Renewals, expansion and complaints

A renewal is a sale, and like any B2B sale it takes time. If the first conversation about next year happens a week before the end date, the client has already decided, or has no time left to get approval. So work backwards from the end date with a simple calendar:

1. 120 days before: look inward. Check usage, attendance and results inside the team, so you arrive with facts.
2. 90 days before: meet the client to review the year and hear what's changing: new teams, new budget owner, new goals. There is still time to adjust the program.
3. 60 days before: send the proposal and start procurement and legal. Remember Veloria: legal alone took three weeks. At 60 days you should be finishing, not starting.
4. Before the end date: sign, and agree the first review of the new term, which starts the next cycle.

Put every client's end date on the calendar the day the contract is signed.

Apply the calendar to the two contracts Marta spotted in early April.

The law firm ends on 30 June, so it is at 90 days today. That is the moment to meet its contact and review the year: what worked, who used the lessons, what is changing next year. The proposal comes a month later, informed by that conversation.

The marketing agency ends on 31 May, only 60 days away, and nobody has talked to them. It is late: the review and the proposal now have to happen almost together. The right move is still a conversation first, this month, not a price dropped into the learning lead's inbox. Be honest about what you see, ask why, offer a short review of the year. No invented deadline: 31 May is real enough.

When a renewal is late, don't skip the conversation to save time. Compress the steps, but keep their order: facts, conversation, proposal, paperwork.

Clients rarely announce they won't renew; their usage says it first. Watch these warning signals every month, not only before the end date:

• Attendance falling: the marketing agency attended only 54 % of booked lessons this quarter.
• Fewer active learners.
• The contact going quiet, especially after a change of budget owner.
• Late payment: the agency pays in 81 days on average, on 60-day terms.
• A new budget owner who never chose Klasna.

People who stopped coming rarely see a reason to pay for another year.

Watch the healthy signals too: high attendance (Veloria's 92 % in March), requests from other teams to join, a champion who brings in colleagues or forwards your results upward. They point to expansion, not risk, and deserve a conversation of their own.

A warning signal tells you where to look, not what is wrong. The agency's 54 % attendance might mean a bad schedule, the wrong level for the group, a busy season, a manager who stopped encouraging people, or a program the team no longer needs. Each cause has a different fix, and some have none.

So ask before you guess, and before you discount. A reflex price cut answers a question nobody asked: if the real problem is that lessons clash with the agency's client deadlines, a cheaper lesson that nobody attends is still a lesson nobody attends, and Teams has given away margin for nothing.

The right first move is a conversation: name what you see without blame ("about half of the booked lessons were attended this quarter"), ask what's getting in the way, and propose a short review. Leave the late payments for the call, framed as a question about their process, not a reproach.

A complaint from a key account is not a disaster; it is a test the client is watching. Pavlo reports that Veloria's night-shift dispatchers got a new tutor twice in March, and Stepan has heard about it. How Klasna responds now shows Stepan what happens when a shift goes wrong.

Five moves: thank the client for telling you, own the mistake without excuses, fix the cause fast, say what changes with a date, and check back. "Thank you for telling us straight away. That's our mistake. From next week the night shift gets one fixed tutor, and I'll call you in two weeks to check how it's going." Then ask one more thing: "Is anything else not working that we should hear about?"

What not to do: a reflex discount pays for the symptom and teaches the client that complaints earn money; an excuse ("tutors fall ill") dismisses the problem; asking for it in writing adds work for the person who complained.

Expansion revenue is more revenue from a client you already have: another team, more learners, more lessons. It is often the cheapest growth, because trust is already there and the contract exists.

But a new team is a small new sale, not an automatic add-on. It brings new users, often a different manager, and sometimes a separate budget line that someone else approves. When Pavlo mentions that Veloria's customs brokerage team keeps asking when it's their turn, the next step is to ask him who would approve it and what that team needs: their work, their level, their schedule.

Timing matters too. Offer the expansion only once the open problem is fixed: an expansion built on an unresolved complaint wobbles, and the person who must approve it has just heard that the night shift was let down.

And yes, Veloria gets bigger. As decided for key accounts: Teams doesn't refuse growth; it grows the rest faster.

One number sums up how well you keep and grow clients: net revenue retention (NRR). Take the clients you had a year ago. NRR = what those same clients pay you now ÷ what they paid then. Expansion adds, cuts and lost clients subtract, and new clients are left out, because they say nothing about keeping anyone.

A simple case: a group of clients paid 300,000 UAH a month a year ago. One expanded by 60,000, one cut 30,000: 330,000 ÷ 300,000 = 110 %. Above 100 % means the existing base grows on its own, even before any new sale.

A harder one: clients paid 400,000 a month; they expanded by 80,000, one left (−40,000), one cut back (−20,000), and new clients added 100,000. NRR = (400,000 + 80,000 − 40,000 − 20,000) ÷ 400,000 = 420,000 ÷ 400,000 = 105 %. Adding the new clients would give 130 %; leaving out the losses, 120 %.

NRR is useful, and easy to misread. Three cautions:

• One big expansion can hide several losses. If Veloria adds a large team while two small clients leave, NRR can still look healthy. Always show the losses (clients lost and cut back) next to the ratio.
• It counts revenue, not margin. A renewal bought with a 15 % discount keeps the revenue line almost intact and the margin much less so; NRR won't show it.
• Small bases jump around. With a dozen clients, one decision moves the number by several points. Read the trend over a few quarters and the individual stories behind it.

So report NRR as a headline with its parts beside it: expansion, cuts, losses.

How it fits together: renewals run on a calendar, usage signals start conversations, complaints are handled as selling, and expansion is a small new sale; NRR sums them up when read with its losses. The next lesson hands this work to Teams' first sales hire.