Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Global Head of Renewals

🎯 Role Definition

As the Global Head of Renewals, you will be the central pillar of our customer lifecycle management, holding ultimate responsibility for our global renewal performance. You will design, implement, and optimize the strategies, processes, and systems that protect and grow our recurring revenue streams. This is a highly visible leadership position that requires a strategic mindset to forecast performance accurately, a deep understanding of customer value, and the ability to lead a distributed team to exceed ambitious gross and net retention targets. You will serve as a key partner to the executive team, providing critical insights into customer health, churn risk, and expansion opportunities that will shape the future of our company.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Director of Renewals or Customer Success
Regional VP of Renewals
Senior Director of Sales Operations or Revenue Operations

Advancement To:

Chief Customer Officer (CCO)
VP of Global Revenue Operations
Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Lateral Moves:

VP of Global Customer Success
VP of Strategic Accounts or Enterprise Sales

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Develop, own, and execute the comprehensive global renewals strategy to maximize customer retention, minimize churn, and drive net revenue retention (NRR) through on-time renewals and expansion opportunities.
Lead, mentor, and scale a world-class, geographically dispersed renewals organization, fostering a culture of high performance, collaboration, accountability, and continuous professional development.
Establish and manage a rigorous, data-driven forecasting process for renewal bookings, providing accurate and timely projections to the executive leadership team and board of directors.
Architect and standardize the end-to-end renewal lifecycle process, from initial quoting and proactive engagement to complex negotiation and final closure, ensuring a seamless and positive customer experience.
Partner closely with Sales, Customer Success, and Account Management leadership to create a unified customer engagement model that identifies and mitigates risk while uncovering upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
Design and implement sophisticated customer segmentation strategies to tailor renewal approaches, playbooks, and resource allocation based on customer tier, health, and growth potential.
Personally engage in and provide executive oversight for high-stakes, strategic renewal negotiations, serving as an escalation point for the team and building relationships with key customer executives.
Drive the operational cadence of the renewals business, including weekly forecast calls, quarterly business reviews (QBRs), and performance analysis, using data to identify trends and inform strategic decisions.
Champion the voice of the customer internally, providing actionable feedback from the renewal process to Product, Marketing, and Engineering teams to influence product roadmaps and customer experience improvements.
Develop and manage compensation plans, quotas, and performance metrics (KPIs) for the renewals team that align with overall company goals and incentivize desired behaviors.
Oversee the selection, implementation, and optimization of the renewals technology stack (e.g., Salesforce, Gainsight, Clari, CPQ tools) to enhance team productivity and reporting capabilities.
Create and maintain executive-level dashboards and reporting to communicate renewal performance, risk factors, and key business trends to all stakeholders.
Collaborate with the Finance and Legal departments to standardize contract terms, streamline the contracting process, and ensure global pricing and discounting consistency.
Build and refine predictive models for customer health and churn risk, enabling the team to proactively intervene with at-risk accounts through targeted playbooks.
Lead global change management initiatives related to renewals, ensuring new processes, policies, and systems are successfully adopted across all regions.
Analyze contract entitlement, consumption data, and customer value metrics to build compelling business cases that justify renewals and price uplifts.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis to uncover hidden revenue opportunities or risk patterns within the customer base.
Contribute to the organization's broader data strategy and roadmap by defining key metrics for customer lifetime value and retention.
Collaborate with business units to translate renewal and retention-related data needs into clear requirements for our data engineering and business intelligence teams.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies where renewal-focused analytics or tooling is being developed.
Represent the company at industry events, user conferences, and executive briefings to share best practices on customer retention.
Partner with sales enablement to develop and deliver ongoing training programs for the renewals team on negotiation, product value, and competitive positioning.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

CRM & CS Platforms: Expert-level proficiency in Salesforce (SFDC) and Customer Success platforms like Gainsight, ChurnZero, or Catalyst.
Forecasting & Revenue Intelligence: Deep experience with forecasting tools such as Clari, and a mastery of building and managing complex forecast models.
Data Analysis & BI: Strong ability to analyze large datasets using Excel (pivots, lookups), and familiarity with BI tools like Tableau or Power BI to derive actionable insights.
CPQ & Quoting Systems: Hands-on experience with Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software and managing the quoting process.
Financial Acumen: Solid understanding of SaaS metrics (NRR, GRR, LTV, CAC), revenue recognition, and financial modeling.
Contract Negotiation: Proven expertise in negotiating complex, multi-year, and multi-million dollar enterprise software or subscription contracts.

Soft Skills

Strategic Leadership: Ability to set a clear vision, build a strategic roadmap, and inspire a global team to execute towards common goals.
Executive Presence & Communication: Exceptional ability to articulate complex ideas, present data-driven insights, and influence senior leadership and C-level customer executives.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: A natural ability to build strong, trusted relationships with peers in Sales, Marketing, Finance, Product, and Legal.
Data-Driven Decision Making: A relentless focus on using metrics and data to guide strategy, measure performance, and optimize processes.
Negotiation & Influence: World-class negotiation skills with the ability to find win-win outcomes while protecting business interests.
Problem-Solving: Highly skilled at identifying root causes of complex problems (e.g., churn drivers) and designing effective, scalable solutions.
Mentorship & Coaching: A passion for developing talent, coaching team members, and building a world-class organizational capability.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field.

Preferred Education:

Master of Business Administration (MBA) or equivalent advanced degree.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Business Administration
Finance
Economics
Marketing

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 15+ years

Preferred:

15+ years of experience in a customer-facing role within the technology/SaaS industry (e.g., Renewals, Customer Success, Sales, or Account Management).
7-10+ years of direct people management experience, with a proven track record of leading large, global, and high-performing teams.
Demonstrable history of owning and exceeding a multi-million dollar renewal quota and Net Retention targets in a high-growth environment.
Extensive experience designing and implementing renewal strategies, processes, and performance metrics from the ground up.