Renewal & Expansion Cadence Template

Who this is for

Teams with annual or multi-year contracts where a person - or an AI agent - owns the renewal book: a founder doing customer success, a first CSM, a RevOps lead wiring a motion an agent will run. It assumes roughly $5k+ ACV; below that, renewals should be automatic billing plus a health email, not a pipeline.

Use it when your first annual contracts are coming up with no renewal process, or after the classic failure: learning about a churn at T-7, when the only lever left was a discount.

Renewals get their own pipeline

The core opinion of this template: a renewal is a deal, and it lives in its own pipeline. Not a task, not a reminder, not a stage bolted onto new business. Renewals start at ~85-90% probability and decay when neglected; new business starts near 20% and climbs - mixing them corrupts both forecasts. A dedicated pipeline also makes revenue retention computable from the terminal stages.

Stage	Enter at	The deal is here when...	Advance when
Upcoming	T-120	Renewal deal created with renewal date and current ARR.	The clock hits T-90 - a mechanical daily move by an agent or automation.
Health check	T-90	Usage and adoption under review; risk being graded.	Account graded green/yellow/red, value review booked.
Value review	T-60	The QBR is scheduled or delivered.	QBR held, expansion signals logged, buyer stated continuation intent out loud.
Proposal	T-30	Written renewal terms - including any scoped expansion - in the buyer's hands.	Buyer engaged with the terms. Silence is not engagement.
Negotiation	-	Verbal yes; terms being finalized.	Signature. Nothing else counts.
Renewed	-	Signed. Terminal. Amount = new ARR, expansion included.	Never moves again.
Churned	-	Non-renewal confirmed or the date passed unsigned. Terminal.	Record a churn reason. "No reason" should be an invalid move.

Auto-renew clauses do not exempt you from the cadence - a silent auto-renewal is churn risk deferred twelve months.

The T-90/T-60/T-30 cadence

Three outbound touches, each with one job, each earning the next - all anchored to the contract date.

Touch	When	Channel	The one job
Health check	T-90	Email	Surface blockers while there is time to fix them. Nothing commercial - say so explicitly.
Value review invite	T-60	Email → meeting at ~T-45	Book the QBR. It builds the case the proposal rests on and scopes the expansion.
Renewal proposal	T-30	Email + document	Deliver written terms: same scope by default, expansion options priced in.
Escalation	T-14	Human	If the proposal got silence, leave the cadence: call the champion, involve the exec sponsor. See the follow-up sequence templates.

Between the touches: grade health after T-90 (red means swarm now), prepare the QBR with the customer's own numbers, log expansion signals as they appear.

Expansion-signal checklist

Expansion is cheaper revenue than acquisition - if you catch the signals early enough to scope at T-60 and price into the T-30 proposal. Log each as an activity on the renewal deal the day you see it.

Signal	Where you see it	The move
Seat utilization >80%	Usage data	Propose the next seat tier in the renewal, priced as growth, not penalty.
Repeated plan-limit hits	Usage data, support tickets	The strongest signal. Scope the upgrade before the workaround hardens.
Invites from a new team	User list, email domains	Ask who the new group is; a second use case is a second line item.
Sustained API usage growth	Usage data	They are building on you. Discuss volume tiers before an overage surprise.
Inbound "does it also do X"	Support, sales inbox	Log it - three of these is a roadmap slide in the QBR.
Champion promoted or new exec sponsor	LinkedIn, meeting attendees	New budget authority. Congratulate, then book 15 minutes to re-anchor goals.
Hiring spree or funding round	Job boards, news	Headcount growth is seat growth. Put it on the T-60 agenda.

The QBR skeleton

Thirty minutes, five slides maximum, their data. QBRs die when they become feature tours; keep the agenda about the customer's numbers.

• 1. Their goals, restated (3 min). What they said success looked like. If you never wrote it down, this QBR's output is writing it down.
• 2. Outcomes against those goals (10 min). Their numbers - hours saved, revenue influenced, tickets deflected. No outcome data? That absence is the health finding: grade red.
• 3. Adoption gaps (5 min). What they pay for and do not use, and what closing each gap is worth - where yellow accounts turn green.
• 4. Roadmap, filtered (5 min). Only items that map to their goals. Three maximum.
• 5. Next-quarter plan and the commercial path (7 min). Success plan, renewal date on the table, expansion scoped if signals exist. The only block where money is discussed.

The artifact: renewal pipeline + T-minus sequence

Two payloads. The first creates the pipeline via POST /v1/pipelines - key, name, and an ordered stages array of {key, label} objects. The second creates the cadence via POST /v1/sequences: it enrolls the deal's primary contact the moment a deal in renewals moves into health_check, sends the T-90 email immediately and the T-60/T-30 emails 30 days apart. Each step's delay counts from the previous send, so the whole schedule hangs off that T-90 move into health_check - a move driven by an agent reading the deal's renewal_date custom field (create it with POST /v1/fields). exit_when is re-checked before every send and the instant the deal changes, so a deal that moves forward - or churns - never gets a stale email.

{
  "key": "renewals",
  "name": "Renewals",
  "is_default": false,
  "stages": [
    { "key": "upcoming",     "label": "Upcoming" },
    { "key": "health_check", "label": "Health check (T-90)" },
    { "key": "value_review", "label": "Value review (T-60)" },
    { "key": "proposal",     "label": "Proposal (T-30)" },
    { "key": "negotiation",  "label": "Negotiation" },
    { "key": "renewed",      "label": "Renewed" },
    { "key": "churned",      "label": "Churned" }
  ]
}

{
  "name": "Renewal T-minus cadence",
  "trigger": {
    "event": "deal.stage_changed",
    "filter": [
      { "field": "pipeline", "op": "eq", "value": "renewals" },
      { "field": "stage", "op": "eq", "value": "health_check" }
    ]
  },
  "exit_when": [
    { "field": "stage", "op": "in", "value": ["proposal", "negotiation", "renewed", "churned"] }
  ],
  "steps": [
    {
      "wait_days": 0,
      "subject": "Quick check-in - anything in the way?",
      "body": "<p>Hi {{first_name}},</p><p>Your renewal is about three months out, so this is the point where I ask: is anything in the way of you getting full value? Blockers, missing features, teammates who never onboarded - reply with whatever is on the list and we will clear it while there is time.</p><p>Nothing commercial in this email. That conversation comes later, and it goes better when everything works.</p>"
    },
    {
      "wait_days": 30,
      "subject": "30 minutes on your numbers this quarter",
      "body": "<p>Hi {{first_name}},</p><p>I would like to walk you through what your team actually did with the product this quarter - adoption, outcomes against the goals we set, and what is underused. Thirty minutes, five slides, your data.</p><p>If there is anything you want on the agenda, reply and I will add it.</p>"
    },
    {
      "wait_days": 30,
      "subject": "Your renewal - written terms this week",
      "body": "<p>Hi {{first_name}},</p><p>Your renewal date is about 30 days out. You will have written terms from me this week - same scope by default, plus the options we discussed in the review if you want them.</p><p>If anything changed on your side - budget, team, scope - tell me now and I will build it into the proposal instead of negotiating it later.</p>"
    }
  ],
  "enroll_existing": false
}

Note: deals without a primary_contact_id do not enroll; enroll_existing: true would immediately enroll deals already in health_check. Enrollment is idempotent per contact.

Apply it with your agent

If your agent speaks MCP, point it at https://api.relmcrm.com/mcp with a bearer key and paste:

Connect to the Relm MCP server. Then:
1. Call relm_describe_schema. Create the custom deal field renewal_date (date)
   via relm_create_field if it does not exist.
2. Create the "Renewals" pipeline exactly as in the pipeline JSON above.
3. Create the "Renewal T-minus cadence" sequence exactly as in the sequence
   JSON above, then preview it and confirm the step schedule is 0 / 30 / 60 days.
4. For every customer on an annual contract, create a deal in the Renewals
   pipeline, stage "upcoming", amount = current ARR, custom_fields.renewal_date
   set, and the account champion as primary contact.
5. Every day, move deals in "upcoming" whose renewal_date is 90 days out or
   less into "health_check" - that move enrolls the champion in the cadence.
Use my test key first; only repeat on live after I confirm.

Over REST, post the sequence payload from a file. Rehearse with a relm_test_ key - test-mode sends are simulated, never delivered - then re-run with relm_live_:

curl https://api.relmcrm.com/v1/sequences \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer relm_test_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d @renewal-cadence.json

Before enabling anything on live, hit GET /v1/sequences/{id}/preview - a dry run that returns the step schedule and who would enroll right now, with no side effects. Full reference in the docs; if the agent is new to CRM work, start with how to give your AI agent a CRM. For what should fire on every pipeline move beyond email, see the stage-change playbooks; for accounts already dark, use the re-engagement sequence instead.

FAQ

When should a renewal cadence start?

Ninety days before the contract date at minimum, 120 for enterprise accounts with procurement or legal review. At T-90 you can still fix a red account; at T-30 you can only discount it. The first touch is a health check with nothing commercial in it - the commercial conversation earns its place at T-30.

Should renewals get their own pipeline?

Yes. Renewal deals start at roughly 85-90% probability and fall when neglected, while new business starts near 20% and climbs - mixing them makes both forecasts wrong. A separate pipeline also makes revenue retention computable straight from the terminal stages.

What are the strongest expansion signals?

Seat utilization above 80% of the licensed count, repeated hits on plan limits, invites landing in a new team or department, sustained API usage growth, and inbound "does it also do X" questions. Log each one on the renewal deal; scope the expansion in the T-60 value review and price it into the T-30 renewal proposal.

What does a good QBR agenda look like?

Thirty minutes, five blocks: restate their goals (3 min), outcomes against those goals using their numbers (10), adoption gaps (5), roadmap items relevant to them only (5), next-quarter success plan plus the renewal and expansion path (7). No feature tour. If you cannot show outcome data, that absence is the health finding - grade red and fix measurement first.

Can I use this cadence without Relm?

Yes. The T-90/T-60/T-30 structure, the pipeline stages, the expansion checklist and the QBR skeleton are tool-agnostic - run them from any CRM plus a calendar. Relm is simply the fastest way to apply them: two API calls or one MCP prompt, free on 1,000 requests a month.