The CSM Pay Gap

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

I share strategies and guides to help you become a proactive CSM who delivers more value to your customers and revenue to your company every week.

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Last week, we talked about the CSM Identity Crisis. The confusion about what your job is actually about. The exhaustion of carrying everything without a system underneath. The quiet erosion of confidence in the work you are doing.

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story. The identity crisis does not only make your job harder. It’s also making you poorer.

You are working harder than anyone else in your company. But your salary does not reflect it. At the end of the year, you sit in a performance review. Negotiating a 3% increase or none at all.

The gap between what you are worth and what you get paid is not an accident. It’s the result of working in a profession that can’t prove its impact.

In today’s episode, you’ll learn why it’s happening and how to build the leverage to get the compensation you deserve.

Looking at your colleagues from sales, it’s hard not to get envious.

Sales reps

While CSMs

and don’t get even paid half as much. The function managing the most revenue in the business is the one with the least commercial credibility.

This double standard does not exist because you are not doing valuable work. It’s because it is invisible.

A sales rep is closing a deal. That deal has a number. This number is undeniably and directly attributable to their work. They get a commission based on the close.

This is what most CSMs don’t have. The problem is not the profession itself. It’s that it reported on the wrong metrics since its inception. And did the wrong work in the process to make them look good.

You had 17 calls with your customer over the year? Cool, but what have you been talking about? A new strategy that turned into a massive performance boost? Or what buttons do customers need to click in which order?

Calls, Emails, QBRs, and on-site visits - activity and effort are not proof of impact. At least from your leadership’s perspective, and this is the one that decides the salary you can command.

The same holds for customer sentiment metrics such as NPS and CSAT. No one trusts these numbers, and research shows why. No correlation has been found between those metrics and customer revenue actions.

Besides, if the correlation existed, there’s another problem that it can’t solve. The attribution between the product, AI, and you. You need to prove that customer success and the following revenue impact happened because of your actions. Specific actions.

The CSMs getting paid what they are worth are not smarter than you. They do not work longer hours. They do not have better accounts, a better manager, or a more enlightened leadership team. They have a value story that makes their impact undeniable.

Here’s how to write yours:

It all starts with documenting the customer’s status quo before the success journey begins. You need to have

This is the “Before” in your value story. It’s determined at the start and tracked from that point forward. Without that baseline, you can’t prove that anything changed.

This is why customer discovery is not a nice-to-have. Why it’s not done with receiving the hand-off from sales containing superficial information. It is the foundation of your customer’s success. And yours.

Asking "what is the specific business outcome you are trying to achieve and how are you currently measuring it?" in the first meaningful conversation you need to have to prove your impact - to customers and your leadership.

In the next step, you build a customer success plan based on the information from the customer discovery. A roadmap that outlines all the steps from the status quo to the desired outcome. This is your strategy document.

It includes

Major tasks and inputs only. Not every click of a button needs to be documented.

Here’s an example for a CSM working for a company selling Employee Engagement Software.

Customer Retention: You provided a workshop and a strategy session on how to build a reward (incentive) system for your customers. With joint monthly revisions to optimize the system. As a result, their annual employee turnover went down from 33% to 25%. Saving the company 327k in hiring costs. The renewal became a mere formality.

At Risk Account Saved: A customer decided to go without your help. They built a reward system that their employees did not appreciate. Their annual turnover did not move. You noticed, analyzed the situation, and shared improvement measures. After implementing your suggestions, their number started moving. Preventing 75k ARR from walking out the door.

Customer Expansion: Due to your proposed strategy, customers accomplished their goal of 12 months in just 6. You identified another angle to further decrease their annual employee turnover by rebuilding career paths. 4 weeks later, they purchased the expansion that contains the required features.

The evidence must not be stored in your head. Not in call notes nobody reads. Not in a random field in your CSM. In a structured record that builds the story. Month by month and quarter to quarter. So that when the performance review arrives, the evidence is ready.

The evidence trail is not extra work. It is five minutes after every meaningful customer interaction.

Five minutes of writing down what happened, what you did, and what it was worth in language a CFO could read.

12 months of five-minute entries is the difference between a salary conversation and a salary negotiation.

With the baseline and the evidence trail, you already have the

Now you need to quantify the impact of your work in a number. A number that matters for your leadership. A revenue number. Demonstrating your impact could be done with a simple spreadsheet:

With a single number at the bottom that makes it easy for a CFO to quantify the ROI you bring for the company.

The inability to prove your impact accumulates month by month and year by year. Here’s a quick example of the costs:

Over 5 years, that’s €50,000 to €100,000 in foregone earnings. Without including the losses from the pay rises you did not get because you were not promoted. Without the commissions you deserve but did not receive.

You are underpaid. Not because you are not good enough. Not because CSM is not valuable. Not because the profession does not deserve better.

Because your work is invisible. And invisible work gets paid a minimum. The number is not fixed. It is not determined by the market, your company, or your job title.

It is determined by your ability to prove your impact in a language that matters for your leadership.

Build the evidence.

Start getting paid what you are worth 👇