Mr.Pickles

Sr. Customer Success Manager

For those who are wondering...

For those who once asked what a CSM does, here's a chronicle of the daily struggle.

Currently, I'm a customer success manager and I have no tangible skills to offer to anyone ~~just kidding or not?.~~ Sometimes I manage all post-sales activity for the company's customers through onboarding and progressive adoption activities, operational day-to-day support, relationship-building, product knowledge, planning, and execution.

The funny thing is that my role is actually to support and ensure the success of the customer yet I have absolutely nothing to offer them, except for a friendly face and good vibes.

I must ~~the JD says~~ develop a trusted relationship with key customer contacts by delivering consistently responsive and best-in-class customer service; being customer-focused and consistently honoring commitments also making sure ~~to be accountable~~ for customer retention by conducting regular check-in calls, with the ultimate focus on minimizing churn ~~please don't leave or my commiss is gone because I'm being measured by KPIs I can't control yay...~~

I also proactively seek out revenue growth of the customers through expansion, cross-sell, and up-sell opportunities through both inbound and outbound approaches; which is like selling ~~but not really~~ because this is beyond the sales process.

In all honesty, I can't help at all with the implementation of the product because I never even looked at the product. I don't even have a user account for the product, the only thing I'm good at is advocating for the customer, and by that I mean being a punching bag - let me explain:

Say a customer's implementation misses the deadline because of a product bug; because I'm the face of the company to the customer, they'll yell at me for this and rage. The engineering team then will yell at me for taking their precious time to develop features to fix the bug ~~I guess that's why they pay me the big bucks~~

When I'm not on calls you'll find me engaging in one of my many hobbies which includes playing the Nintendo, verbally and physically assaulting the fridge, and browsing Bravado, that's because I have so much downtime.

Questions? Let's read them in the comments section.

😂 Sales Humor

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21 comment

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Sunbunny31

Politicker

4

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Consider yourself a quarterback. Your job is to find the right play and then make sure it's executed. You get to pass the ball to the players and hopefully you picked the right one. The more you learn about the role, the easier those play calls will be.
Outside of the sports analogy, all I can tell you is that the very best thing you can do is communicate. Communicate to the customer - the worst thing is being left in the dark. Communicate internally; if you don't know something or what to do about something else, ask until you do, and let the people you're asking know that you're doing it on behalf of the customer and are operating in their best interest.
Best of luck!

jefe

Arsonist

2

🍁

Love this perspective.
Accurate and kind.

HVACexpert

Politicker

4

sales engineer

So you’re like a project sales manager -ish?

CuriousFox

WR Officer

2

🦊

ISH

Mothy

Politicker

3

Account Executive

When you seek out revenue growth opportunities, do you then pass them off to an AE or AM?

GDO

Politicker

0

BDM

Growth within customers should go to AM? No?

Mothy

Politicker

1

Account Executive

Yes, however I know some orgs have different titles. Our SFDC guy for example has an AE title, but an AM role for whatever reason.

GDO

Politicker

1

BDM

Strange

Revenue_Rambo

Politicker

3

Director, Revenue Enablement

Yup that is an accurate day in the life. Especially getting yelled at by engineering for asking to fix an issue they caused.

lowhangersalesbanger

Executive

3

Director of Sales

And to think I always though CSM's did about as much real work as Marketing

Mr.Pickles

Arsonist

1

Sr. Customer Success Manager

ba dam tum

Pachacuti

Politicker

3

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

1 - Sales people in general have no tangible skills other than "I talk good for a living" skill. We're the first to die in a Zombie Apocalypse.

2- Much of what occurs is outside our control. Focus on your own efforts, attitude, and best interest.

3- Remember - the No-Friend-O is not your emotional support animal.

jefe

Arsonist

2

🍁

To your first point, you're generally correct - UNLESS we are able to become the leader of some kind of community through talking good.

Mr.Pickles

Arsonist

0

Sr. Customer Success Manager

you can always form a sect :v

Pachacuti

Politicker

1

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

As someone who's been both a Cult Leader and Follower, I get it ;)

1

Retired Sales Professional

What do you do to invest in yourself. Don't get me wrong, it's cool that your able to enjoy yourself, but don't loose yourself and invest in your skill sets so that your ready for the next step or position.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

1

Sales Rep

What has been the main disconnect with what you were told in the interview vs what you are doing

pirate

Big Shot

1

🦜☠️ Account Executive

My current org has no idea how to run customer success motion. I'm like have you called them. They say nope. In good orgs, you meet with customer monthly and have a deck. You walk through this deck and it's product updates, events, webinars, new products and every slide it's like are you interested? Could this be of interest? And then also check if any issues, if they want to be a reference customer. Like that's what you should be doing instead of playing Nintendo. You can learn so much about the product by talking to customers and playing dumb or asking internally until you find your people.

RealPatrickBateman

Politicker

1

🔪Amateur Butcher🔪

YIKES....

Mr.Pickles

Arsonist

0

Sr. Customer Success Manager

Boss?

wolfofmiami

Opinionated

0

🐺

How many customers do you manage? Ik some pple with 120 customers and they have 0 free time til Friday at 4

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