large churn, run a post-mortem with the team (the AI generates a timeline summary to speed up the analysis).
Learning from every churn is what makes you a better CSM. LealUp makes it easy.