The Path to Success in Customer Success Management

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, deliver more value for your customers, and turn it into revenue for your company every week.

Want to show your leadership your true potential? Check out these resources 👇️ 

• The Customer Retention Blueprint

• Raising the Bar - Enterprise CSM Guide 

• Plugging the Hole - Churn Guide 

• Peeling the Onion - Customer Problem Discovery Guide 

• The CSM Operating System for Customer-Value Led Growth

Last week, I wrote about the unpleasant truth. That the reason why the CSM job is so hard is not (only) because of someone else.

It’s the result of following practices (mostly) invented by CSP software vendors that match the design of their product (like measuring what’s easy and not what matters).

Practices that are built on wishful thinking and oversimplifications instead of customer needs and behavior.

If you want to see a major shift in your results and how you are perceived by your leadership you need to make a 180° turn.

You need to replace

and forge it into a repeatable system that creates accurate and repeatable results (that’s also getting you out of the reactive hamsterwheel).

In today’s episode we will start with the customer discovery and customer goals in particular.

The Customer Discovery

Your customer engagement does not start with the onboarding. It starts with a thorough customer discovery. If you don’t understand your customers’ needs your only choices are trial-and-error or one-size-fits-all. Your customers will not submit to either of them.

You are receiving a hand-off from sales or a CSM entry? It’s not the holy grail (as many CSMs unfortunately think) because it does not go deep enough for your work.

As it came up in almost any of my live courses and trainings: You also need to do the discovery with your legacy customers. Ditch the don’t-touch-if-it-ain’t-broken mindset before these seemingly highly successful customers “suddenly” churn.

Yes, it feels awkward, especially when they are already here for years but you need to get over it. Send them an invitation and frame it as an initiative for better collaboration (subject line for Email). If they are pushing back, apologize for missing out on it earlier.

“Hi XY, looks like things are going well and you see substantial value from using our product. I’d like to meet with you to learn how I can help you to get even more. Are you available on A or B at 4pm?”

1. Determining Customer Goals

Let me ask you a simple question: If you don’t know what your customers want to accomplish, how could you possibly know whether they are successful? This is the first thing you need to know.

You need to have a tangible goal for an objective evaluation of your customers’ results. This is the most important question when it comes to customer renewals. Because at the end of the day, that’s what’s driving your customers’ decision.

In the easiest version, you get this information by simply asking: “What are you trying to accomplish with our product?”. If you already have that information the next step is to evaluate your customers’ goals 👇️ 

Note: This is also where you are either setting, confirming or correcting your customer’ expectations.

Sometimes customers simply don’t get what your product is doing. Thanks to companies keeping value propositions so vague because they believe narrowing it down will cost them potential clients.

If you can’t deliver what your customers care about there are only two potential outcomes - you can “resell” them on something that’s equally desirable or you part ways with them. Which is still better than spending a lot of time fighting a lost cause.

There are customer goals that are outright unrealistic. If you are selling sales software your product will not allow your customers to jump from 2% to 10% conversion rates by itself.

Other customer goals are unrealistic based on deeper insights about the company. Going from 2% to more reasonable 4% can be off-limits for a particular company. Like when they are changing their sales leader every year, there’s a high AE turnover, etc.

What both have in common is that you need to set them straight. In the first scenario, you may share actual customer results that give them a reality check of what’s possible and what’s not.

In the second scenario, you need to put things in perspective. “Given what you’ve told me about your sales organization, it’s unlikely that you can achieve your goal. Here’s what I believe is possible in your situation …”

Ok, and what if customers don’t know what they want to accomplish? Or if they are not able to articulate it? Then it’s becoming your job to help them. Yes, it can be a challenge but it’s an even bigger opportunity.

Because you can take the first step of becoming a trusted advisor with your first contact. Help your customers to understand themselve better. Make suggestions based on what their peers are doing or based on their specific situation.

Tired of putting out fires all day while being overlooked by your leadership?