Hi, Markus here. Welcome to a new episode of the Customer-Value-Led-Growth Newsletter.
Most CSMs are still struggling to prove their impact because they have been taught the wrong version of the job.
That’s why I have built the CSM Operating System to help you grow from an invisible to an irreplaceable CSM.
You have read 1,000 LinkedIn posts. Listen to 10 podcasts every week. Attend Gainsight Pulse and other events every year. You purchased another course. Downloaded more playbooks. Saved more frameworks. Added more templates and signed up for another waitlist
And somehow, it feels like you're making progress. You’re learning, investing in yourself, and staying ahead of the curve. Except there’s one problem:
Nothing is actually changing.
Your customers don't behave differently because you listened to another podcast.
Your renewals don't improve because you saved another framework.
You are not more strategic because you downloaded another playbook.
And you don't become a better CSM because you know every trick in the book.
The problem isn't learning. The problem is what happens when collecting knowledge starts to feel like creating change.
That is the Collector’s Fallacy, and it’s a real problem in CSM.
Why it feels like progress
The Collector’s Fallacy is particularly dangerous because it doesn't feel like passiveness. Because passiveness usually means doing nothing. That's not what you're doing.
You're consuming. You're researching. You're taking notes. You're attending events. You're investing in your development. You're looking for better ways to work.
It feels productive because, in a sense, it is productive. Every new piece of information gives you something valuable: the possibility of doing something differently.
You listen to a podcast about executive conversations and realize you've been approaching them the wrong way.
You attend a keynote about value realization and leave with five ideas you want to implement.
You download a framework and think, "This could completely change how I manage my accounts."
And that feeling is real. You have learned something. But learning something and changing something are not the same thing.
That's where the trap begins. Because once you have consumed the information, your brain can give you a small sense of accomplishment. You discovered something useful. You understand the concept. You can see how it could work.
And that can create the feeling that you've already moved one step closer to becoming the CSM you want to be.
Except your customers haven't experienced any difference, and neither have your results.
The knowledge-action gap
Think about how much most CSMs already know.
You probably know that you should focus on customer outcomes rather than product activity.
You know that you should ask better questions.
You know that you should be proactive rather than constantly reactive.
You know that you should demonstrate value before the renewal conversation.
You know that you should have difficult conversations instead of avoiding them.
You know that executive engagement matters.
And that is the important distinction.
The biggest constraint for many CSMs isn't a lack of knowledge. It's the gap between what they know and what they do.
You can explain outcome-based CSM perfectly and still spend your next customer meeting talking almost exclusively about product usage.
You can know that you need to challenge customers and still avoid the uncomfortable question because you're worried about damaging the relationship.
Knowing isn't the hard part. Doing is. And doing something differently once isn't enough either.
The trap of “later”
One of the biggest enemies of change is a word that sounds completely harmless:
Later.
"I'll try that with my next customer."
"I'll go through the framework when I have more time."
"I'll implement this next quarter."
But there is always something else. An escalation, a renewal, or an urgent request. Then another piece of content appears, and the thing you saved yesterday gets buried underneath.
Eventually, you have a huge collection of things you intend to do. But your actual behavior remains remarkably consistent.
This is why the Collector’s Fallacy can be so frustrating. You can spend months actively trying to improve yourself while barely changing the way you actually work.
You don't need another intention; you need an action.
Start before you know everything
The solution isn't to stop learning. It's to recognize when you already know enough to start.
You don't need to master the perfect framework before trying a different approach with a customer.
You don't need to finish another course before changing how you run your next meeting.
You don't need to read five more articles before having the conversation you've been avoiding.
Pick one thing small enough that you can actually do it.
Maybe it's one new question in your next discovery conversation.
Maybe it's asking a customer to quantify the business outcome they're trying to achieve.
Maybe it's changing the way you prepare for your next QBR.
The point isn't to transform everything overnight. It’s to move knowledge from your head into your behavior. Because that's the moment when learning starts to matter.
Action becomes a habit
There’s another trap you need to avoid. You can take action once and still not create meaningful change.
You try the new question with one customer, and it works reasonably well. Then the following week gets busy, and you go back to your old way of working.
That's not a new behavior; it’s an experiment. Real change requires repetition. You use the question again and again.
Until you no longer have to consciously remind yourself to do it. The same applies to almost everything you want to improve as a CSM.
You don't become better at difficult conversations because you finally have one.
You become better because you have enough of them to become comfortable being uncomfortable.
You don't become better at demonstrating value because you build one business case.
You become better because you make value demonstration part of how you manage your customers.
Action creates the behavior. Repetition creates the habit. And habits are where change starts becoming reliable.
Habits become systems
The final step is turning those habits into systems because even good habits are vulnerable when your workload increases.
That's why best practices eventually need to become part of how you operate.
If asking better questions matters, build those questions into your discovery process.
If ending meetings with clear next steps matters, build that into your meeting structure.
If demonstrating value matters, create a regular process for capturing and communicating it.
The goal is to stop relying on motivation and memory. A system makes the right behavior easier to repeat.
And that's when something you learned can become part of how you actually work.
Stop collecting and start applying.
There will always be another LinkedIn post worth reading. Another podcast worth listening to. Another framework worth saving.
And that's fine. You should keep learning. But don't confuse the size of your collection with the amount of progress you've made.
The CSM with 500 saved frameworks isn't necessarily better than the CSM with five.
The CSM who has listened to every Customer Success podcast isn't necessarily more strategic than the one who has listened to a single one.
And the CSM who knows every best practice isn't necessarily delivering better outcomes than the one who has mastered a handful of them.
The difference is what happens after the learning.
That's the path from knowledge to change:
Learn → Act → Repeat → Build the system.
So the next time you find yourself saving another post, downloading another playbook, or signing up for another course, ask yourself one question:
What am I going to do differently because of this?
If you have an answer, go do it. That's how learning becomes action.
Action becomes habit. Habit becomes a system.
And the system is what makes the change permanent.