RenewRenewal prepHuman review required

Renewal Risk Brief

Turn scattered account signals into a one-page renewal brief your manager can read in 60 seconds.

The renewal brief is the workhorse of any renewal cycle: it forces you to convert a pile of signals into one defensible call. The model’s job is not to decide the renewal, it is to make your reasoning legible fast.

The template

Copy it, swap the {{marked}} variables for your account, and run it.

prompt.txt

You are helping a Customer Success Manager prepare for an internal renewal
review. Using only the facts I provide below, write a renewal risk brief.

Account: {{account_name}}
ARR: {{arr}}
Renewal date: {{renewal_date}}
Product usage trend (last 90 days): {{usage_trend}}
Open support/escalation issues: {{open_issues}}
Executive sponsor status: {{sponsor_status}}
Known commercial context: {{commercial_context}}

Rules:
- Use ONLY the facts above. If a fact is missing, write "not known", do not infer or invent.
- Give a single risk call: Green, Yellow, or Red, with one sentence of reasoning.
- List the 2-3 concrete things that would most change the risk call.
- Keep it under 180 words. This is for a busy manager, not a customer.

Variables

{{account_name}}: Account namee.g. Northwind Freight
{{arr}}: Annual recurring revenuee.g. $84,000
{{renewal_date}}: Renewal datee.g. 2026-09-30
{{usage_trend}}: Usage trend, last 90 dayse.g. weekly active seats down from 41 to 26; API calls flat
{{open_issues}}: Open support / escalation issuese.g. one P2 open 3 weeks on SSO reliability; no P1s
{{sponsor_status}}: Executive sponsor statuse.g. original sponsor (VP Ops) left in June; no confirmed replacement
{{commercial_context}}: Commercial contexte.g. asked about pricing tiers on last call; competitor named once

Worked example

A CSM covering mid-market logistics accounts has a renewal 90 days out. Seat usage is sliding, the champion just left, and procurement mentioned a competitor. She needs to walk into Thursday's forecast call with a defensible call, not a vibe.

filled-prompt.txt

Account: Northwind Freight
ARR: $84,000
Renewal date: 2026-09-30
Product usage trend (last 90 days): weekly active seats down from 41 to 26; API calls flat
Open support/escalation issues: one P2 open 3 weeks on SSO reliability; no P1s
Executive sponsor status: original sponsor (VP Ops) left in June; no confirmed replacement
Known commercial context: asked about pricing tiers on last call; competitor named once

Good output vs bad output

GOODCommits to a single call, ties it to the specific facts given, flags the one unknown that matters, and hands the manager decisions rather than a summary.

RISK: YELLOW. Champion loss plus a 37% seat drop are real signals, but ARR
is intact and there are no P1 issues, so this is a save, not a fire.

Why yellow, not red: usage is down but not collapsed, and the pricing
question reads as budget scrutiny, not exit.

What would move the call:
- Red if no new sponsor is identified in 30 days.
- Green if we re-seat the 15 dormant licenses and close the SSO P2.
- The competitor mention needs one direct question next call: evaluating, or leverage?

Missing: we do not know the renewal owner on their side. Confirm before the call.

BADLooks fine at a glance. Here is why it fails.

Northwind Freight is a valued $84K account renewing on September 30th. The
account shows some risk signals but also has strong fundamentals and a great
relationship built over the years. Usage has dipped slightly but this is
likely seasonal. We recommend a proactive outreach cadence and a strategic
QBR to re-engage the sponsor and demonstrate value, positioning us well for a
successful renewal and potential expansion into new business units.

Hallucinated specifics"built over the years" and "expansion into new business units" are invented, none of that was in the input.
No next stepRecommends "a proactive outreach cadence" without a risk call, an owner, or a trigger, so the manager cannot act on it.
Unverified claimCalls the seat drop "likely seasonal" with zero evidence, which is exactly the wishful read that gets renewals missed.
Wrong registerReads like a customer-facing success story, not an internal risk brief; a manager scanning ten of these learns nothing.

Guardrails

When NOT to use this

Do not paste raw CRM exports or ticket bodies that may contain customer PII into a general model; summarize the facts yourself first.
Not a substitute for the renewal forecast system of record; this is a thinking aid, not the number of truth.

Responsible use

The risk call is a hypothesis. A human owns the forecast; the model does not get a vote in the CRM.
Strip named individuals down to roles ("VP Ops") unless your account handling policy allows names in prompts.

A human must review the output before it reaches the customer.

Model + settings

Model: Claude Sonnet (fast, cheap, strong at faithful summarization) or Opus for a high-value account.
Temperature: 0.2 (low, you want it to stick to your facts, not get creative)
Settings: Put the "use only the facts above" rule near the end of the prompt; recency in the instruction improves adherence.
Ask for a fixed max length (under 180 words) so briefs stay scannable across a book of accounts.
Run the same template across your whole renewal cohort for consistent, comparable calls.

Back to all prompts