The Alignment Problem at the Top of Your Revenue Organization

Organizing leadership around value creation

Renewals are the cornerstone of the recurring revenue model. Even a modest 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by as much as 95%. For subscription-based software companies, renewals often account for the majority of annual recurring revenue, making them a strategic priority. As organizations guide customers toward modern platforms, maintaining high renewal rates becomes even more critical. Companies achieving strong renewals during platform transitions see a 20% to 30% increase in customer lifetime value.

Customer success and support functions own adoption and retention strategies and play a critical role in renewal outcomes. But their strategic value lies more in how they are governed than in how they operate. These teams exercise proactive risk management so they can surface early warning signs of churn by monitoring usage patterns and customer health. When customer success and support are clearly aligned — whether through the CRO or the CCO — they enable proactive retention intervention. When ownership is unclear, however, insight is lost, intervention comes too late and renewals can falter.

Traditionally, ownership of renewals sat with the CRO. But as the lines between customer experience and retention blur, boards and CEOs are rethinking the model. Some are expanding the responsibility of the CCO to include expansion revenue and renewals. Others are retaining renewals ownership under the CRO and prioritizing operational excellence within the CCO role to reduce bottlenecks, accelerate time to value and ensure seamless implementation, relying on strong coordination between sales and customer success to support retention.

To make these tradeoffs more concrete, consider two examples:

Understanding ownership in renewals

Company A: Renewals under the CRO

The CRO owns the full revenue number, and renewals are treated as any other sales-led process. Therefore, the CRO has a direct reporting line to the CEO. Meanwhile, account executives handle expansion and negotiate renewals, while customer success is an influencing function.

This model works well when the product is transaction-oriented, implementation is relatively straightforward (think lighter-weight SaaS/AI tools) and expansion is driven by clear selling opportunities. It can also be effective for a company focused on serving a well-defined set of customers in specific industries, creating a single, unified revenue target.

When this works best: It’s most effective when expansion is driven primarily by sales execution rather than post-sales value realization.

The tradeoff: The post-sales teams may lack the authority or accountability to address early signs of churn, making renewals reactive if the customer experience suffers and reducing focus on revenue.

Company B: Renewals under the CCO

The CCO owns retention, usage growth and revenue expansion for the existing customer base. Customer success leaders are empowered to intervene early around adoption and retention, align value delivery with renewal timelines and drive usage patterns that increase lifetime value. This approach works well for companies with complex implementation processes (think high-touch enterprise resource planning deployments), heavy adoption requirements or large multiyear relationships where value realization is the core driver of renewals.

When this works best: It’s most effective when long-term value delivery — not transaction selling — determines renewal outcomes.

The tradeoff: The CRO must operate without a portion of the total revenue number. And tight coordination between the CCO and CRO is essential to prevent overlaps or gaps in accountability.

As these examples show, picking the right ownership model requires clarity on the organization’s renewal goals. But should a company decide to roll renewals under a CCO, what kind of profile would work best? Ultimately, the decision comes down to the organization’s priorities and growth stage. CEOs should weigh streamlined accountability against specialized customer focus.

Choosing the right chief customer officer profile

Boards and CEOs often search for the perfect CCO profile, when they should really focus on what kind of CCO — commercial or operational — their post-sales organization needs (for more, see “The modern chief customer officer”). Choosing between a leader with strong commercial expertise or one with more operational prowess depends upon their organization’s priorities, stage of growth and the conditions that shape post-sales success. While the customer journey remains central, execution after the agreement usually determines which kind of leadership is best.

We recommend clients consider two critical questions to determine whether revenue retention is primarily a selling challenge or a value-delivery challenge. A high total score suggests the organization needs a commercially oriented CCO who can drive retention, increase usage and expand accounts. A low to moderate total score suggests the need for an operationally oriented CCO who can standardize onboarding, improve time to value and reduce friction in post-sales delivery.

1. How much of our growth depends on expansion within existing accounts?

(1 = minimal expansion, 5 = majority of growth)

2. How mature are our sales operations and customer success teams?

(1 = low maturity and in need of structure, 5 = highly mature and scaled)

Beyond clarifying the CCO profile, the answers to these questions elucidate where the CRO-CCO hand off should sit to maximize customer value. The framework below can help boards and CEOs assess whether their renewals ownership model aligns with their organization’s needs.

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With competitive pressures rising, AI changing how customers engage and talent demands increasing, the stakes have never been higher for determining the right commercial leadership model. Companies that design their leadership structure around the outcomes their customers care about most are the ones that consistently win.

The authors wish to thank Brooke Nyman for her contributions to this article.