Retention Is the New Growth Lever: CRO Insights from 2025

74% of respondents say that most of their revenue comes from existing customers, according to ChurnZero 2025 Customer Revenue Leadership Study. As a CRO, this number isn't surprising. SaaS leaders have known for a while that expansion drives predictable growth, but it is a powerful reminder of how dramatically the math of growth has shifted. For years, our playbooks revolved around acquisition, pipeline, new logo targets, and net-new ARR, but revenue strategies have changed. 

Retention, adoption, and expansion aren’t side plays anymore. They’re the growth strategy. And in a market where NRR and GRR have finally stabilized after two years of decline, execution now matters more than ever. 

Growth isn’t about weathering volatility; it’s about operating with precision, visibility, and discipline.  

In this post, I want to share some of my thoughts around what Customer Revenue Leadership data reveals about customer-driven growth, and what it means for how we CROs need to think about our teams, tech stacks, and operations moving into 2026. 

As the Market Evolves, Execution is Key 

For the first time since 2022, the Customer Revenue Leadership Study shows net revenue retention (NRR) and gross revenue retention (GRR) leveling out. That’s good news, but it also means our biggest excuse is out the window. 

In a turbulent market, swings in retention can hide execution gaps. In a stable one, your NRR tells a more personal story. 

As CROs, that means shifting from reactive to intentional. From chasing pipeline to engineering precision across the customer lifecycle.  

When I look at the organizations that constantly outperform, it’s never just because they have the flashiest tech or biggest teams. It’s because they operate with real accountability around operational visibility. They know which deals are healthy, which renewals are at risk, and where customer value is starting to break down. Plus, they make it everyone’s job to act on that information. 

That's why visibility, through data, forecasting, and AI-driven insights, is the new performance advantage.  

At Outreach, we've built our platform around this principle: unified visibility across the entire revenue cycle. Our Sales Forecasting software helps CROs run multiple AI-powered forecasts concurrently, predict deal health, and adjust forecasts dynamically based on risk, sentiment, and pipeline quality. When you can see what's coming, you can act on it. 

Team Design Drives Revenue More Than Org Charts 

One of the most striking findings in the Customer Revenue Leadership Study is the measurable lift that specific roles bring to NRR: 

• Customer Enablement → 99% NRR with vs. 94% without (+5) 
• Customer Success Managers → 98% with vs. 90% without (+8) 
• Support → 98% with vs. 93% without (+5) 
• Account Management → 98% with vs. 94% without (+4) 

These are huge lifts with the addition of specific support! And it reinforces something I've seen throughout my career: the structure of your team matters less than the coverage and collaboration between roles. You can't scale retention if enablement, success, and account management aren't speaking the same language.

At Outreach, we’ve seen that when success and enablement teams share one system for coaching, forecasting, and account visibility, NRR lifts naturally; not because every motion is perfect, but because the customer experience is consistent. 

But we’re also seeing a worrying trend.  From 2023 to 2025, Customer Marketing roles fell 38% and Customer Success Operations dropped 33%.   Those teams are scale levers for lifecycle programs and advocacy, cutting them introduces long-term drag on NRR.

Technology Strength Is Now a Revenue Lever 

We talk a lot about "tech stack optimization," but the data is clear: stronger tech stacks directly correlate to stronger NRR. 

• CRM: 98.5% NRR with vs. 90% without 
• Customer Success Platform (CSP): 100% with vs. 94% without 
• Learning Management System (LMS): 99% with vs. 95% without 
• Support Software: 99% with vs. 93% without 

That’s a 6–10-point gap and the difference between thriving and treading water. 

For CROs, this means treating technology not as a collection of tools, but as a system of execution that keeps post-sale operations consistent and measurable. 

At Outreach, we’ve built our platform around the belief that without unified engagement and revenue intelligence, NRR is at risk. Our AI Revenue Workflow Platform connects prospecting, customer engagement, and revenue signals end-to-end, so CROs can spot the risks early and act fast.

AI Maturity Is Still Tactical (and That’s the Opportunity) 

Another important takeaway from Customer Revenue Leadership Study: AI maturity is still in its early stages. This mirrors some of the work we’ve been doing to outline a maturity curve within RevOps. 

• 35% of teams are in the Exploration or Evaluation stage 
• 38% are using AI Tactically (or Experiment stage) 
• 14% are Operationalizing AI 
• 4% are using AI Strategically or Scaling with AI 
• 3% are AI-Driven 

While it might feel like everyone on a GTM team is proficient in using AI, the truth is only 21% have moved beyond tactical use. Most teams are still stuck in the lower two stages of the maturity curve. 

This gap is exactly where the opportunity lies. 2025 has been the year of adoption and 2026 is the year that agentic solutions will be expected. Anyone not keeping up will be behind the curve. It's a competitive landscape for those who supercharge their pipeline goals with AI. 

What does that mean for CROs? We can’t afford to keep AI boxed into experiments or one-off productivity boosters. The next generation of high-performing teams will operationalize and ultimately scale AI across the customer lifecycle, using it to forecast churn, surface expansion signals, and orchestrate next-best actions, not just write emails faster. 

That’s why our AI is designed to move teams from tactical assistance to strategic revenue impact: 

Tactical (Productivity)

• Conversation Intelligence and Insights helps teams coach around critical customer lifecycle moments, from onboarding to renewal, by analyzing conversations and identifying opportunities to strengthen relationships. Email Assist accelerates personalized follow-ups and renewal communication, ensuring every customer touchpoint feels timely and relevant.  
• AI Personalization for Call Tasks equips teams with contextual pre-meeting research and tailored insights that help every interaction drive measurable outcomes.

Strategic (Revenue Impact)

• Revenue Agent for running targeted retention and up-sell plays based on customer signaling churn risk or expansion opportunities  
• Deal Health scoring using 17+ factors to predict outcomes with up to 81% accuracy 
• Next Best Actions that prescribe specific plays based on account signals 
• Forecast Prediction with dynamic risk and sentiment analysis 

Our AI Agents can run as co-pilots (recommendations with human oversight) or auto-pilot (automated actions) depending on your team’s maturity and risk tolerance. And because they’re powered by the Outreach Data Cloud, which unifies CRM data, first-party data from your enterprise systems, and third-party intelligence, combined with all the conversations and interaction happening inside Outreach every day.  

This foundation gives our AI the complete context it needs to help CROs forecast risk, identify expansion signals, and prescribe next-best actions across the entire revenue lifecycle.  

Unlike models trained on fragmented or public web data, Outreach’s AI learns from billions of customer interactions and go-to-market team signals, building a dynamic understanding of how top-performing teams execute and where others can improve.  

The data powers our end-to-end revenue workflows – so whether you’re forecasting, coaching, or managing renewals, your AI Agents can connect the dots between intent, engagement, and execution in real time. Most importantly, our AI is isolated from public LLM training and built with enterprise-grade security and governance, so your customer data stays yours while still powering smarter revenue decisions. 

Real CROs, Real Results: How Outreach Customers Are Winning 

These strategies aren’t theoretical; they’re happening in the field. Check out what a couple of our customers have been able to accomplish with our tools below. 

Siemens:

Rolled out a new global forecasting process to 4,000+ sellers across 190 countries using Outreach. Achieved over 70% forecast submission rates and unified opportunity guidelines worldwide. 

Read the Siemens story → 

Omniplex Learning:

Scaled its sales team from 10 to 30 reps while maintaining consistency and visibility using Outreach’s AI-powered workflows; accelerating onboarding and deal management. 

Read the Omniplex Learning story → 

Five Moves Every CRO Should Make Going into 2026 

 The Customer Revenue Leadership Study research identifies five strategic imperatives for the year ahead: 

The CRO Mindset Shift: Retention as the Growth Engine 

If I could leave one message with every CRO heading into 2026, it would be this: 

When every team (sales, success, enablement, support) sees revenue through the lens of customer value, growth compounds naturally. 

That’s the mindset shift defining the next generation of CROs; those who treat retention not as a metric, but as the new acquisition. 

FAQs 

What does the 2025 Customer Revenue Leadership Study reveal about customer-driven growth? 

The 2025 ChurnZero Customer Revenue Leadership Study shows that 74% of respondents report that most of their revenue comes from existing customers, confirming that retention, adoption, and expansion  are primary growth levers. The report also highlights that NRR and GRR stabilized after two years of decline, signaling a return to controllable growth driven by operational discipline and customer value realization. 

How are CROs using AI to reduce churn and improve retention? 

Forward-thinking CROs are shifting from using AI for tactical productivity (like call summaries or research) to strategic revenue impact, applying AI to identify renewal risk, predict expansion opportunities, and automate next-best actions. Tools like Outreach’s Revenue Agents help CROs surface churn signals early, improve forecast accuracy, and operationalize retention as a scalable growth motion. 

What roles most influence NRR? 

According to ChurnZero’s research, teams that include enablement, customer success, support, and account management roles see NRR lifts of 4–8 points. CROs who align these functions under shared goals and shared data, rather than keeping them siloed, see stronger renewal performance and higher customer lifetime value. 

How can Outreach help CROs operationalize retention and expansion? 

Outreach unifies forecasting, deal health, and customer engagement data into one AI-powered revenue workflow platform, giving CROs a complete view of account health and expansion potential. With Revenue Agents that surface risk, track engagement, and automate follow-ups, Outreach helps CROs turn retention insights into predictable, repeatable growth.