Renewal starts at handover, not a month before expiry
28 Aug 2026 After-salesRenewal
The deal is signed, the team celebrates and moves to the next one. Eleven months later someone calls about renewal and discovers the customer stopped using it in month three.
The first ninety days decide the year
A customer who reaches their first real result within thirty days usually renews. One who has not reached it within ninety rarely does, however happy they seem in meetings.
Define "first result" for your product in one measurable sentence. Examples: first ten deals entered · first report exported and sent · first week with three active users. Then make that the goal of handover, not "training completed".
Early churn signals
| Signal | Appears before renewal by |
|---|---|
| Active users drop below half | 6 months |
| The decision-maker stops attending reviews | 4 months |
| One support ticket closed without a real fix | 3 months |
| "We are reviewing budgets this year" | 2 months |
Only the first is measured automatically, the other three must be logged by whoever owns the account, in the system rather than in their head.
What should happen automatically
- On signature: the contract is created with start and end dates, and a handover task opens.
- Day 30: a scheduled review, was the first result reached?
- 120 days before expiry: a renewal task opens for the account owner. Not thirty, thirty days does not repair a relationship neglected for a year.
Ask this every quarter
"What were you doing before us that you are still doing?" The answer reveals the part that went unused, and that is exactly the part whose value gets cut at renewal.