Guide · Checklist
Renewal risk at 90, 60, and 30 days.
Most renewal processes start 30 days out — which is exactly when it's too late to change anything. This checklist starts at 90, when every signal is still actionable.
“Renewal quotes take me longer than new deals.” — CSM, r/CustomerSuccess, 2026. They take longer because the discovery was skipped.
Checkpoint 1 · 90 days out
Read the quiet signals
- Champion engagement trend: who has gone quiet in the last 60 days, and who replaced them (if anyone)?
- Support sentiment over the last quarter — not volume, tone. Pull the last 20 tickets and read them.
- Usage vs the account's own peak: is the core workflow growing, flat, or decaying?
- Stakeholder map refresh: is your mapped sponsor still the person who decides?
At 90 days, everything is still fixable. This is the highest-leverage checkpoint and the one most teams skip — because nothing looks wrong yet.
Checkpoint 2 · 60 days out
Confirm the commercial reality
- Has the close date moved? One push is process; two is a signal.
- Any seat or module contraction in the last 90 days? Contraction precedes the conversation.
- Who owns the renewal on their side — and have you spoken to them directly?
- Executive sponsor aligned on your side for anything above your CSM's authority?
At 60 days you're confirming, not discovering. If the 90-day check didn't happen, you're doing both at once — which is why the 90-day check matters.
Checkpoint 3 · 30 days out
Run the play, not the process
- Paper process mapped: who signs, what approvals, how long does legal take?
- Value story refreshed with this year's outcomes — not last year's pitch deck.
- Expansion or contraction scenario planned: what do you do if they ask for 20% off?
- Every risk signal from the earlier checks has an owner and a status. No orphans.
At 30 days there are no new discoveries — only execution. If you're still finding risk now, the earlier checkpoints failed.
Questions, answered honestly.
What if we don't have 90 days — the renewal is next month?
Run the 30-day checklist now, and run the 90-day checklist anyway to learn what you missed — that learning is what makes the next renewal different. Then put the account on a watch list: the patterns you find now are the early-warning system for the rest of the book.
Who should own this checklist?
The CSM owns it, but the 60-day executive alignment needs a sponsor above the CSM for strategic accounts. The most common failure isn't the checklist — it's nobody being accountable for the 90-day check happening at all.
How does this relate to health scores?
The checklist is what the health score should be summarizing. If your score says 'green' but the 90-day check surfaces a quiet champion and decaying usage, trust the checklist. Better: rebuild the score so it encodes the checklist — that's the back-tested score design we do.