By Amin Akbarpour
Over the past several months I’ve been in touch with many entrepreneurs, reading their content, and having conversations around their experiences and lessons learned. It’s become increasingly clear as I listen to and read about some of the blind spots and obstacles that they have faced, that there are numerous advantages to those who have had vast business experience before beginning their entrepreneurial journey. Surely I’ve realized that my own experience in Customer Success has been very helpful from an entrepreneurial perspective. So much so that Customer Success can be a great training ground for any aspiring entrepreneur. How?
Most employees at a company share one common job: selling. It’s everyone’s job, to varying degrees, to sell and promote the company’s mission, product, or service. In Customer Success, you’re not only selling outwardly to clients and partners, but you’re selling internally as well. This allows you to develop your selling prowess that’s not just aimed at external stakeholders. As an entrepreneur, you are also constantly selling - whether it’s to investors as you seek funding, to candidates you hope to bring on board, or to new clients and partners. Customer Success representatives regularly develop these soft skills by applying them both externally and internally as they work across departments or functions.
I’ve always felt the most successful Customer Success teams were those built around empathy and relationship building. There have been many pieces over the years (Forbes, Fast Company, etc.) highlighting the need for successful leaders to be empathetic, primarily from the point of view of internal management and Success. Given the world we live in today, it’s never been more critical to be able to embrace and support each other. Entrepreneurs who can build strong healthy relationships and remain empathetic in all situations and towards all stakeholders are the ones who tend to truly improve the world through their actions.
Given CS’s role and reach across a company, you’re given a unique opportunity in understanding the different roles, obstacles, and strategies that marketing, product, sales, finance, or other departments face and utilize. If you thought the number of hats you can put on as CS was daunting, multiply that and you have yourself an entrepreneur’s collection. CS has a leg up here given the nature of the role requires you to work cross-departmentally and to understand every stakeholder’s perspective. It’s why if you’re considering getting into entrepreneurship but don’t have the tools, capital, or wherewithal, Customer Success can be a great world in which to begin your journey.
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers a CSM Certification Program which includes classes such as Uncovering Opportunities and Cross-Functional Leadership. Visit TheSuccessLeague.io for more information on our training and consulting offerings.
Amin Akbarpour - Amin is a customer success coach and architect. With relationship-building at the core of his practice, he molds teams by instilling the necessary principles to transform them into trusted advisors. Amin is one of the founding advisors to The Success League and currently serves as an account manager for Persado. Amin is a University of San Francisco alum who now calls New York City home.