Does your customer success team need a renewals manager? 

As your customer success team grows, it's important to ensure that you build your team with the variety of skillsets needed to adequately support customers. As the team grows, it may be helpful to begin differentiating positions on the team. Renewal managers are an important part of diversifying the team.

What is a renewal manager? 

A renewal manager helps ensure that customers renew their contracts. This role typically exists at SaaS or other subscription based companies. The renewal manager sits on the customer success team, although it involves a hybrid skill set requiring customer relationship building and sales. 

Why are renewal managers important? 

Customer success teams need very different skills on the team, ranging from technical product expertise, to relationship building, to sales. It’s rare to find all of these skills in the same person, so these teams need to onboard different individuals to serve these needs. A renewal manager brings a sales and relationship management skill set to the team that others may not have. 

How can a renewal manager help your customer success team? 

First and foremost, renewal managers can help improve renewal rates. This is important because it’s generally much less expensive to renew an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. Higher renewal rates contribute to stronger revenue growth and higher NRR; metrics which are often used to assess the strength and financial health of a company. 

In situations where renewal rates are low, renewal managers can help dig into the problem and shed light on the underlying issues at hand. Renewal managers serve as an important source of data and insights on customers and on the product. 

Finally, renewal managers can also help train the entire customer success team on best practices in regards to renewals, and with selling more broadly. These skills help CSMs become well rounded and better able to support the business and the customer. 

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