Bob London explains why waiting until contract end to ask for renewal is a mistake. Instead, start temperature checks 3 to 6 months in. Ask customers on a 1-to-5 scale how they'd react if a competitor called, then you have time to fix problems before renewal.
Chapters
I think the biggest mistake I see with renewing customers, especially large sort of high-touch customers, is this sort of last-minute, you're checking in with them as you're asking for the renewal, which could be $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 a month for a year that you're asking them for. The renewal, as one of my clients said to me recently, is an outcome of doing certain things correctly. And you have to take their temperature, see if they're getting value, but you can't do that 2 minutes before you ask for the renewal. And that's why you have to have these authentic, transparent conversations with customers, you know, 3, 4, 6 months into the relationship and on a regular basis. For example, if you ask something like, hey, if you got a call from our competitor tomorrow, how would you react on a scale of 1 to 5? And that is one of the questions that I teach. You get a sense of where they stand because you're not asking about competition. You're really asking how do they feel about you and the product and the value they're getting. The problem is if you ask that question, you know, a week or 5 minutes before the renewal is due or comes up or the contract ends, you can't do anything with the answer. You can't react to it. You can't address anything. But if you ask it 6 months into the relationship, you can get all kinds of insights and it gives you time to course correct or just change their perception based on things that they're not aware of.
