The Revenue Operating System: How to Plan a Quarter Like a Revenue Leader and Hit Your NRR and GRR Goals

Speaker A: When was the last time you sat down at the beginning of a quarter and knew with complete clarity and confidence exactly what you needed to do to protect and grow revenue and what plays or playbooks you were going to run to be able to hit those revenue targets? Well, I don't want to say that in customer success we're a bit vague, but I know I've particularly felt moments when I have been forecasting revenue where I've said something like we need to reduce churn. And that level of clarity is just not enough in 2026. I mean real clarity when forecasting your number. The kind where you can point at your book of business and say, here is where the risk is, here is where the expansion lies, and here's the play I'm running for each one and here's how I'm going to report on it for the board and my C suite. And if that does not sound like your current reality right now, you are not alone. And honestly, it's not entirely your fault. Because customer success has evolved and most customer success teams were never taught how to plan a quarter, how to forecast a quarter, or even be able to build a revenue target. They were taught how to react to customers. And that is how we have run customer success for decades. But no longer. In 2026 we are going to make the shift to truly become revenue focused. And it starts by planning your quarter appropriately. Welcome back to the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I'm your host Anika Zubair and if you are new here, welcome. I am so excited to have you here and if you have been here before already, you know who what we're all about. We are here to turn customer success into what it has always meant to be a true revenue function. Hello everyone, I'm your host Anika Zubair and welcome to the Customer Success Pro Podcast. Your go to space for real talk, expert advice and actionable insights in the world of customer success. I'm a CS executive leader, award winning strategist, CS coach and customer success fanatic. I help CSMs, UM and CS leaders build build the skills and the confidence to become revenue driving pros and scale world class CS teams. So whether you're brand new to CS or a seasoned leader, this podcast is here to support your growth. Because customer success isn't a destination, it's a journey. And I'm here to be your guide and navigate every step of your journey. So join me every Wednesday where you'll get fresh CS tips, tricks and strategies you can actually use. Some weeks I'll Share my own insights and best practices from working in CS over the last 13 years. And once a month, I'll bring on expert guests to dive into the most relevant and pressing topics in customer success today. So if you're ready to level up, hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune in, and let's make your CS journey a little bit easier together. All right, today I'm giving you the full revenue operating system for quarterly planning. Now, this is exactly how I teach revenue leaders to plan a quarter so that they can walk into every forecasting call, every leadership review and every board update with confidence and really understand their targets and numbers and playbooks that they're going to run and not just go by gut feel. And also, this is the exact playbook I have run with my teams to hit 122% NRR. It's an actual repeatable system and it's something that I've taken from multiple companies to the next. And it's something I hope that you can also take into your organization. So buckle up, grab your notebook, because this one is going to be a very tactical podcast where I'm going to help you forecast your, your future revenue growth in customer success. So let's jump in. All right, before we get into any frameworks, I want to hit you with some data points because I really do think data should drive most of our decision making. But a lot of times in customer success, we tend to do things based on gut feel. Or even worse, we tend to do things based on reactions of what other people or customers are doing around us. And I've come across some data that is going to make this feel super urgent to you. Okay? According to the latest 2026 SaaS benchmark data, the median net revenue retention score for B2B SaaS companies, it sits around 103 to 106%. But here's the thing. The top quartile companies are actually hitting 113% and above. And the companies at the very, very top, the ones that are, like, commanding premium valuations, the ones that are the unicorns, the ones that we all want to be like, are getting acquired for 24x revenue multipliers, okay? And they are all running NRR north of 120%. Now, as I've said earlier in this podcast, I have also run a team at 122nrr or 122% nrr. And I get it. Gross revenue retention is also out there. Okay? It is a, uh, very important metric, but grr, it strips out all the expansion and it just tells you how leaky your bucket really is. It sits at basically a median right now in the B2B SaaS reporting between 91 to 92% for scale stage companies. So these are companies that are growing and the best, best company, the top, top companies are hitting 98% GRR. And I really want to just share a few of those numbers with you because I get asked a lot, hey, what does good look like or what does great look like when it comes to NRR and grr? Well, as everything in customer success, it totally depends. But having somewhat of a 90s level of GRR and over a hundred percent NRR is going to truly make you and make you feel like a revenue generating team. But the gap between average and except enormous by the way. And that gap is not luck. It's. It's really all about planning. And I want to give you an analogy that I think makes all of this click in and all of these numbers really make sense. And if you've been watching the 2026 Formula 1 season, I don't know if you guys know this about me, but I am kind of a Formula One fan girl. But if you have been watching Formula One in 2026, you know that this year is a complete reset. There's new power units in the cars, there's new area regulations, there's new teams on the grid, younger teams by the way, and the cars are way, way lighter. And the rules are totally different. And for the first time in years, they are potentially mandating two stop strategies, which is where in the number of laps that these cars do, the team has to actually stop the the car twice. Which means teams cannot just cruise on one set of tires anymore. They have to be strategic about where they pit stop and what like type of tires they decide to start on versus finish on. And they have to manage like degradation across the full race distance, which is again quite a number of laps, like hundreds of laps, like sometimes 50, 80 laps, which is again a lot of wear and tear on these cars. And here's what I love about that. That means that the teams that win in F1 are not the ones actually with the fastest car on paper, because again, there are tons of these Formula one teams that get a lot of funding or a lot of money, I should say. And they have some of the best drivers. But this year, thanks to these new regulations, there are literally teams that are winning, that have the best race strategy. The ones who plan out every sort of tire change before the lights even Go out and they adapt in real time based on what's happening on the track that day. Whether it's the weather, whether it's a tire, whether it's other teams, they have a race strategy for that day. And I tell you all this story not just to tell you that I'm a huge Formula one fan, but I want you to kind of think of quarterly planning and customer success in the exact same way. The quarter is your race. And I know that sounds exhausting and like, oh my gosh, we need way more than a quarter. And I agree, customer success needs months, years to really see results. But we're gonna use quarters as like almost like a small sprint. And your customers right now, they are the laps, right? And your NRR and grr. Those are the goals. Those are all of the goals that you're trying to finish towards a finish line, essentially the checkered flag. And if you do not have a before the lights go out, before the cars are on the actual racing track, you are just driving and hoping for the best. And again, I say this while smiling. If you are watching this on video, it's because I know so many customer success teams are doing exactly that. They are getting their car fully ready, say they have the fastest car, they have the best playbook to go, and. And then they just go and they think that that's the best strategy for the race. But as I've just pointed out, Formula One has adapted to different regulations, different changes. And in SAS in 2026, we have to adapt and change to different regulations, different ways of doing business. Thanks to AI, thanks to funding being at an all time low, thanks to the multiple wars that are happening all over the world, our strategy and customer success has to look different in 2026, especially because we are revenue generating functions. So I really want you to stop hoping for the best. And in today's podcast, I'm going to teach you how to actually build your race strategy, what I like to call your revenue operating system. And I want to make sure that as you get into race day, AKA next quarter, so at the time, if you are listening to this, it's being released, released in quarter two. But as we prepare for quarter three, which for a lot of companies is slow quarter because it's the middle of the year, it's summertime for a lot of parts of the world, and there's a lot of people who are just slowing down. But we want to get race ready for Q3 and Q4 by building your revenue operating system. So the way we're actually going to be able to do this is really be able to understand that most CS teams, what do they actually look like at the start of the quarter and what looks like at the end as well. So as the quarter actually begins, leadership sends down a retention target. Maybe it's an expansion target or something like hey, we need 95% GRR and 110% NRR this quarter or this half year. And then the CS team says okay, cool. And then they open up their books of business, they start scheduling customer calls and they do check ins, they do quarterly business reviews and. And that's it. That is the plan. I know for a fact that that is the plan in so many organizations because I get the privilege of working with hundreds of customer success teams around the world. And let me just say that that plan check in calls and QBRs, it's just vibes and hopes. And there's no segmentation in the portfolio by risk level. There's no identification of which accounts have expansion potential and which ones um, would might have a trigger for churn. And there is no proactive play being run against specific customer outcomes. Like there is no forecasting that shows where revenue is at risk and where it can maybe upside and where it can grow. And it is truly reactive from day one. And that is the place problem when we are working like this. I hear it time and time again that people are saying I want to stop being proactive, I don't want to be reactive. But we spend our entire quarter firefighting because you're chasing red accounts that should have been flagged weeks ago. You're scrambling for renewals that are that snuck up on you. And by the time you think you have expansion time, the quarter is already over and you have nothing to actually show for it. And the reason why I painted this picture and why it matters so much right now is I've already kind of indicated but the SaaS market has shifted. It is in a flux at the moment and customer acquisition costs are rising. Like to get a new logo or a new customer into your business. It's costing the marketing and sales teams way, way more money than it has ever done before. And a lot of people keep thinking like, oh, it'll go back to normal or things will balance out. Honestly, like as uh, someone who's been in this B2B SaaS world for coming on nearly 20 years, I haven't seen anything ever get easier or grow back to the way things were before. Like budgets now are tighter than they have ever been and investment is becoming Trickier and trickier. And boards are no longer looking at top of funnel growth as like the primary indicator of a healthy business. So that means that the shift in SaaS is changing, which means we have to now really step up and show that we have revenue ownership and that if you can't actually grow customers from the top of funnel or from new acquisition of customers, you have to really understand that customer growth and revenue growth is mostly coming from the customer team. But the customer team has been always reactive and that is because we were always as a B2B SaaS company focused on the sales and marketing team taking care of customer growth. But that's flipping now. That means that customer growth is now on the customer success team and investors, the board, your C suite, all your leaders are looking at the post sales economics. They are looking at NRR or net revenue retention and they are looking at GRR or gross revenue retention and they are looking whether your existing customer base is growing or shrinking. And if you're a CSM or a CS leader who cannot answer those questions with data, a plan and what you're going to do to have like uncomfortable conversations with your CRO about forecasting, it's going to be uh, tougher and tougher out there. Like truly, if you cannot with confidence answer, hey, this is what NRR is today. This is what GRR is today. This is our forecast for both these numbers and also this is what we're going to do to hit those numbers. We are in a world of pain in customer success and I just am calling it out because the world has changed. Now listen, as a customer success leader I was always responsible for these numbers. Every single executive team meeting that I was part of, every board meeting I ever attended, I had to have my GRR NRR number to hand. But not only to hand, I had to identify where the flags or risks or possible churn was and also what the upside was and how do we actually hit those numbers. And these metrics matter the most right now in SaaS, like now more than ever, how much revenue you keep and grow from your existing customers that you already have is so, so important. And if you don't have a system for planning a quarter around that you, you are falling so, so, so behind. And I say this with as much love in my heart because I want you to be on the right path towards growth. Because again, I think customer success has been a revenue engine forever. Like forever and ever. But again, when I was working as a customer success leader at growing scale ups and startups, I was responsible for those forecasts. I was responsible for always reporting grr, nrr. And my teams also knew exactly where we stood on a quarterly basis because I came from a sales background. For those of you guys that don't know that I actually worked in sales before I worked in customer success. And even in my very first customer success leadership role, which I was head of customer success at the time, the startup I was at, I reported to the VP of sales. So the way the VP of sales and then eventually the CRO ran customer success was like a revenue and commercial function. And this was back in 2014. So from 2014, I have always forecasted revenue growth and customer success. But what I've been starting to hear from other CS leaders and other CSMs that I work with is this is m now becoming almost new, like forecasting and being able to really identify risk. And the risk forecast as much as the upsell forecast is something that's a lot. It's new and it's. It's not very comfortable to people to try something new. So that is why today I want to make sure that we talk about the importance of forecasting and making sure you understand your NRR and GRR numbers. But building an operating system for revenue, because by the way, when you're a sales counterpart, so when you're VP of sales or CRO, when they tell their sales team, either their sales managers or their AES, like, hey, we need to hit 500,000 in net new logo acquisition this year or this quarter or this month, whatever the metric is, they have a plan of action. They know exactly how many leads they have to talk to. They know which leads are hot versus cold. They know the timeline because they know it takes about 30 to 60 days to close a new deal. So they have almost like a systematic approach towards revenue. And that's why today I want to make sure that we go through exactly what the revenue operating system looks like when it comes to customer success. Because as much as I pull on sales experience, I've also had 13 years of CS experience and CS forecasts differently than sales. And we'll get into that. But before we do, I want to kind of walk through a few mistakes that I've been seeing happen across the board with tons of CS teams when it comes to making or it comes to planning your quarter. And I want you to be honest with yourself here. I want you to check how many of these you are guilty of. Because I. I say this with love in my heart because truly I know I have been guilty of These. But I also know that there are a lot of people who are still living in these ways of working, which unfortunately, they are not going to serve you. All right, just a quick pause from the podcast because I want to talk to you for a second about something that I know is weighing on a lot of customer success leaders. Right now you are sitting in a forecast review. Leadership is asking you about pipeline, about renewal confidence, about expansion targets. And you feel that tightness in your chest because you know your numbers are based on a gut feel and a spreadsheet that has not been updated in maybe three or four weeks. Well, you're just not confident. You're a bit nervous. And the worst part is, is you know you should have better answers, but nobody ever taught you how to forecast renewals and upsells properly. Now imagine walking into that same meeting with a forecast model that you can trust. One where every renewal has a confidence score and where every expansion opportunity is mapped to a specific trigger where you can say with conviction, here is what we are protecting, here is what we are growing, and here is what is at risk and what we're going to do about it. Imagine how different that feels. That is exactly what I teach in my Forecasting Renewals and Upsells workshop. This is a hands on tactical session where I work with CS teams to build a real forecasting system, not a theoretical one. We cover how to assess renewal likelihood using leading indicators, how to identify and stage expansion opportunities, and how to build a revenue forecast that your CRO will actually respect and how to present it with confidence in any leadership or board meeting. If you are a CS leader and your team does not have a forecasting muscle yet, this workshop will change the way you operate. Head over to thecustomersuccesspro.com team event to learn more. Or feel free to DM me directly on LinkedIn to book a session for your team. Let's turn your CS team into a forecasting machine. All right, let's jump back into the podcast. All right, Mistake number one is treating the quarter as a continuation and not a reset. Now, most CS pros roll from one quarter into the next without ever stepping back to assess what happened, what worked, what did not, and what needs to change. They keep running the same playbooks, the same cadence calls, the same QBRs. But the thing is, your customer base is not static. Contracts are moving, stakeholders are changing, budgets are shifting, there's new competitors entering the market at light speed because of AI. And if you are running the same plays you ran last quarter without Reassessing the landscape that you're currently in, you are planning for a world that no longer exists. And I just really want to call out that I have some stellar playbooks. But thanks to AI, I have had to rethink exactly how to position these playbooks because customers are cutting tools and products that are quite heavy and quite uh, expensive. And they're cutting these tools because AI is now cheaper, easier and most people can vibe, code something and build something on their own. Right. That's why teams are now repurposing some CSMs into forward deployed engineers, which is really cool to see. But also realize that as a vendor that means that they are consolidating tools. And if my Churn playbook last year was on competitors that are your typical competitors. Well, this year I hope you have a new playbook for AI Churn because that is a reason why you need to change your plays depending on the world that exists right now. All right, mistake number two that I see is not separating your book into protect, grow and like watch categories essentially. So if your customer is in your book of business and gets all the same energy, meaning your smallest versus your small, the biggest customers, and if they have the same meeting cadence, the same engagement model, you are being inefficient with your time and you are leaving so, so, so so much money on the table. Your healthy customers do not need the same attention as your at risk accounts. And your accounts with expansion potential need a completely different level of conversation than your accounts that are just trying to get value from what they already bought. You need to know at the start of every quarter which accounts fall into which category and which play you are running against each one. All right, mistake number three, and this is one that I've been guilty of and I still see so many teams guilty of as well. But mistake three I see happening is confusing activity with strategy. I cannot believe I'm saying this in June of 2026, but I see so many teams still confused like oh, CSMs planned their quarter saying something like I'm going to run QBRs with all my accounts or I'm going to do monthly check ins or I'm going to send renewal reminders 90 days out. Awesome. But that is activity. That's not a strategy by the way. That is not a strategy if you are saying you're going to have business reviews with your clients or you're going to actually send them a renewal value, um, like slide deck or you're going to give them a value report on how they've been Using your product and the ROI they've been getting. That's not a strategy. Okay? The strategy is saying something like I've identified three accounts at risk of downgrading because their executive sponsor changed my play or my playbook that I'm going to run is to do rediscovery within the first two weeks of stakeholder change and map out the new stakeholders priorities and deliver a refreshed success plan by week four. Okay? That is a strategy. Do you see the difference there? All right, mistake number four is not building a revenue forecast for your business book. This one is big and this one applies by the way, if you're an individual contributor, a customer success manager, or you are a CS leader. Okay? So if you're a CS pro and you cannot tell me right now the total ARR or annual recurring revenue in your book, how much is up for renewal this quarter and the likelihood of renewal for each account, and maybe also where expansion pipeline sits, then you do not have a plan, you have hope and that's again not going to serve you. Okay, revenue leaders forecast. If you were to ask your sales leader exactly how many deals are going to close this quarter or how many demos they're going to run, or how much there's a likelihood of, you know, lost, close lost versus close won, they don't accept a guess. And if you want to be treated like a revenue professional, you want to seat at the executive table, then you need to start forecasting like one. And finally, the last mistake, mistake number five that I see happening too often is planning in isolation. Now we love saying in customer success that we are super cross functional. But I feel like even though we work with so many teams, which I know is very common to have, you know, meetings with sales and product and marketing. But what we end up doing is we have meetings about the customers with multiple different, uh, cross collaboration with multiple different teams. But what we don't do is we do not plan with alignment to our sales, product, leadership, marketing teams. And your quarter plan does not exist in a vacuum. Like if sales is targeting the same accounts for upsells that you're trying to stabilize, you're going to have a conflict. And if product is, let's say sunsetting a product or sunsetting a feature that your biggest customer relies on, then you have risk there, right? And if your leadership is expecting that you hit 110% NRR but has not given you the tools, the data or the executive support to run expansion plays, you have a gap as well. So alignment starts at the Quarter like alignment that starts with all different teams at the start of a quarter. It is not optional, it is foundational. And if you are a CS leader listening to this episode, you need to sit down with all your counterparts, product marketing, sales, um, executives, and really understand what is the quarterly goal of the business and how are we all going to work towards that goal together. All right, let's get into the good stuff here. Here is my revenue operating system. This is the exact framework that I've used and I teach now, and I encourage customer success professionals to plan a quarter like a revenue leader. Now, there are six steps, and I'm going to walk you through each one. Okay? Step one is run quarterly revenue audit. So before you plan forward, I need you to look back at the start of every quarter. And the first thing that you should be doing is audit the previous quarter. And I do not mean like a service level, we hit our number, we missed our number kind of review. You can start there. But what I want you to do on top of that is I want a detailed breakdown. And what I mean by that is, what was your actual grr last quarter? What was your actual nrr? Which accounts churned and why? Which accounts downgraded and which ones were maybe leading towards positive upsells or renewals? Which accounts expanded and which ones triggered the expansion? Where did you miss opportunities? Where did you over invest time in accounts that did not need it? Truly, this audit is going to be a deep dive into the data that you are going to need to plan smarter for this next quarter. And it's going to tell you where your playbooks worked and where they did not. It shows you patterns. Maybe you'll notice that every account that churned had a stakeholder change in the previous quarter. Or maybe you'll see that every account that expanded had a QBR where you presented ROI data. Those are patterns that become foundational in your next quarter strategy. All right, step two in the revenue operating system is to segment your book into three buckets. Now, whether you're a CS leader or you're an individual that have your own book of business, you still need to separate into three buckets. I need you to put the buckets as, uh, protect, grow, and watch. Okay? Those are the three buckets. Once you have your audit done, take your entire book of business and put every account into one of these three categories. As I said earlier, protect. These are the accounts that are at risk and they maybe they have a renewal coming up or the sentiment is low, or maybe there's been a Stakeholder change. Maybe product adoption has dropped. Maybe they flagged budget concerns. Whatever the reason is, these are the accounts that need a defensive playbook. Your goal is to stabilize them, reinforce value, and get them to a confident renewal level. And then the second bucket is grow. These are your healthy accounts, and these are the ones that have expansion potential. They are seeing value. They have white space in their organization. They have a budget. They have a champion who is advocating for you internally. These accounts need offensive plays. So your goal is to identify the expansion trigger, build the business case and partner with sales or run it yourself if you're running upsells yourself to close an upsell. And finally, the third bucket is watch. And these are your stable accounts. They're not at risk, but they're also just not ready for an expansion either. They are renewing comfortably using your product, but there's like no immediate trigger for growth or risk. So your goal here is just efficient engagement. Keep that, uh, keep delivering value, stay visible, but do not overinvest time here. That should be going more towards your protect or grow accounts. All right, step three is, uh, setting your quarterly revenue targets. Now that you know what you are working with, set specific, measurable targets for the quarter. And I mean specific. This is another thing that I know in cs, we are a little bit too gut feel about is we just say, oh, we want to increase NRR or we want to increase nrr. That's great. But that again, is a vibe and a gut check. And for grr, your target should look something like, I will retain X dollars out of Y dollars, uh, for renewal. That'll give me a grr of X percent. Okay, stop saying we want to reduce churn. That is not a target. That's a wish. We need to have structured goals. And every single time I coach customer success managers inside of RevUp Academy or the workshops that we run, I tell everyone that a goal and a wish are, uh, two different things. A goal has a deadline and has a metric attached to it. If you just say something like, hey, I want a promotion, that is a wish. But if you want to say, I want a promotion to a senior CSM that earns X dollars by the end of 2026, that is a target. And you are much likely or much more likely to hit a target than a wish of getting a promotion. So get very, very specific. And on the flip side, for nrr, your target should look something like, I will generate X dollars in expansion revenue against the starting ARR of Y dollars, which should give me a NRR percentage of X and then that is where you're able to again have very concrete numbers. So you know exactly what you are doing now. You need to know your numbers. I remember my very first board meeting that I walked into. I didn't know my numbers. And after that board meeting I, I went home and cried. Truly, it was traumatic because everyone else in the room knew their numbers and I had a guesstimate, I had a rough estimate and it made me realize that that exact moment, I still remember it. Okay, back in 2016, I remember it like it was yesterday. And I from that day forward always, always, always knew my ARR, my NRR and my GRR numbers. Any given day, any given week, I would be on top of those numbers because those numbers are going to be the reason you are a revenue leader rather than a support leader. Okay? You do not want to sit in the support bucket because the support bucket are task doing versus revenue is really helping the business grow. So you want to remember the projected churn, the projected expansion, the projected pipeline, the net outcome of all of your work. This is the revenue model for the quarter and this is what you need to get comfortable in not only understanding but being able to articulate to other team members. All right, step four is building an account level play. So this is where most frameworks stop and they give you segments and targets but they don't actually tell you what to actually do. So let me get really specific because I um, am tactical and practical as your customer success coach. I want to make sure that for every account that you put into your protection bucket, you build a defensive play that might look like Schedule a rediscovery call by week two. Map two new stakeholder priorities. Deliver a refreshed success plan with ROI metrics by week four. Escalate internally if needed. For every account that's in your grow bucket, build an offensive play that might look something like hey, present a white space analysis in the next qbr. Build an ROI use case for additional product lines. Warm up the economic buyer by week three or co sell with my AE to present the proposal by week six. Okay? For your watch accounts, I want you to build a maintenance cadence, right? That might look like bi monthly check in or quarterly value reports delivered via email or automated health score monitoring. The key here is for every account has a play, not a hope, not a but a play. Okay? And again reminder with timelines and metrics and owners. Okay? You want to have a timeline, you want to have a metric or a milestone and you want to make sure you have owners for each one of these plays as well. All right, step five, Build your quarterly forecast. Okay. Now that we've done all the groundwork, now this is where we're going to build it all into a forecast. For every renewal in the quarter. Quarter, I want you to assign a confidence level. Green, yellow, red. We've used these so many times in customer success. Green means the renewal is essentially done, the customer is healthy, the contract is expected to close out on time. Yellow means it's at risk, or there's some reason it's not going to actually close. Maybe there's a stakeholder change, or maybe there's been conversations about budget reviewal, or maybe there's just low adoption. Right. And so you put them in the yellow bucket. And then red means the renewal is at risk and you need support either from an executive engagement, a product escalation, or something else. Okay. And for every expansion opportunity, I want you to assign a stage. Okay. You want to, uh, say it's either identified, qualified, proposed, or confirmed, and attach a dollar value and a close date to this. Again, we're kind of getting into the sales nuance of all of this, so. But this is what becomes your forecast document, right? It is the thing that is going to bring you clarity whenever you are asked for a pipeline review or an update about our NRR or how we're going to hit it. Having that kind of, like, document where every One of your CSMs either have some sort of forecast or you've built it as a CS leader. Every leadership meeting, it's going to be showcased, and it should be updated weekly or at the very least every other week. All right? The final step is align. Cross functionally and lock in your rhythm. Okay. Final step is alignment. Before the quarter begins, you need to align with three different groups, at least minimum three, I should say. You want to make sure you're aligned with sales, so make sure you're not stepping on each other's toes. Agree on who owns the expansion conversation for each account. Agree if there's a handoff process. If, like, for example, CS identifies the upsell and then passes it to an ae. And then you want to align with products, so understand the roadmap. Know what's launching, what's being, um, sunsetted, and what is being delayed as well. So map this to your accounts. If there's a feature your top account is relying on and it's being changed, that is a risk that you need to get ahead of early this quarter. And then the final team you want to align with, is leadership. You want to make sure your targets, your forecast and your plays are visible and aligned to what the business needs. If leadership expects 110% NRR, but your forecast shows 105%, then have that conversation now. Like literally go sit down with your CEO and CFO and tell them, hey, I know you want to hit 110%. But even with our best case forecast of us hitting these upsells and renewals, this is the reality of our nrr. I want you to have this conversation now and not in week 10 of the quarter. Because what's going to end up happening is you end up setting the operating rhythm right? Weekly forecast update, bi weekly pipeline reviews, monthly account dives, whatever. The cadence works for your organizations. Build it and commit to it and share it with your leadership team early because again, now you're building the muscle that you are being proactive and you are forecasting rather than being reactive and telling them, at the end of the quarter, this is what has happened. That is the revenue operating system and it's pretty straightforward. It's all about auditing, segmenting, target planning, forecasting, and alignment across teams. It's six steps. It's one. It's honestly one simple system and it's something that you should reset every quarter. All right, I've touched on this before, but I want to bring in a little bit of a personal story to share with you. Early in my career, I managed a book of business that was worth about $5 million in ARR. And I remember at the start of uh, one particular quarter where I had 12 renewals, a couple of known risks, and leadership was pushing for expansion across the board. Okay, everyone was being pushed for expansion. And you know what I did? I opened my calendar, I scheduled a bunch of check in calls and I figured I would just handle things as they came up. By week 6, 7 in the quarter, 2 accounts were in crisis that I had not anticipated. And one of them had a stakeholder change that nobody flagged. The other one had silently reduced their usage by over 50%. And then like the previous two months, they were just basically dropping off when it came to usage and adoption. And I had not been looking at the data and the expansion conversation I was supposed to happening, they never happened because I was so busy putting out all the fires all the time. Now that quarter, I missed my GRR target. I missed my NRR target. And the worst part was that I missed them. Uh, yeah, that was really hard. I did miss them. But what was worse is that I could have seen it Coming. If I had done the work at the front end of the quarter, and that was a quarter that changed how I decided to operate as a customer success professional. From that point on, I never started a quarter without doing the full audit. The segmentation, the forecast, the plays. And when I started doing that, not only did my numbers improve m but my confidence also improved. I was not anxious anymore. I was not reactive. I walked into every meeting knowing exactly where I stood. And that is the gift of a system. It doesn't just improve outcomes. It improves your experience. And you go from being someone who is constantly surprised by bad news to someone who sees it coming and has a plan of action. Right? Think of it like this. Um, a pilot does not take off without a flight plan. They do not just point the plane in a general direction of destination and hope for the best. They have a route, they have waypoints. They have contingencies for bad weather, for delays, for diversion. And because of that plan, they can handle almost anything that happens in air with composure. And that is what this revenue operating system is. It's going to give you your flight plan, and it's going to be a flight plan for you to plan your next quarter. And once you have it, everything changes. All right, we're at the point of my solo episode where I love to challenge you if you've been here before. You know, I love a weekly challenge because I don't want to just be here for your entertainment. I want to be your coach, where you take everything we've talked about in this week's episode and you go put it into an action plan. Right? And I mean a weekly challenge this week, okay? Not next quarter. This is the perfect time to do it. This week, I want you to take your book of business and put every single account into one of the three buckets. Protect, grow, or watch that. Is it just segmentation, okay? And, uh, I want you to look at every account and ask yourself, is this account at risk? Is this account ready for expansion? Or is this just a stable account that needs some steady engagement? For me, write it down, put it in a spreadsheet, put it on a whiteboard. I don't care where it goes. Just get it out of your head and onto paper. Because here is what is going to happen. The second you do this exercise, you are going to see things that you didn't see before, and you are going to realize that you have been spending equal time on accounts that need very different level of attention. And you are going to notice that risk. You are going to notice risks that you are ignoring and opportunities that you were just not chasing. And that is the starting point for everything else we talked about today. So once you have the buckets, you can build the plays. And once you have the plays, you can build the forecast. And once you have the forecast, you can walk into any meeting with confidence and be that revenue leader. But it starts with segmentation. So do it this uh, week and if you want to share yours with me, feel free to DM me on LinkedIn. I would love to see what you have come up with. All right, if this episode hit home, will you do me a favor and hit subscribe to this podcast wherever you are listening right now, whether it's on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. And if you are a true listener and you've made it to this point of the podcast, I would love it if you leave me a comment down below. I respond to to every single comment. So go ahead and drop a comment down below and I promise I will get back to you. And if this actually resonated and you're a CSM thinking I don't know my ARR, grr, or NRR number, share this episode with your leadership team. M Or maybe you're a fellow CS leader and you have another CS leader that can use some help share it with them. Because sharing is caring and we all, as a customer success community want to level up as revenue leaders. Leaders together. And you need to be able to share these tips and tactics with other people who need to hear it. And go ahead and follow me on LinkedIn where I share content like this every single day. And if you are a CS leader who wants to take this deeper, remember to check out the Forecasting Renewals and upsell workshop@thecustomersuccesspro.com team. And if you're a CSM who's ready to become more strategic and revenue focused, then RevUp Academy is the place to be where we teach you how to forecast GRR and NRR. And check that out at thecustomersuccesspro.com RevUp um, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I will see you next week for our next episode. Thanks for in tuning tuning in to the Customer Success Pro podcast. I hope you picked up something valuable to take back to your team. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you took just 10 seconds to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more CS pros like yourself discover the show. And creating new episodes takes a lot of work, so leaving a nice review keeps me motivated to keep creating. And don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcast episodes. I drop a new episode every Wednesday packed with practical tips, and if you've got a topic you'd love for me to cover or want to be a guest on my show, send me a message. All the details are in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. And hey, if this episode helped you share it with a fellow CSM or CS leader, remember, sharing is caring. Cheers to your CS journey and I'll catch you next week for our next episode.