neerailn

Sales Leader

Customer Success Salaries - Advice Wanted for Friend!!

Hey all, My colleague in CS asked for some advice on negotiating his salary (he's a Customer Success Manager)...I know I know, why isn't he in sales...it's just not something he wants to do.

Anywho, if you know any ranges for what start-up tech companies are paying in Canada (or US, I can convert) that may help as we brainstorm ways for him to leverage his experience, value, and the market.

Thanks in advance for any tips/knowledge!!

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SaaSData

Catalyst

VP of SaaS & Unit Economics 🏴‍☠️

Here you go... Customer Success Salaries coming at you.

Please do NOT confuse the Account Manager role here with someone who is also carrying quota too, this is where SaaS goes wrong most of the time. Not specializing and underpaying real AEs to take care of the hard work again.

Very low on the Equity Scale, but this role is becoming a lot more important. In SaaS all the profits are unlocked by having a strong Customer Success Team...

However, don't confuse that. You need the same caliber of person to CLOSE a renewal as you do the person who sold it.

I advise many companies who think they will bring in this mysterious low cost Account Manager and really screw up their Go-to-Market Strategy.

Many orgs have not separated this role out right but here is the most accurate data on this from a few of my collections that I've done.

Here are your Comp Splits from the SaaS Data thinktank HQ...

Base - Variable (Based on Bay Area Salaries... keep reading for other cities and comps)

Collect Paperwork - Make Happy Collect Paperwork -
Account Manager - 80-100 | 100-130
Senior Account Manager - 90-110 | 130-160

On-Boarding - High Velocity -
CSM (Junior/Mid IC) - 70-100 | 80-110
CSM (Senior IC) - 120-140 | 170-200

Leadership -
CSM (Director) - 140-160 | 160-200 (Manager of a Team)
Customer Success (VP) - 160-200 | 220-260 (VP of a Team)

That's the data for a Bay Area...

Add 14% to NYC
Subtract 16% for Austin, Boston, Chicago

20-30% Variable with the Average being about 25%.

Goals - Key Metric:

The Account Manager role up there was talking about Enterprise Account Managers with VERY little risk on Renewals. Please do not correlate my Account Manager role to a GAM or Enterprise Field Rep that needs to drive consumption or drive Renewals at Risk. These are classic "Renewal Reps"

Account Manager - Manage a Group of Accounts/Renewals - Less On-Boarding
Senior Account Manager - Manage a Group of Accounts/Renewals - Less On-Boarding

Customer Success here means high velocity on-boarding and reducing chances of churn. Typically in a SaaS high velocity model.

CSM Junior/IC - 50-100 On-Boardings
CSM Senior - Manage 2-3 Bigger Accounts, 20-50 On-Boardings

Hire/Fire Team

Director - Team of 5 or 6 - Measured on Growth / Renewal %
VP - Team of 12 - Measured on the Growth / Renewal %

Average Renewal rates being 97%+ in SaaS.

Less Revenue, Higher Churn is Acceptable. Churn is a killer and this is the profit center of SaaS.

But, for Sales Professionals it's not a good reason why it's a profit center.

It's a Profit Center because pay Sales People in Customer Success a lot less money.

I've been collecting some data on this for a while now.

-SaaSData
lmk if i can help

<insert self-promotional cell-phone number here>

I removed my cell-phone when someone complained I was self-promoting. (but I'm not sure what I promote?)

neerailn

Executive

Sales Leader

Thank you, very helpful!

InQ5WeTrust

Arsonist

No marketing, mayo isn't an MQL

Compgauge contains CSM pay data. Advise he checks that.

UrAssIsSaaS

Arsonist

SaaS Eater

Probably need more context on the size/scope of the role, industry etc but compgauge like @InQ5WeTrust pointed out is your best bet.

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

Did you try to check some range in Glassdoor or similar sites ?

FormerStartupJobHopper

Tycoon

My sense of CS is higher base/floor, but lower ceiling/commission. I interviewed at HubSpot about 2 years back for a CS role that was $75-$85k (US) base with NO commish (glad now that I didn't do that lol).

I was fairly green out of school so more experience may net you more of course. But on the flip side I think HubSpot pays pretty well, so that was probably high for someone with my experience at the time.

I feel like a lot of CS roles have some commission aspect to them, but not typically 50-50 splits like AEs. Maybe somewhere between 75-25 and 90-10.

IYNFYL

Politicker

Enterprise SaaS AE

Usually it’s a 75-90% base for CS in my experience

saasibee

Opinionated

Enterprise Rep

A friend of mine was making 85k (all salary no bonus/commission) and recently took a new job at around 100k (again no bonus) as a senior CSM.

IYNFYL

Politicker

Enterprise SaaS AE

Yeah it’s hard knowing what entails in that CS role. Every company these days label their titles different so some have a quota like an AM would. Also depends if it’s a bigger established company or startup. My two cents is if you pay shit for the role you will get a bunch of inexperienced people, such as my current company, who you spend more time training in Client Success 101 instead of them actually doing it.

Jewcan_Sam81

Politicker

Account Executive

Depending on his level and years of experience, especially in tech, he shouldn't ask for anything less than 90K USD

Flippinghubs

Opinionated

Account Executive

Compgauge as mentioned should be the best place to look

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neerailn

Customer Success Salaries - Advice Wanted for Friend!!

11 comments

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