Hi, Markus here. Welcome to a premium edition of the Customer-Value-Led-Growth Newsletter.

Every week, I share strategies, guides, and frameworks to help you create exceptional value for your customers and company.

If you need additional resources, check out these links:

“How can we deliver so much value that our customers will grow to 5x their initial size?”

Have you ever asked yourself this question? You are not alone, few CSMs and CS leaders ever did.

Because it does not fit with how CSM has been taught and lived in the past decade.

Instead, the more pressing questions have been about how to

and consequently, mindset drives actions, and actions drive outcomes.

So here we are and legions of CSMs are still playing by “the rules” and waiting for their leadership to get the value of Customer Success Management eventually.

If you are growing tired of it, here are 7 principles for playing to win as a CSM in a new Era:

Top-level performance does not result from mediocre practices. If you don’t know your customers’ goals, metrics, problems, processes, and progress you are setting yourself up for failure.

Every blind spot is a risk of losing customers despite pouring in substantial effort. Guessing and assuming, based on what you know, is only viable if you have exhausted all options to get accurate information.

CSM in its true form is an act of leadership. Do you know what your customers do when you are not in the (virtual) room? Never count on your customers being able to find success unless proven otherwise.

Despite your best efforts you need to ensure customers not only take but stay on the right path. Schedule follow-ups after every major point in the customer journey e.g. after completing your webinar series or training sessions.

At any given time, your customers are in one of 4 phases in their success journey:

You need to understand why they have fallen behind, failed, got to the finish line, or crushed their goals. Use this knowledge to avoid the former and unlock the latter.

It does not matter how many customer meetings you run. It does not matter how many E-mails you answer. It also does not matter how many customers watch your tutorials, download your guides, etc.

The only thing that matters is the success rate of your inputs. Dedicate yourself to building the greatest education and training experience for your customers in the universe. Measure what works, what does not, and why for ongoing improvement.

Never count on your customers to understand how much they benefit from working with you, even when they are supposed to measure it. There’s no substitute for actively demonstrating value.

Benchmark your customers’ actual vs their projected outcomes on multiple levels. Highlighting their improved business performance is great. Showing how much their lives have become better will give you the edge.

A CSQL is not a customer you want to sell more to. It’s a customer that has untapped growth potential. Solving more problems or more valuable problems. Additional use cases for other teams.

Or simply scaling their existing outcomes with additional resources. Dig into your customers’ businesses and uncover potential growth opportunities. Turn them into business cases and show your customers how they’ll benefit from an upgrade.

Make no mistake, wasting your time is the arch nemesis of your success. If customers are not willing to put in the effort or follow advice call them out. If the situation is not changing, politely ask them to leave.

Do the same for customers who are simply not the right fight. You are doing everybody a favor. If customers are doing things the wrong way let them know asap. Concealing the truth will make things worse.

Share this episode with a friend or colleague if you find it valuable 😃