Renewals, Upsells, Cross-Sells, who should own what?

Having worked for multiple software companies as a customer success leader where I have directly owned different aspects of the commercials, listened to webinars on this topic, read whitepapers, and interviewed multiple CS leaders, I feel like I have an answer on who should own commercials within a software organization, and the answer is, “it depends.”

All models have pros and cons, so I will share my thought process on how I determine the preferred model for B2B Enterprise Software SaaS business (annual contracts), along with the issues to understand that warrant different models. Non-enterprise (sub $20k annually) and monthly subscriptions should have a product-led solution.

Revenue Categories

First, I want to ensure we are on the same page when talking about revenue within an account. I have observed revenue being lost due to these different categories not being well understood!

• • Renewal: This is the standard renewal term where nothing is changing year over year and the contract renews with the same customer audience. The expectation is that this should renew as-is, preferably with an uplift included.

• • Upsell: This is expanding what has already been sold (increasing capacity). More users in a per-user subscription model is a classic example, but it’s just “more” of what you’ve already sold. This work is done with the same customer audience.

• • Cross-Sell: You are selling a new product/module to a customer with the same customer audience.

• • Account Expansion: You are selling anything (new or same product) to a different audience within the company. This is a frequently confused area, so I will provide multiple examples:

• • • Disney. You’ve sold to Lucas Films, but you want to expand into Marvel, ABC, Hulu, ESPN, etc…

• • • You have a product that fits multiple departments: Say you are selling a product whose end users are both marketing and sales. You’ve successfully sold into marketing, but have had zero success getting adoption in sales, where that is the goal. An example here would be Salesforce, with Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, etc. Different buyers each time.

• • • You have products that fit different departments/individuals. You have sold product A to a person responsible for the scope of product A, but need to establish relationships with others to sell products B, C, and D. Could be that person’s boss, that person’s peers, or a different department entirely.
    • You have successfully sold into multiple business units in a company, and now want to go to IT to get the company to agree to an Enterprise License Agreement (ELA).

Revenue Roles

Now let’s talk about the different roles that typically have direct ownership (they process the contracts) of these commercial categories:

• • Renewals Reps

• • Customer Success Managers (CSMs)

• • Account Executives

I break these roles into specific skills (and costs) as follows:

Knowing each role’s strengths and weaknesses, you can then apply them to your expected customer model based on the skills and effort required.

Mapping Revenue Categories to Roles for Clear Ownership

Starting with Renewals, typically the goal should be to make them as frictionless as possible. Having an auto-renewal with default uplift language in contracts helps with this. If you have an environment where the renewal is just processing some paperwork with little negotiations (less than 4 hours of work), I recommend having the CSM own the renewal directly. This is the most cost-effective solution, as you don’t have to hire another team.

If you are in an environment where the paperwork is heavy, and there are tactical negotiations that happen frequently, I recommend having a separate renewals team. This is beneficial as it frees the CSMs up to continue to be the trusted advisor, and the renewals team will negotiate for slightly better terms than a CSM will on average. 

If you are in an environment where renewals are complex, products are being reconsidered, and you are more often than not also having upsell/down-sell conversations, I recommend the Account Executive owning renewals. This is the most expensive model, but it’s worth it as you are getting significant revenue expansion during your renewals and you need seasoned owners to navigate alongside your executive sponsors to get budgets approved and negotiations done on time.

While having a low-friction easy renewal process would seem like the goal for most companies, I know of one company that expects to have a significant upsell each year so they intentionally add friction to the renewal process to ensure the additional revenue is obtained. They do not include auto-renewal language, and they have the account executive own the renewal as there is almost always significant upsell/cross-sell involved as well.

Upselling can again be owned by any of the three roles. Typically whoever owns the renewal should also own the upsell, as the same rules apply. If renewal paperwork is easy, upsell paperwork typically is also easy, and a CSM can own it. If there are tactical negotiations and a lot of paperwork, a renewals rep can own it, and finally, if it’s extremely complex with strategic negotiations then the account executive should own it. It’s important to highlight that you also need a process that flags upsell opportunities as you are hitting license limitations. If the product does not do this, I recommend the CSM kicks this conversation off with customers as the primary point of contact.

Cross-selling is a bit different from renewals and upsells as you are identifying a new product to solve a different problem. For this scenario, I typically recommend a paired approach with the CSM and the Account Executive. There can be some “low hanging” fruit cross-sell plays that CSMs can run solo, but typically the Account Executive should be responsible for the cross-sell number, and the CSM should be helping to identify “customer qualified leads.” 

As an example of shared cross-sell ownership, I had a product come out where we could independently determine whether it would help the customer out. The CSMs worked with engineering to turn the product on for all customers. From there, the CSMs shared the news of the product release in a customer meeting, with the benefits (if there were any) and list pricing for them. If the customer wanted to learn more, we then pulled in the Account Executive to help close this deal.

Finally, the account executive should fully own account expansion. A CSM can help identify other roles in the company, but this is opportunistic at best. An Account Executive doing this work is typically a senior-level role and is working strategically on how to grow the account through additional relationships and pain points that the company can solve for the customer.

Once you have figured out the right ownership model you can then start working on having the correct incentive/compensation packages for each role!

There’s a lot of nuance to what I’ve written above, so if you have questions please ask me on LinkedIn or X!