What’s the secret to acing contract renewals? It’s more complicated than sending the right form at the right time. Customer success leaders from Enfusion and BenchPrep use proven strategies — and in this article, they’re sharing their cheat codes.
Customer success is all about relationships, but too often relationships go cold after the initial sale. “There are no shortcuts,” said Joseph Vayalattu, managing director and global head of client services at Enfusion. “Putting a focus on the relationship only during the time of renewals compromises the guarantee of continued partnership.”
At BenchPrep, successful relationships with customers require successful relationships between teams. Senior Customer Success Manager Claudine Townley said the best trick for successful renewals is constant communication across the company. “I don’t think I could have a successful renewal without the help of internal stakeholders,” she said.
Built In Chicago sat down with these customer success experts to learn more of their top tips and tricks.
Enfusion’s investment management software creates enterprise-wide cultures of real-time, data-driven intelligence, boosting agility and powering growth.
What strategy do you adopt in order to best position yourself for a successful customer renewal?
There needs to be an unwavering commitment to providing world-class service and support to our clients each and every day. Continued value creation and trust in our teams are integral to our long-term partnerships.
Share a time when you had to take a creative, out-of-the-box approach to a customer renewal that ended up being successful.
Cost is typically one of the primary drivers around decisions to pursue alternatives, especially in this competitive environment. We recently had a customer reach out about an unbelievable offer they were receiving from a competitor to migrate over to their platform.
While we couldn't necessarily compete with their price offer, we were able to supplement their current package with additional services for a reasonable incremental cost. This increased their contract size with us but decreased their overall costs as a result of not having to pay two vendors. This structure can be used going forward for other clients facing similar cost pressures.
What is a common mistake account-facing professionals make during the renewal process, and how do you recommend they avoid it?
A common mistake is not engaging with clients frequently enough throughout the relationship. No news does not necessarily mean good news.
As with any relationship, building trust takes time and effort. Being proactive, understanding any pain points and offering creative solutions paves the way to building trusted partnerships and making the renewal process a simple “check the box” exercise.
As with any relationship, building trust takes time and effort.”
BenchPrep helps the world's leading education, training and assessment companies build and deliver best-in-class online learning programs.
What strategy do you adopt in order to best position yourself for a successful customer renewal?
The strategy that has worked best for me is to start planning and talking to the customer early. I review renewal contracts a year in advance and try to start planting seeds with customers early on — at least six months out, if not before.
The process always takes much more time than anyone anticipates, so starting early to get a take on the customer’s strategy and direction, as well as to determine any potential blockers, is key. If the customer is willing to start talking early, it usually means they intend to renew. Sometimes you can even get everything wrapped up before the end of the contract.
Finally, if there is a need for legal teams to get involved, that often takes additional time, so starting the conversation early is key.
Share a time when you had to take a creative, out-of-the-box approach to a customer renewal that ended up being successful.
One of my customers had been talking since their launch about wanting to use our platform for more than just exam prep. They wanted to take advantage of more features but weren’t sure how — nor did they have the time to strategize for it. To top that off, they had customized the platform to such an extent that it wasn’t really even possible for them to use it in any other way.
As part of the renewal, our implementation manager suggested adding in a second, out-of-the-box version of our platform at no additional cost. Now that this new version is set up, we can partner with the customer and come up with new ways to support their learners and to make our product stickier overall.
From this, I learned that involving team members outside of our customer success department is important when brainstorming renewal strategies as everyone has different vantage points. I also learned that thinking about the problems the customer is trying to solve is the key to getting them to renew and truly find value in your solution.
Involving team members outside of our customer success department is important when brainstorming renewal strategies as everyone has different vantage points.”
How do you tap into the expertise of other internal stakeholders to help you in your renewal process — and what can other sales and customer success professionals learn from that?
I don’t think I could have a successful renewal without the help of internal stakeholders. Our business has a weekly pricing meeting that pulls folks from customer success, product, sales, finance and professional services — including folks from our leadership team — for this very reason.
When the CS team has a tough renewal, we can pop into these meetings to present our strategy and get feedback and suggestions from different groups. We also work closely with our professional services team whenever we want to scope and present services to our customers as part of a renewal.
It is so important for everyone to be involved since it cuts down on internal questions, especially on what our commitments are, and ensures ownership of customer relationships beyond the CS team.
