The 7 Most Common Reasons Renewals Efforts Stall - and How to Fix Them
David Pinto | Principal Consultant | RenewalsHub
June 2025
Even the best renewals strategies can fall flat in execution,…
… not because the business case is weak, but because critical elements to successfully execute the strategy are missing or misfiring.
We’ve seen it in business models across various industries; a company launches a strategic initiative to improve renewals, maybe even builds a cross-functional team and creates dashboards - yet six months later, the results are underwhelming. Target success metrics are not being realized. Teams are confused about ownership. Automation is partial or ineffective. Forecast accuracy is off. The effort stalls, not because the intent wasn’t a good idea, but because it wasn’t fully and effectively operationalized.
At RenewalsHub, we’ve identified seven common reasons renewals efforts lose momentum - each tied to one of the core components of the RenewalsHub Renewals Engine, our framework for scaling predictable renewals success.
If your renewals program isn’t delivering, chances are one (or more) of the following challenges is the root cause.
1. Data & Insights
You’re flying blind - or worse, trusting the wrong signals.
The stall: Too many organizations base their renewals strategy on siloed, inconsistent and/or incomplete data. Forecasts are often driven by rep sentiment or static reports. But even more dangerous is when teams rely on data that looks credible but lacks predictive value. Churn risks go undetected. Expansion signals are missed. Leadership sees renewal performance in hindsight – with no time to take meaningful action.
The fix: Build a unified data foundation that supports more than base-level forecasting. You need clean, consistent and timely data across product usage, engagement, contract terms, support history and customer outcomes. Then, layer in analytics that surface predictive churn indicators, flag expansion potential, and deliver real-time insights to reps and managers.
Insight: Strong dashboards are useful, but actionable insights are transformative. That means surfacing signals like “renewal at risk due to lack of recent executive engagement” or “growth opportunity based on license overage trend.” Your renewal motion should be driven by intelligence, not just information. Companies that operationalize insights, not just report them, outperform those who chase lagging metrics.
2. Process & Workflows
Everyone’s doing it differently - and no one owns the customer journey.
The stall: Sales has one way of managing renewals. CS has another. If a dedicated Renewals team exists, they have their own style. Partners do it their own way, or not at all. There’s no consistent, unified hand-off renewal journey, no shared playbook and no clear triggers for engagement or escalation.
Without defined, standardized workflows, each team (Sales, Customer Success, Dedicated Renewals teams, Partners, Ops) ends up improvising. That leads to inconsistent customer experiences, internal confusion and missed milestones. Worse, critical renewals can fall through the cracks simply because no one knew it was “their turn.”
The fix: Document the full renewal lifecycle - from initial customer engagement through quoting, negotiation, final closure and post-renewal follow-up. Clarify which organization/team owns each step, what triggers action, where data is captured and how exceptions are handled. Then embed these workflows into your systems so they drive behavior, not just sit in a slide deck.
Insight: Great renewals teams don’t wing it - they execute playbooks that are structured, visible, and enforced. A consistent renewal motion builds customer trust, internal alignment, and scalable results. If two reps approach the same renewal two different ways, you don’t have a process - you have a liability.
3. Systems
Your tools aren’t enabling renewals, they’re blocking them.
The stall: Teams waste hours toggling between tools to find contract terms, usage metrics, pricing history or billing info. Spreadsheets are the fallback. Systems are disconnected or overly customized, making reporting painful and workflows unreliable.
The fix: Start with the core question: Can your systems support your defined renewal workflows? Align your CRM, CPQ, billing and CS platforms so that renewal-critical data is accessible and actionable. Prioritize integration, usability and automation-readiness. Build for renewals as a first-class motion, not a bolt-on to new business.
Insight: World-class renewal engines don’t just have better tools - they have tools that talk to each other, reflect reality and drive behavior. If your systems create friction instead of clarity, they’re not neutral, they’re costing you money.
4. Automation
You're spending too much time on tasks that don’t need a human.
The stall: Teams are manually emailing customer renewal reminders, generating quotes, updating trackers and chasing approvals. High-volume, low-value renewals eat up time and delay strategic work. Customers may even miss renewal windows entirely due to inconsistent customer outreach and follow-through.
The fix: Identify the repeatable, rules-based motions in your renewals process and apply automation there first. Recognize which renewals can be automated - typically, your low-complexity, long-tail accounts. Build workflows that trigger initial customer outreach and follow-up engagements, automate renewal reminders, quote generation, approvals escalate exceptions and close loops and even auto-renewal processing when applicable. Monitor performance and refine based on feedback and results. Don’t just digitize tasks - automate outcomes.
Insight: Smart automation isn’t about removing people - it’s about refocusing them. The best renewals teams use automation to create leverage, not just efficiency. If your highest-paid talent is chasing $2K renewals, you’re not scaling, you’re leaking value.
5. Coverage Strategy
Most of your renewals aren't being actively managed - and it’s costing you.
The stall: Strategic accounts get attention, but your long tail - often 60–80% of transaction volume - gets little or no proactive management. Internal teams lack bandwidth. Partners lack enablement. No one’s quite sure who’s working which customer. Churn hides in the unowned segments.
The fix: Build a coverage model that aligns with account value, complexity and renewal risk. Define where high-touch is necessary, where digital-led engagement makes sense and where partners should lead. Then build segment-specific playbooks - including automation, handoff points and SLAs.
Insight: Coverage isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing differently. Scalable renewals operations treat coverage like a portfolio: they optimize for return, risk and resource efficiency. If your coverage model was built on headcount, not strategy, it’s already broken. People are important, yes, but they must be utilized to support the coverage strategy.
6. People & Roles
Ownership is vague, incentives are misaligned and accountability is missing.
The stall: No one has clear end-to-end ownership of renewals. Sales owns some. CS owns others. Renewals teams (if they exist) lack authority. Channel roles are murky. Without accountability, renewals become everyone’s job - and no one’s priority.
The fix: Define clear ownership by customer segment, geography and motion. Assign role-specific responsibilities (for example - who initially engages the customer, when, how, with what message; who quotes; who closes) and tie incentives to renewal outcomes, not just activities. Ensure enablement reinforces these roles with training, dashboards and support resources.
Critically, align compensation plans and performance metrics across functions so that Sales, CS, Renewals and Partner teams are rowing in the same direction - with shared expectations and shared rewards. Even if renewals-focused KPIs are organization- or team-specific, they must align and not contradict each other.
Insight: Clear roles create velocity. The most effective renewals organizations don’t just assign ownership - they operationalize it through aligned compensation plans, performance metrics, workflows, and a clearly defined operating model. If your renewals team needs a meeting to figure out who’s responsible, it’s already too late.
7. Governance & Reporting
You're not managing the engine - you're reacting to the results.
The stall: There's no formal review of renewals performance. Metrics lag. Risks go unnoticed until it’s too late. Leadership gets quarterly surprises, and frontline teams operate without real feedback loops. With no governance structure, it’s hard to know what’s working, what’s broken or what needs to change.
The fix: Establish a structured operating cadence with cross-functional stakeholders - weekly, monthly and quarterly - to review both outcomes and inputs. Use these reviews to assess progress, surface gaps and make timely adjustments. Track metrics like on-time renewal rates, early engagement, quote velocity, partner execution and automation yield. And use dashboards that drive decisions - not just display data and create space for cross-functional teams to course-correct in real time.
Insight: Governance isn’t overhead - it’s your control tower. It’s what separates scalable renewals motions from one-off heroics. If your renewals engine lacks a drumbeat - a structured way to review, adapt and realign - you’ll struggle to scale. The best-run renewals teams operate on a rhythm that exposes friction, flags opportunity and reinforces accountability. If you’re reviewing renewals after the quarter closes, you’re already too late to fix them. Think of governance not as oversight, but as organizational oxygen.
Final Thought: Build a Renewals Engine That Doesn’t Stall.
Renewals efforts don’t necessarily stall because companies lack strategy. While strategy is essential, execution breaks down when the engine designed to deliver that strategy is incomplete, misaligned or underpowered.
Each of the seven issues above may seem isolated - a data gap here, a workflow breakdown there - but they’re really symptoms of a renewals motion that isn’t structurally sound. These aren’t minor execution misses. They’re system failures. And system failures don’t get fixed by working harder. They get fixed by designing smarter.
The good news? Every one of these challenges is solvable. With the right structure, tools, roles and operating rhythm in place, renewals becomes more than a sales function - it becomes a scalable, predictable growth engine.
If more than one of these stall points sounds familiar, it’s time to take a hard look under the hood. Diagnose the system, not just the symptoms. Because when your Renewals Engine is purpose-built and aligned, renewals don’t just happen - they accelerate.
Explore how RenewalsHub can help at renewalshub.com, or reach out directly to start a conversation.
Take our free 2-minute RenewalsHub Renewals Maturity Self-Assessment to identify gaps and start building your renewals motion with intent.