Why your SaaS NRR stalls at 90%: a practical playbook to get to 120% without adding more features

Read time: 3 minutes.

Welcome to the 188th edition of The Growth Elements Newsletter. Every Monday and sometimes on Thursday, I write an essay on growth metrics & experiments and business case studies.

Today’s piece is for 8,000+ founders, operators, and leaders from businesses such as Shopify, Google, Hubspot, Zoho, Freshworks, Servcorp, Zomato, Postman, Razorpay and Zoom.

Today’s The Growth Elements (TGE) is brought to you by:

AI-native CRM

“When I first opened Attio, I instantly got the feeling this was the next generation of CRM.”
— Margaret Shen, Head of GTM at Modal

Attio is the AI-native CRM for modern teams. With automatic enrichment, call intelligence, AI agents, flexible workflows and more, Attio works for any business and only takes minutes to set up.

Join industry leaders like Granola, Taskrabbit, Flatfile and more.

👉 Start for free today

^{Thank you for supporting our sponsors, who keep this newsletter free.}

Many SaaS businesses in the $1-10M ARR range sit around 90-100% NRR, while top‑quartile companies operate above 115-120%.​

Most teams respond by shipping more features; in practice, NRR usually fixes faster through better customer targeting, packaging, and operations.​

Why NRR gets stuck around 90%

• Wrong fit customers: aggressive acquisition brings in accounts that should never have been closed; they churn at renewal.​

• Flat packaging: plans do not create natural upgrade paths (no usage tiers, add‑ons, or seat expansion levers).​

• Weak value communication: customers do not see the business outcomes (time saved, revenue, risk reduction), so renewals become price negotiations.​

• Reactive customer success: teams chase tickets instead of proactively driving adoption and expansion in the right accounts.​

The practical NRR → 120% playbook

[1] Fix who you sell to:

• Define a “high LTV ICP”: segments with better retention and expansion, based on 12-24 month data.​

• Tightly align marketing and sales on this ICP; pay less or nothing on deals outside it.​

[2] Make expansion structural, not ad‑hoc:

• Introduce clear expansion levers: seats, usage bands, and 1-2 high‑value add‑ons instead of custom bundles.​

• Align pricing so the customers who get more value naturally pay more over time without a hard sell.​

[3] Operationalise success:

• Define 3-5 product usage signals that correlate strongly with renewal and expansion (logins, feature adoption, workflows completed).​

• Build a simple playbook: for high‑health accounts, run QBRs focused on value and roadmap; for medium‑health, run activation and training plays; for low‑health, run save plays.​

[4] Close the value loop:

• For top segments, quantify value in concrete numbers (hours saved, revenue influenced, error reduction) and make this part of every renewal and QBR.​

• Use this data to refine ICP, pricing, and packaging every 6-12 months.​

Final learnings

• NRR problems are usually customer fit, pricing, and operational issues, not feature gaps.​

• Getting from 90% to 120% NRR comes from selling to the right customers, giving them natural ways to grow, and running a disciplined success and value narrative, not from adding more complexity to the product.

That's it for today's article! I hope you found this essay insightful.

Wishing you a productive week ahead!

I always appreciate you reading.

Thanks,
Chintankumar Maisuria