The top 5 CSM Leadership Priorities

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.

Need additional help? Check out these resources 👇️ 

• The Customer Retention Blueprint *NEW*

• Raising the Bar - Enterprise CSM Guide *NEW*

• Plugging the Hole - Churn Guide *RENEWED*

• Peeling the Onion - Customer Problem Discovery Guide *RENEWED*

• The CSM Operating System for Customer-Value Led Growth

CSM is at a crossroads. Keeping following the “traditional” path will only further make it drown in insignificance. The alternative is a hard reset that breaks with it, followed by a 180° turn.

A change of this magnitude is never easy. It’s not easy to see what needs to change. It’s even less easy to understand how to change it. All while trying to keep daily operations running as smoothly as possible.

In today’s post, I want to give CSM leaders directions through carving out the top 5 priorities they need to set for (the rest of) 2025 and beyond.

1. Upskilling the team

This is the undisputed #1 on the priority list. Customer demands have massively increased over the past 3 years. While most CSMs have not received any education and training at all.

The old playbooks are not working anymore (if they ever did). Customers don’t need someone to tell them which buttons to click. They need analysts, problem solvers, and advisors who help them unlock tangible value.

CSMs need to master 6 core areas

1. Customer Discovery

2. Success Planning

3. Customer Enablement

4. Measuring Success

5. Demonstrating Value

6. Monetizing Value

and acquire substantial industry expertise. CSM leaders either need to coach their team or get external help. And if there is no budget, they need to secure one.

2. Demonstrating the ROI of CSM

If you are still reporting NPS, Customer Health, Adoption, and Usage to your leadership, you need a full stop. These are vanity metrics that put you in the glorified support/cost center corner.

Your leadership does not care about any of them (even when they say they do). What they care about is revenue. You need to demonstrate the ROI your team has created.

• Customer renewals that happen because you enabled them to solve their problems and accomplish their goals

• Customer expansions that happen because you identified growth opportunities for your customers and showed them how they can seize them

• Customer referrals that happen because customers are deeply grateful for your team’s contributions to their success

CSM leaders need to stop playing nice. Nice is what’s getting you fired. If you are not working for a non-profit organization, your company’s goal is to make money. Plain and simple.

3. Shielding the team from outside distractions

It’s crazy how many CSMs are still buried in foreign work, and entire teams are the miscellaneous crew. As the leader, you need to put an end to this. You need to push back and say no.

If you are afraid to do it then I’m sorry - you don’t have what it takes to be a leader. And the most tragic part is that saying yes to please your leadership is backfiring. Because when the results are not there - and that's what will happen - it’s not going to save you.

Last time I read about the topic, the average tenure of CSM leaders was 18 months. So there’s actually very little to lose. However, there’s a good and a bad way to push back.

The bad way is to point out the additional workload for your team. The good way is to point out how much revenue your company is losing because your CSMs are chasing open invoices, running demos, solving support tickets, etc.

4. Cleaning up the customer portfolio

Your product is not the right fit for everybody. And not everybody who is the right fit (on the outside) for your product becomes successful. Aside from doing foreign tasks, trying to fix the wrong customers is the biggest waste of time.

Some customers don’t have the mandatory skills and knowledge to become successful. Not everything can be taught, at least not with a reasonable effort.

Other customers have the abilities and capabilities, but are self-sabotaging themselves. They are not willing to put in the effort. They change direction weekly. They don’t follow advice.

In the end, it does not matter. Both types of customers need to go - the sooner the better. Because they make you lose twice, as they will churn anyway, and the time you’ve wasted puts other customers at risk as they got less attention.

5. Eliminating redundant activities

“Deliver value with every interaction.” The golden mantra of customer success management. Most CSM teams are far away from it. Far, far away.

They are performing tasks and activities for the sake of it. Because they are considered standard practices. They never measure whether they have an actual impact.

And so their days are filled with redundant activities that keep them busy and leave less time for the things that actually matter.

They are

• Sending check-in Emails to customers that have a 0.1% response rate

• Running customer meetings that could have been an Email

• Doing 4 QBRs with senior customers that don’t need them anymore

As a CSM leader who wants to have their team run like a well-oiled machine, you need to challenge everything you are doing. And ruthlessly eliminate all tasks and activities with an insufficient impact on the effort ratio.

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