5 Key Principles to defeat Churn

Build a structured approach for sustainable results.

Author

Markus Rentsch
May 08, 2025

Customer & CSM Alignment

Do you know what your customers do when you are not in the (virtual) room? The lack of visibility of the customer journey is reducing CSMs to reactive work by design. And it’s the biggest of all churn risks.

Flowla has built a single space where you can collaborate with your customers in full transparency for flawless execution. No more guessing and assuming. No more getting blindsided.

Hi, Markus here. Welcome to a new episode of the Customer-Value-Led-Growth Newsletter.

I share strategies and guides to help you become a proactive CSM, deliver more value for your customers, and turn it into revenue for your company every week.

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Customer expansion is the new acquisition. An increasing number of CSMs own revenue growth goals in 2025. I have said this quite some times before. Owning revenue goals as a CSM is an opportunity and not a burden.

It’s the path to get everything you are currently missing - status and recognition, career opportunities, budgets, and better compensation. But there’s one particular challenge you need to master before you can focus on growing your accounts - keeping more of them.

If you are losing 20% of your revenue to churn within a year, it’s a herculean task to accomplish a 120% NRR. It would require your remaining customers to grow by 50% (120/80 = 1.5) in one year.

With churn rate this high, how likely are they going to buy more? It’s more likely that your remaining customers barely get enough value to justify paying for a little longer.

In today’s post, I want to share 5 key principles to defeat churn and build a strong foundation for growth.

1. Understanding Root Causes

If you are running exit interviews/surveys with your customers about why they are leaving, the most popular answers you get are

  • “The product was too expensive.”

  • “Features A, B, and C were missing.

  • “Competitor X has a better product.”

But here’s the catch - none of these is an actual churn reason. They are merely proxy reasons. Think about it

  • If the product was too expensive, why did customers purchase it in the first place?

  • If important features were missing, why did they purchase your product in the first place?

  • If a competitor has a better product, why did they purchase your product in the first place?

That does not make any sense. What your customers are saying is

  • They are paying too much for what they get in return.

  • They were not able to successfully use the product, and believe it’s because something is missing

  • They failed to accomplish their goals, and now they are trying their luck with someone else.

You don’t have a product or pricing problem. You have a lack-of-value problem. Adding more features or giving discounts won’t solve it. You need to understand why and where things are going south. Therefore, you need to run a root cause analysis every single time.

Note: The only exception is external churn reasons that are not under your control.

2. Shared Ownership

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