By Kristen Hayer
You got into Customer Success because you liked assisting customers, because you enjoyed teaching new technology, or because you got immense satisfaction from hearing that “click” when all of the pieces of a tough implementation came together. Then you got into CS leadership because you enjoyed coaching new team members, you wanted to have more of an impact on the direction of the company, or you excelled at building cross-functional relationships. But… in 2022 your team is expected to sell, and you as the leader are expected to run the selling aspect of your CS organization. You’ve never been a salesperson. In fact, part of why you got into Customer Success in the first place is because you liked customers but didn’t want to be in sales. You love your team and company, you don’t want to quit, and you also don’t want to admit that you feel out of your depth on this initiative.
You aren’t alone.
In 2022 the majority of Customer Success teams will have a selling component to their role in the company. This might be as simple as qualifying and handing off leads, or it might be as comprehensive as handling all selling after the initial purchase. Most CS teams will do some selling to existing customers, with some sales still being handled by the Sales organization.
Companies are realizing that this division of labor, handled well, results in an overall boost to company revenue. They are also realizing that their CS team, positioned as a trusted advisor to the customer, is in the best spot to uncover and develop opportunities. Selling, in its traditional form, is a thing of the past. What companies are realizing is that what they need to be doing is enabling the buying experience. Customers are generally selling themselves through research, reviews and references. And who best to enable that experience? Customer Success.
CS leaders come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and some (including the author) do come from Sales. However, according to a study conducted by The Success League in 2020 on CS leaders and their backgrounds, only 25% have business degrees (the most common degree among Sales leaders) and only 15% have sales-related skills listed in their top 3 on LinkedIn. So, if you’re one of the roughly 75-85% of CS leaders who have no background in selling, there is a good chance that you’re going to be stuck managing a function you’ve never managed before in 2022.
What are you going to do?
Luckily, even though sales teams sometimes paint the picture that sales is a magical profession that requires a sprinkling of pixie dust, you can learn all of the skills you’ll need to successfully manage your team’s selling efforts. In fact, you are set up to succeed in a way most sales teams are not, because of all the things I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. There are 4 key areas where you should focus as you build your selling leadership skills: Designing account plans, uncovering opportunities, managing the pipeline and building CSM confidence. Let’s take a look at each:
Designing Account Plans
An account plan is exactly what it sounds like – it’s a plan for what you want to do with a specific customer. It should include details about the customer’s company (their value props, revenue streams, cost centers, etc.), which of your solutions they currently have, which of your solutions would be a good fit for them and why, a map of the key players (decision-makers, influencers), and a plan for how you’re going to approach persuading them that your solution is a good fit. This isn’t a document that you’ll share with your customer, but it is something you should share internally. If you are selling into a digital CS program you would create an account plan for a micro-segment: a group of customers with similar characteristics who would be a good fit for a specific offering.
Uncovering Opportunities
Your job as the leader is to make sure that your CSMs are uncovering all of the opportunities they can. If they are doing a great job of building relationships and proactively working with their customers, this should be pretty easy. Opportunities will organically arise during strategic conversations. If they aren’t used to looking for opportunities, you may need to do some training on where and how to look. You can also engage your Marketing team to get leads coming to you. Have them build campaigns designed to get customers interested in your offerings and feed these leads to your CSMs. Finally, you can have your data team help you look for those micro-segments I mentioned above. Are there groups of customers who are more likely to buy (maybe they are close to the top of their tier, or their usage has increased substantially)? Have your CSMs approach these customers to gauge their interest.
Managing the Pipeline
Pipeline management is both an art and a science. The science part is that you need to make sure all of your CSMs are tracking all of their opportunities (ideally as early as possible) and updating them regularly in a CRM or CS platform. This should be part of your one-on-one meetings every week, and you should feel comfortable asking very direct questions about where customers sit in the pipeline and why they haven’t been updated. The art comes in knowing which of your CSMs are overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. You’ll find that you have that one CSM who thinks everything will close tomorrow (and it never does) and that you have another CSM who wants to wait until the deal is basically inked before adding it to the pipeline report. You’ll need to manage both of these personalities toward the middle – a reasonably accurate pipeline that you can confidently review with your leadership team on a weekly or monthly basis.
Building CSM Confidence
The final skill you’ll need to develop is building your team’s confidence, especially if they have never sold anything before. There are a lot of terrible salespeople in the world, who unfortunately have soured a lot of people on the discipline of sales. However, if you remember what I said at the beginning: Sales is a thing of the past. Now, what great companies do is enable the buying experience. Your CSMs persuade customers to do things all the time. They get them to go through implementation, talk them into adopting more of your solution, and walk them off ledges when they want to leave you. Selling isn’t really any different. It’s just understanding a problem that needs to be solved, and helping the customer see why solving that problem is in their best interest. Specific skills you should develop on your team are engaging executives, asking great questions, handling objections and negotiations and managing their pipeline. These are all skills that can be learned, and having a selling tool kit will boost their confidence.
How can you learn more?
There are 3 great books that I would recommend for learning more about the discipline of selling. First, The New Strategic Selling by Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman was first published in 1995 and features an established consultative selling approach with more details on account plans. It is on its second revision and holds up. Second, The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson was published in 2011 and features a comprehensive approach to creating opportunities by challenging customers to grow. Finally, SPIN Selling (awful title, solid methodology backed by research) by Neil Rackham outlines a framework for asking questions that help customers decide that change is in their best interest.
Finally, I would encourage you in your efforts to lead your CSM team to sell. Being a revenue-generating team provides benefits that you will never get as a cost center. You’ll have access to staff and resources that you wouldn’t have if you stayed on the services side of CS. If you need to build a business case for tools or programs, you’ll have revenue to back up your request. It is also incredibly rewarding to see your team receive tangible recognition for their efforts in the form of higher compensation and company accolades. By building your skills in these four areas, you’ll be the right leader for your team as you transition into the bright future of selling.
The Success League is a customer success consulting and training firm. Our CSM Certification Program includes courses like Managing the Selling Cycle, Managing Your Portfolio, and Business Strategy for CSMs. Visit TheSuccessLeague.io for our full list of offerings.
Kristen Hayer - Kristen believes that customer success is the key to driving renewal and expansion revenue, and delivering exceptional customer experiences that produce referrals. Over the past 20 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with growth-stage tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 2 podcasts about the field: Transforming Experiences in Customer Success (formerly Strikedeck Radio) and Reading for Success. Kristen serves on the board of the Customer Success Leadership Network and the board of the Customer Success program at the University of San Francisco. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.