Carnmoor Fleet Leasing / BB-Demo – Renewal
Callcompleted
Carnmoor Fleet Leasing · 2026-09-10 13:15
Finance Director Ian Prendergast says he cannot explain a 40-seat Growth line to the board with five or six active users. He will renew if value is shown, otherwise it may be smaller. No complaint, invoices paid.
What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Finance Director Ian Prendergast says he cannot explain a 40-seat Growth line to the board with five or six active users. He will renew if value is shown, otherwise it may be smaller. No complaint, invoices paid.
What happened: Amara Obi, new as CSM, opened the 10 Sep 2026 renewal call with usage of five or six active people against 40 licensed seats. Gemma Thorne put the fall down to adoption, not the product.
Customer view: Ian is not unhappy and nothing has gone wrong. He wants cost per user, hours saved and uplift in pounds, and will not agree a price on a call.
Commercial: The order form says £42k and the term ends on Tuesday 1 December 2026. The CRM deal record carries £22k, which Sophie Ling said is not the Growth price and she would correct. A Starter-scope option sits beside Growth at the new list price.
Watch: Gemma wants to keep the multi-team scope and fix usage instead. The written note was promised before 22 Sep 2026, and the evidence does not show whether it was sent or what Ian decided.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Renewal value and scope
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Sophie Ling to send Ian a written note in pounds with two options, the end date and the notice wording, before 22 Sep 2026.
- Amara Obi to run a working session on a real client review and send a fortnightly usage report.
- Gemma Thorne to check the review-time estimate with two account managers and bring one client example.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Five or six active users against 40 Growth seats leaves the finance director unable to justify the renewal line.
- Ian said the renewal may be smaller, and Starter scope was raised as an option.
- The CRM renewal record shows £22,000 against the £41,800 order form, which could confuse the discussion.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- A dashboard per major client built on agreed figures would give account managers a reason to use the brain.
- Remarketing and residual values could widen use if Gemma gets a view from that team.
Transcript
Amara Obi NoneHello, can you both hear me all right? I've got the recording going, so if anything cuts out just shout.
Gemma Thorne NoneLoud and clear. Afternoon, Amara. Hi Sophie, I can see you've just popped up.
Sophie Ling NoneAfternoon, both. Sorry, I'm a minute behind, the call before this one overran. Is Ian joining?- Gemma Thorne NoneHe's coming off a finance meeting, he said five minutes. He'll dial in when he's out. Honestly, it's been one of those weeks. Rain all morning, three clients chasing me about reviews, and a printer that has decided not to work.
- Amara Obi NoneSounds about right for a Thursday. Shall we make a start and Ian can catch up? Gemma, I don't think we've met properly on a call, so let me introduce myself. I'm Amara, I'm the customer success manager for Carnmoor, so I look after adoption and the renewal conversation. Sophie owns the commercial side.
- Sophie Ling NoneWhich means I'm the one who sends you the numbers. Nice to see you, Gemma.
- Gemma Thorne NoneAnd you. Right, so I'm in the middle of preparing a review for one of our corporate fleets, which is partly why I wanted to get on this call, because it ties in. Hold on, I think that's Ian.
Ian Prendergast NoneGood afternoon. Apologies for the delay. Can everyone hear me?- Amara Obi NoneWe can, Ian, welcome. I'm Amara, I've taken over as customer success manager on your account. Sophie you know already.
- Ian Prendergast NoneYes. Sophie, hello. Amara, pleased to meet you. I'll start with the same question I always ask. What has changed since the order form?
- Amara Obi NoneFair question, and I'd rather answer it straight. Here's what the numbers say. You're licensed for forty users on Growth. In a typical month recently there have been five or six people actually active in the brain. That's down by well over a third on the previous quarter.
- Ian Prendergast NoneFive or six, against forty.
- Amara Obi NoneYes. I'm not going to dress that up. The other side of it is that nothing's broken. There are no tickets from you in the last month, nothing high priority, and your invoices are all paid on time. So it's not a service problem. It's quiet, and quiet is what worries me at renewal.
- Ian Prendergast NoneQuiet is one word for it. In my world it's forty seats, six people, and a contract that ends on Tuesday 1 December 2026. Forty-one thousand eight hundred pounds a year. What does that cost per person who actually uses it?
- Gemma Thorne NoneIan, can I come in on that before it turns into a sums exercise? Because I think the honest answer is that it's on us as much as anything.
- Ian Prendergast NoneGo on.
- Gemma Thorne NoneWhen we started, the account managers used it every time they were preparing a client review. Pull the fleet, the queries, the invoices, one picture. That's what I bought it for. And then the autumn review cycle came round and people went back to what they know. Spreadsheets, the shared drive, ringing the service desk. It's not that the brain's wrong. It's that nobody's made it the first place to go.
- Amara Obi NoneThat matches what I can see. The people who were asking questions early on have tailed off, and the usage was never spread widely. It was a handful of account managers and you, mostly. So who else should have access? Is the service desk in there at all?
- Gemma Thorne NoneSome of them have logins. I'd be lying if I said they use them. They're stretched, and I don't want to say anything unfair about them, they've got a lot on. It's more that nobody showed them what's in it for them on a busy afternoon.
- Ian Prendergast NoneGemma, forgive me, but that's a training problem, and a training problem is not a reason to pay for forty seats. I want to understand the base. If six people use it, what is the cost to serve each client that comes out of this?
- Gemma Thorne NoneWhich client, which fleet? Because it's not even across them. The two big corporate fleets we review most are where it earns its keep. The rest, honestly, haven't touched it.
- Ian Prendergast NoneThen that's the number I'd like to see. What did one review cost us before, and what does it cost now? I can't take a line to the board that says people like it.
- Amara Obi NoneI can pull the question counts by person and by month, and I can show you which clients' reviews were prepared from the brain and which weren't. I can't give you the hours saved, because we don't measure your people's time. That would have to come from Gemma's team. Gemma, could you estimate that?
- Gemma Thorne NoneRoughly, yes. Before, an account manager lost most of a day rebuilding a client's picture. When they use the brain it's a morning, sometimes less. I'd want to check that with two of them before I put it in writing, I don't want to promise something I haven't seen.
- Ian Prendergast NoneThat's sensible. Put it in writing once you've checked.
- Sophie Ling NoneCan I add where we are commercially, so nobody's guessing? The contract runs to the end of November, strictly to 1 December 2026, and the renewal date is 2 December 2026. The thing to know, Ian, is that you signed on the earlier price book. At your first renewal after the summer the list price moves to the newer one, and any discount you had in the first term falls away. I'm not going to quote a percentage at you without the base, I know you'd ask. I'll set it out in pounds.
- Ian Prendergast NoneShow me the uplift in pounds, yes. Not a percentage. The current figure, the new figure, and the difference.
- Sophie Ling NoneUnderstood. One more thing, and this is a bit of housekeeping. On our side the renewal deal record in the CRM currently carries twenty-two thousand pounds, and a target date of Tuesday 22 September 2026 to agree terms. Please don't read anything into that figure. It isn't your Growth price. The order form is what governs, and that's forty-one thousand eight hundred. I'll tidy the record so it matches.
- Ian Prendergast NoneTwenty-two thousand. That is a long way from what I pay.
- Sophie Ling NoneIt is, and I'd rather you heard it from me than saw it on a document. It's the sort of number that looks like a Starter renewal. So that's actually a useful thing to talk about, if you want to.
- Ian Prendergast NoneGo on, I'm listening, but I'll say now that I'm not agreeing a price on a call.
- Sophie Ling NoneOf course, and I wouldn't ask you to. Look, here's the shape of it. Growth is built for several teams. Starter is one team, fifteen users as a soft limit and a smaller number of connectors. If the honest picture is that you're using this as one team's tool at the moment, then it's worth looking at what a smaller scope would cost, next to what Growth would cost at the new list price.
- Gemma Thorne NoneSorry, can I be careful here? I'm not keen on shrinking it just because we've had a slow few months. The whole point was that corporate account managers, the service desk and remarketing see one picture of each client. If we drop to one team, we've lost the reason we bought it.
- Ian Prendergast NoneGemma, and I say this respectfully, the picture is only worth something if people are looking at it.
- Gemma Thorne NoneAgreed. Completely agreed. That's why I'd rather fix the use than cut the scope. But I also can't take a commercial decision without you, so I'm not going to argue it as if I could.
- Amara Obi NoneI think both of those can be true. Can I suggest we treat the next few weeks as a test? I'd rather you renewed on the right scope, whichever it is, than renewed on autopilot or walked away from something that could work.
- Ian Prendergast NoneI don't renew anything on autopilot. What does the test look like?
- Amara Obi NoneTwo parts. First, a working session with the account managers and a few people from the service desk, on their own client data. Not a feature tour. Pick a real review that's coming up and prepare it from the brain together. Second, I'll give you a usage report each fortnight, by person and by question, so you can see for yourself whether it's moving.
- Gemma Thorne NoneI like that. Let's get the service desk in on this. If I can get a couple of their team leads for an hour, they're the ones who can say what a driver actually asks, and what the client actually saw.
- Ian Prendergast NoneIs that an hour of their time or a morning? I'd like to know what that costs us as well.
- Gemma Thorne NoneAn hour, perhaps ninety minutes with questions. I'd keep it tight.
- Amara Obi NoneKeep it tight, yes. And I'd say one thing about the user count while we're at it. Forty seats was a headroom number. If, at the end of this, six or ten people are properly active, that's useful information for scoping. It's not a failure, it's a measurement.
- Ian Prendergast NoneIt's a measurement I'd like in the board pack, whichever way it comes out.
- Sophie Ling NoneThen let me say what I'll send, and when. Before Tuesday 22 September 2026, a written note setting out two options in pounds: Growth at the new list price with the current term's figure alongside it, and a smaller scope. Each with what it includes and what drops off. No percentages without the base.
- Ian Prendergast NoneAnd the implementation fee? That's one-off, I take it. It doesn't come back.
- Sophie Ling NoneCorrect. The implementation was a one-off at the start. A renewal is just the subscription. I'll say so in the note, so there's no confusion about what's in the figure.
- Ian Prendergast NoneGood. Because I've seen suppliers quietly fold things into a renewal line and then not be able to explain it.
- Sophie Ling NoneI'd hate us to be one of them.
- Gemma Thorne NoneCan I ask something slightly different? Mm. When I log in, what I'd love is a view per client that I can show in a review without anyone asking where it came from. Is that something I should be building as a dashboard, or is the chat enough?
- Amara Obi NoneGrowth includes the dashboards builder, so yes, you can build it. I haven't seen that anyone at Carnmoor has built one yet, which is one of the things I'd flag. A dashboard per major client, agreed with Ian's team so the numbers are the numbers, would give you your reviews starting from agreed figures. That's the thing you told us you wanted.
- Gemma Thorne NoneThat's exactly what I want. Agreed numbers. Because at the moment the service desk have one story and the account managers have another, and the client gets both.
- Ian Prendergast NoneThat, I'll grant you, is a real cost. A client hearing two versions is a retention risk. But it's a risk I can't price, and I need to price things.
- Gemma Thorne NoneI know. I'll try to give you one example, with a real client, of where it went wrong. Not today, I need to check it first.
- Ian Prendergast NonePlease do.
- Amara Obi NoneCan I just check one practical thing? When the usage dropped, did anything change on your side with the systems that feed the brain? Sometimes a connector goes quiet after a change and people stop trusting what they see.
- Gemma Thorne NoneNot that I'm aware of. Though I'd want to ask someone in IT to be sure. I don't think the data's been the complaint. It's been more, I'll ask the account managers, it's been 'I don't have time to learn another thing'.
- Amara Obi NoneThat's useful, thank you. I'll look at it from our end anyway, nightly refresh and the record counts, and tell you what I find. If the data is current, we can rule that out.
- Ian Prendergast NoneLet me be clear about where I am, so nobody leaves this call with the wrong impression. I'm not unhappy. I haven't been let down. Nothing has gone wrong and you've been paid on time. But I can't explain this line to the board at present. If I can, I'll renew. If I can't, we'll take a view at renewal and it may be smaller.
- Sophie Ling NoneThat's completely fair, and thank you for saying it plainly. It's what I'd want to hear if I were on your side.
- Ian Prendergast NoneAnd I'd like the contract position confirmed in writing as well. The end date, the notice period, and what happens if I say nothing.
- Sophie Ling NoneI'll include all of that in the same note. The end date is Tuesday 1 December 2026, and I'll quote what the order form says about notice, word for word, so you're not relying on my memory.
- Amara Obi NoneAnd from my side, the renewal notice will come to you in good time, with the usage picture in it. You won't be surprised by anything on that document, because you'll already have seen every number in it.
- Ian Prendergast NoneGood. That's all I ask of a supplier.
- Gemma Thorne NoneCan I just say, for the record, I'm not trying to defend a bad position. I think the brain is good. I think we haven't done our part. If we only get this one thing right, which is the account managers using it for every review for the next quarter, I think the numbers will answer Ian's question for him.
- Ian Prendergast NoneThen give me the numbers, Gemma, and I'll answer it.
- Gemma Thorne NoneFair. Challenge accepted.
- Amara Obi NoneLet me read back what I've got, because I don't want any of this to drift. One. I'll set up the working session with account managers and service desk leads, on a real upcoming client review. Gemma, you'll send me two or three dates that work. Two. I'll send a fortnightly usage report to you both, by person and by question. Three. I'll check the nightly refresh and record counts and tell you if anything's stale.
- Sophie Ling NoneFour. I'll send the written note to Ian before Tuesday 22 September 2026, in pounds, two options, with the end date and the notice wording. And I'll correct the renewal record on our side.
- Gemma Thorne NoneFive. I'll check the review-time estimate with two account managers, and bring one real client example. And I'll get the service desk leads.
- Ian Prendergast NoneSix. I'll read the note, and I won't decide anything until I've seen usage over the next few weeks. I'd rather say that now than have anyone think the 22nd is a deadline for me.
- Sophie Ling NoneUnderstood. The 22nd is just our internal target, not yours. Nothing happens to your contract if it passes.
- Ian Prendergast NoneGood.
- Amara Obi NoneOne last thing from me, and then I'll let you go. Gemma, who else should have access? Not for seats, just thinking about whether remarketing is in the picture. You mentioned them when you bought it.
- Gemma Thorne NoneRemarketing, honestly, no. They've got logins and I don't think anyone's used them. I'd probably have to talk to their head of team first. It's a different conversation, they care about residuals, not client reviews.
- Ian Prendergast NoneThat is, in fact, a conversation I'd be interested in. Residual values are where my money is. If this can help there, it changes the arithmetic. But I won't pay for a hope.
- Amara Obi NoneUnderstood, no hope pricing. Let's keep that as a possibility and not a promise. If Gemma gets a view from remarketing, I'll fold it into the session.
- Gemma Thorne NoneI'll ask. No promises.
- Ian Prendergast NoneRight. I have another meeting in a few minutes. Anything else for me?
- Sophie Ling NoneOnly thanks, Ian. I appreciate the directness. It makes my job easier.
- Amara Obi NoneSame from me. Let's get the next check-in in the diary once the working session's happened, so we're looking at real movement. I'll send a few dates this afternoon.
- Gemma Thorne NoneLovely. Thanks, all. I'll send the dates for the session by the end of the week.
- Ian Prendergast NoneThank you. Goodbye.
- Sophie Ling NoneBye, Ian. Bye, Gemma.
- Gemma Thorne NoneBye, both. Speak soon.
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