Churn was bigger than new business. So I built the system that saw it coming.
The year I took over, churn and downgrades were larger than everything the new-business engine brought in. We were filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom and congratulating ourselves on how fast we poured.
The picture, before the words.
Renewals were handled reactively. A CSM found out an account was leaving roughly when the account told them. By then the conversation is not a save, it is an exit interview.
You cannot save a renewal in the last thirty days. You can save it ninety days out, when the signals first turn. The whole job was to move retention from reactive to proactive, which means one thing in practice: see the risk early enough to act on it.
Solve the seam, wire the stack, split the drag from the judgment.
I ran churn, closed-won, and closed-lost analyses to learn what actually predicted a loss. Not opinions, patterns. You cannot build an early-warning system until you know what the early warnings are.
One place that showed every account, its health, its renewal date, its risk. Not a spreadsheet someone updated when they remembered.
Account-health churn-risk scoring that flagged the accounts turning cold while there was still time to do something. The signal, not the surprise.
A renewal-proactivity playbook so the work started months ahead, on the accounts the score flagged, in priority order.
What was true after that was not true before.
The result, and the detail behind it.
Lead with what changed, then break it down.
Churn and downgrades fell 28%. And the muscle we built to read the base paid off a second way: the same instinct, applied backward, fed a seven-figure churned-customer win-back. The accounts we lost were not gone.
If your CSMs find out about churn from the customer, you do not have a retention motion, you have a notification system. Build the autopsy, score the risk, and start the renewal conversation ninety days out.
The receipts, and what the field says.
From the people I built with.
“Heath built the sales team from 0 to 1 and established the processes that gave us structure as the company scaled. Always thinking outside the box, always prioritizing the customer.”
“Heath is one of the rarest sales leaders I've learned from. He takes a holistic approach to go-to-market and understands every customer-facing department has a role in growth. I believe he's creating the blueprint for sales leaders to become holistic revenue leaders.”
Same method, on your workflow.
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