Team Account Retention Planning

The proactive and structured approach to contract renewal.

Start on time

There is a rule you should never ignore: Towards the end of a contract, there is little left to influence. If you discover that your position is not as strong as you thought too late, retention can be difficult, especially retention against good terms.

Divide a contact into two phases: the operational phase and the retention phase. For a multi-year contract, a retention phase of 1.5 years is best practice.

This 1.5 year retention phase gives you time to change things when necessary. You need a strategy and a plan to realize your goals. Especially when you want to improve contract conditions. This way, the end of a contract is not only a risk, but also an opportunity.

How to start?

Teach your organization which formal steps to take as part of the retention phase. Only then will you become strong as an organization and will you find that you are in a much better position to extend a contract than you thought beforehand.

The most important step: use the Contract Renewal Canvas 1.5 years before the end of the contract. The canvas allows the account manager to assess the situation, formulate a retention strategy, set goals and create a plan to achieve them.

The canvas is a one-pager, visual and only focusing on the answers to the essential questions.

Tenacity's Contract Renewal Canvas is an account plan that account managers really enjoy working with. And that is one of the conditions for implementing this tool successfully. No long background stories, just proper thinking and conclusions. It really helps to see what you are missing in the daily routine.

Retention is a team effort

Of course, a retention process is not a matter for the account manager alone. A canvas is the ideal form to communicate to other people involved and involve them from the very first moment, when the retention plan is being drawn up. You need all the insights and support you can get, and it is the account manager's job to orchestrate it.

A canvas also gives you, as a manager, the information you need to coach your account manager and/or adjust in the retention strategy and implementation of the plan.

We implement it for you

You get this tool from us and within 3 months, working with the Contract Renewal Canvas is fully up and running. Your team is trained, you have agreed together how to use the canvas, it is integrated into your management process and it works.

Your team is excited and you really have a much better grip on retention and your team. We set everything up for and with you and make it work. No more questions afterwards, no more resistance, no more thinking about the practicalities, but above all a feeling that a big step has been taken.

Thanks to our many years of experience, this is a short and simple process. Your team is transformed into a proactive team that thinks strategically and in a structured way about renewing contracts and sets itself goals to optimize the initial situation.

Read more about the short Account Plan implementation project here.

Read how we implement account plans