Why your renewals still feel unpredictable?!?

In Partnership With

Hey CS Pro,

Renewals don’t become stressful at the end, they are decided months earlier. In this episode, Emma Lampert breaks down how to stop “hoping” your forecast is right, and start building a renewal and expansion system you can actually trust.

But first, today’s sponsor

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• Shift from activity driven check ins to outcome focused conversations

• Clearly show value in every customer interaction, even without a perfect product

• Build momentum toward renewals and expansion instead of scrambling at the last minute

This is the foundation for predictable renewals, stronger customer relationships, and more strategic influence as a CSM.

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Commercial is not a dirty word

Emma says it plainly, customer success IS commercial. Not because you are pushing product, but because renewals are a lagging outcome of the value you delivered all year. If the customer got real outcomes, you protect the renewal. If they did not, you either go flat or you lose it.

I loved the way she reframed it…CS is still advisory, still strategic, still about outcomes. But it’s advisory with a purpose. You are helping customers win, AND you are responsible for the revenue that comes from that customer staying and growing.

One of the biggest reasons CS teams struggle with revenue ownership is detachment. Emma called it out… too many CSMs do not understand how their work ties to the way the business makes money.

Her advice was simple and honestly, a little uncomfortable (in the best way)…

That means understanding how your company generates revenue, how costs show up, and what happens downstream when you give discounts, credits, or concessions. If you do not understand your company’s P and L, talk to your finance leader and learn it.

Because this is the truth…you cannot lead a commercial function if you do not understand the commercial model.

Quota is just math, stop panicking

The moment Emma said her team has a 120% NRR target, I smiled… because yes, that’s a quota. Call it a KPI if you want, but it is still a number you are accountable to.

What makes Emma’s approach work is that she does not throw a scary target at her team and hope activity magically turns into revenue. She reverse engineers it.

Here’s the mindset shift she teaches:

If your book is $1M and your target is 120% NRR, the “extra” you need is $200k. Break it down by quarter. Then break it down by average expansion size. Then turn it into the number of real opportunities you need in the pipeline.

Suddenly “we need $200k” becomes “we need two real expansion motions this quarter” or “we need a pipeline of X projects that will drive adoption and usage.”

That’s when quota stops feeling like pressure and starts feeling like a plan.

She also made a point that a lot of CS leaders forget… CS has an advantage sales does not. Sales has to create a pipeline from scratch. CS already has built-in revenue events on the calendar…renewals.

So instead of treating renewals like random calendar admin, she recommends timeline mapping. Look at the year, find your biggest renewals, and build your expansion and value plan around them months in advance.

That’s how you make revenue repeatable. Not by doing more calls, but by engineering the right moments.

The renewal system that builds forecasting confidence

This is the part I think every CS leader listening needs to steal.

Emma forecasts six months out, she looks at the current quarter and the next quarter. The reason is simple…you need runway. If you find risk three months out, you cannot do much. Customers are busy, meetings take time to book, and priorities shift. Six months gives you space to actually change the story.

At the six-month mark, the CSM needs to have an explicit conversation with their champion about whether enough value has been delivered to justify another year. Not vibes, not usage alone, not “I think they like us”… an actual conversation.

And then she layers in her three-question framework to keep account planning focused on what actually predicts outcomes:

1. WHO CARES

Who are your stakeholders, who is engaged, who signs contracts, are you truly multithreaded, do you have champions AND decision makers?

2. HOW DEEP

How embedded are you, surface level usage or integrated workflows, one product or multiple, how sticky is your footprint?

3. WHAT ROI CAN THEY PROVE

Can the customer actually talk about the ROI, do they have a defined outcome, what is changing over time?

Notice what she is NOT doing…she is not obsessing over “health scoring” as a data collection exercise that no one uses. This is more like a practical pulse check that forces the right conversations.

Then comes the cadence…weekly forecast calls.

Every week, the team updates the forecast in HubSpot, including best case, worst case, and notes on what changed.

Emma’s take was savage but accurate… “Nothing changes week to week because you are not focused on it.”

The moment forecasting becomes a weekly rhythm, it stops being a last minute scramble.

And when it comes to best case and worst case, she ties it to evidence, not hope. In her consumption model, usage is a leading indicator of revenue. In traditional SaaS, the parallel is seat utilization or feature adoption. If they bought 100 seats and only 10 are used, your worst case is not 100 seats. You need to be honest.

One more moment I think every CSM needs to hear… direct questions are your friend.

Emma shared a churn story where she relied on “usage and vibes” and got blindsided. The real issue was the value did not stack up for the true long term owner.

Her point was simple… if they are not going to renew, they are not going to renew anyway. Asking earlier helps everyone. Your customer does not want a last minute awkward conversation either.

Now on upsells… her approach is not “show up three weeks before renewal and ask for more money.” Instead, she sees upsell as the natural result of consistent discovery. Discovery is not a kickoff activity, it is an every call habit.

If you are aligned to their roadmap, if you ask enough questions, if you let them sit in the pain long enough to understand impact, expansion becomes “how else can we help” instead of “how can we sell more.”

That’s it for this week. If you want to hear the full conversation with Emma (especially her forecasting cadence, the quota breakdown, and her take on outcome economy), go listen to the episode and tell me what hit home for you.

Have a listen to the full podcast:

I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.

Cheers to your CS success,

Anika