Renewals and expansion

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:

1. Click the customer's row → side panel with detail.
2. Forecast dropdown → change category.
3. Proposed delta field → enter estimated renewal ARR.
4. 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

Red flags (possible churn)

• Champion changed — detected if the champion's email bounces or if Clearbit shows a new role.
• Usage dropped — usage dimension fell 30%+ in the last 30 days.
• Open critical tickets — high severity, unresolved for >7 days.
• Negative sentiment — last 5 emails show negative tone (NLP over the timeline).
• Prolonged silence — no bidirectional activity in >45 days.

Green flags (expansion indicators)

• Growing usage — spikes in advanced features or new modules.
• New customer users adopting LealUp — detected by logins from new domains.
• High engagement — fast email replies, frequent meetings.
• Mention of additional needs — the AI extracts mentions like "we also need X" in the timeline.

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:

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:

1. Identify an additional stakeholder (not just the champion) with upsell approval power.
2. Prepare a specific proposal (additional module, extra seats, higher tier).
3. Schedule demo/conversation.

Path 2 — Natural conversation

Sometimes expansion comes up during the renewal conversation. When prepping the proposal, the AI can suggest:

⌘K → "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:

1. CSM spots the opportunity (expansion or complex renewal).
2. CSM creates a note in Customer 360 → the AI can generate the briefing.
3. CSM changes forecast to "Best case" + tag sales_handoff.
4. AE (sales) gets a Slack notification (configurable in integrations).
5. AE and CSM run a joint call with the customer.
6. Post-close — CSM goes back to being primary owner, AE stays as co-owner.

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

1. Log churn_reason — required, dropdown with standard reasons (price, competition, strategy shift, product, executive churn, other).
2. Timeline freezes but remains queryable.
3. Win-Back playbook triggers at day 7.
4. 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.