OhYouRichRich

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

Talk to me about your work with Customer Success Managers.

My company is just starting to use Customer Success Managers, however, it seems like that Team's skill set is to immature to be actually helpful. Every time a customer has an issue or is at risk, they are lacking any type of process and ownership. I want to work well with our Success Team but don't know what "good" looks like and I don't have time to do their jobs for them.... Interested to hear how others have leveraged Customer Success Reps, hungry for any tips, tricks, do's, don'ts, etc.

👑 Sales Strategy

☁️ Software Tech

✌️ Growing Pains

26 comments

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jefe

Arsonist

🍁

I don't think success can operate without properly established and adhered to process and guidelines.

The ones I've worked with, thankfully, were quite good. When I was in education I was very aligned with my territory CSM and we worked extremely well together.

You should be able to have regular meetings and they should absolutely be open to feedback, but should also be proactive.

OhYouRichRich

Good Citizen

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

Thank you! I really like that idea, I meet with them monthly right now but to be more proactive and make changes sooner, I'll see if they are open to meeting more regularly.

In your experience with regular meetings, what were some of the topics you'd cover?

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

so this is really going to depend on the type of ppl that are on the team.

i would hope that these folks are open to feedback, eager to learn, and want to get better.

if they are, just helping them out each time a situation comes up can be super helpful so they know what to do next time. there might be more work on your side in the beginning but if you can be helpful, then there should be less work for you down the road.

So what ever situation is coming up, try to give them a framework for how to handle it without you next time.

OhYouRichRich

Good Citizen

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

Very true, gotta meet them where theyre at. I'm thinking I'll listen to more Success & Customer call recordings from Senior Management to get more ideas on "what good (might) look like"

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

yeah this is a great idea too. if you can understand what their boss wants them to do, and you can help them do that, then they will look to you as a resource.

OhYouRichRich

Good Citizen

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

thank you!

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

That’s an issue for your leadership to tackle. Have you let them know your concern?

OhYouRichRich

Good Citizen

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

Totally agree and yes I have. What was odd was it seemed like they already knew and were just going to let it coast on....

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Your manager should be talking to their manager peer to peer and escalating if needed. This isn't really a problem you can solve.

OhYouRichRich

Good Citizen

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

Whats interesting is my manager wants me to set up a meeting with him, myself, and the VP of Success to give the feedback. I also felt like it should be manager to manager...

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

We have a regimented process and clear structure. It sounds like you're being put in a position of having to train and coach a new team, and as a rep, you're not going to have time for that. Your management really needs to get involved and put a framework around this.

OhYouRichRich

Good Citizen

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

Totally agree with you! I'm very process oriented so not having one is making the 'control freak' in me come out - full force.

Wellss

Tycoon

Channel sales

Making sure you're properly aligned with your customer success team is huge! For example, any time we pass over a new account, we have a template to fill out to give the customer success manager the ins and outs of the account. We also give a 'risk score', which is basically how likely we think the account is to churn in the next 6 months. This helps them prioritize which accounts they need to spend more time on

OhYouRichRich

Good Citizen

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

We did something like this months ago and it fizzled out. Everyone here organizes that information differently. Did your template live in sharepoint, powerpoint, onenote, etc? Just curious on what worked well for you.

Wellss

Tycoon

Channel sales

The template lived in our CRM and then as soon as we finished filling it out, it would go into the Customer Success teams platform that they use. We had an automation set up to where as soon as accounts were marked 'won', the template would pop up as an added task and we had to fill it out to officially close the account

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

What does your manager say about it?

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

Bravado's Resident Asshole

I have only ever worked with one success team. They have been super so far. So I don't have a benchmark to tell you what not to look for.

WhoDey

Opinionated

VP of Sales

Once they are ramped up and have some experience under the belt, they can be super helpful. Give them time to develop...and help them. Right now it may seem redundant and annoying, but down the road you'll be thankful.

OhYouRichRich

Good Citizen

Enterprise Account Manager - Associate Manager

Totally agree. I don't want to overstep in my willingness to help either. I think asking if they are open to my giving them feedback is a good place to start. I also gave my direct boss some ideas to share in the next leadership meeting, like have them work on their own 6 critical selling skills, listen to recorded calls, etc.

It sounds like you've had a good experience though. How did you leverage your Success Managers? (Any other ideas outside of Business reviews?)

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

We have an awesome team and each of them are true owners. What’s their problem based on what you see - is it a process, compensation, lack of interest, high customer churn rate ?

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

The Sales team still oversees growth accounts with the renewals and expansions. The CSM manages Services Requests and Go-Lives, nothing really involving pricing

ChumpChange

Politicker

Channel Manager

You need to build SOPs and assign DRIs to each core function of that team. Develop OKR's that address churn reduction and grow an existing book of business. Assign a new book of business every month/quarter/year depending on your product/industry. Have a CSM leader meet with Sales, Engineering, Marketing and Product leaders to facilitate customer feedback or potential areas of interest/risk.

activity

Politicker

VP, Business Development

CS needs a leader that has demonstrated they can implement process for the CS team. Once the process is in place and everyone has their role spelled out, this position is very helpful for sales people. This allows for sales pros to go out and do what they do best.

Mendizo

Opinionated

Sr. Director

Sounds like there's lots of growing pains with this new team, so hopefully they have a good leader to help flesh out the vision.

Prior to joining sales, I was a CSM (I'd come from Support, which was one reason I succeeded since I knew the technical aspect). To me, a few key things for the CSM role:

-CSM's should have monetary upside for renewals and expansions. Compensation drives behavior, and if they're not paid on it, they're not going to do a good job. Sadly, I still see many CSM teams on a base salary with very little upside. I personally had thrived because I got bonused on renewal rate (primary metric) and got a certain commission on upsell, which then helped seed the behavior that I better do right by my customers so they buy more.

-As others have said, proper support from other teams are key. CSM's in a company new to them will have an identity crisis for a while. Customers are used to going to support for problems, Product for gaps, Sales for upsell, A/R for billing issues, etc. Now all of a sudden this new team comes in and they happily have a single throat to choke. Unfortunately, the new CSM's have no idea how to handle all these things... sounds familiar right? :)

So, the CSM team needs to have a 'map' of the existing processes and how to take care of them. Only over time can they truly start to own the customer relationship... until then, they're going to be glorified go-betweens. This is why it takes an experienced CSM leader to broker those processes.

-A good CSM team will be the 'sniffer dogs' for the entire company. They will be in tune to needs, wants, issues, escalations and such even before they happen. A good CSM team is invaluable to a company when they are tapped in, and they have a pulse on the customer. This means you also need people in the role who have that human aptitude; this role IMO is less about being able to 'manage' (which many CSM teams still seem to judge themselves on) and more about 'connecting'. When I was a CSM, I had a book of 150 accounts, which was insanely high by industry standards. There was no way I could keep across all of them, but I could at least still extrapolate the spirit and pulse of what they were feeling, and feed that back into my company. That (and the rest of the CSM team) helped our company stay at about ~98% true renewal rate, which was an insanely high number.

ThatNewAE

Big Shot

Account Executive - Mid enterprise

My company CSM team is haywire. God alone knows what they do, and why.
For starters - I think your team lacks:

- Ownership of accounts
- No penalty if account churn, so there's no 'incentive' to work on the acc
- A proper set process and guidelines

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

Account Executive

I've never worked with well run CSM team so my words probably wouldn't be too kind.

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OhYouRichRich

Talk to me about your work with Customer Success Managers.

26 comments

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