By Ejieme Eromosele
What do CSMs and CEOs have in common?
That isn’t a trick question or the start of a bad joke. CSMs and CEOs have quite a lot in common. Let’s look at the CEO role first.
We know that the title of Chief Executive Officer is an important one. It commands prestige, respect, and admiration. CEOs are an organization’s ultimate leader and number one boss. They are responsible for managing the overall operations and resources of a company to ensure that the business operates at a profit and meets its goals. Said differently, a CEO’s job is to set the vision, strategy and pull all resources to realize business growth and positive value creation.
The end goal “positive value creation” is pretty identical to the north star of great customer success - positive and desired outcomes created for our customers.
The scope of responsibility between the two roles is obviously very different, but there are many things similar about a CEO’s job and what CSMs are expected to deliver. As CSMs we don’t always get to set the strategy and vision, nor do we have great power in deploying and allocating resources. However, we’re still tasked with helping our customers achieve their goals.
This is what makes a CSMs job almost just as hard as a CEOs.
When I interview candidates I’ve been known to say that our CSM has the toughest job in our company. I truly believe this. They are individual contributors; no one reports to them but we ask a lot of them:
CSMs are vision builders. They work with customers to envision a new future where we help them achieve success.
CSMs are change agents. They come into customers at varying states of change maturity and readiness and must work to get the customer onboarded, trained, adopted and successful.
CSMs are constantly juggling competing priorities. They have to juggle priorities across many customers and internal teams.
CSMs are resource allocators. They help internal teams coordinate and resource-plan.
CSMs don’t have all the answers. They must work with different specialists and access various resources within their own company to get customers what they need.
CSMs must focus on what matters most… while not getting distracted and working through internal and external roadblocks.
Ultimately, CSMs guide toward positive outcomes by inspiring action, but not always owning the activities to be done. They lead by influence, not authority. In many ways, the CSM role sounds harder than being a CEO.
At least as CEO, everyone reports to you. You can tell people what to do and they’ll do it. CSMs must still command the same sense of urgency, inspiration, and action, but without the authority.
We should start looking at our CSMs as mini-CEOs. The scope may be smaller but the role is just as hard and just as business critical. When CSMs do well, our companies do well. We’re able to get customers successful which then inspires advocacy and more customers that look like those successful customers. This means we can run more efficient marketing, reduce CAC, and close new business faster.
While it’s important to realize the power that CSMs have, we should also be realistic about the limitations they face. Leading without authority is hard. So leading through influence is the way to fully turn on your CSM superpowers and be a more effective leader.
Here are some tips to help you lead without authority.
Build trust.
You build trust by doing what you say you will do. This means following up and following through on your word. And if you can’t or don’t, quickly take responsibility and seek to resolve open actions and opportunities.
Stay curious.
Seek to understand the world around you. Asking questions to get at a deeper why, a deeper level of understanding will help you better understand your customers and how to best help them. Internally, having a level of understanding of the other parts of the business, and how they work together, will help you have appreciation for other teams’ work and will help you build empathy towards them.
Hone your superpowers.
Continue to develop your skills and areas of strength. You don’t have to be good at everything but focusing on doing a few things really well will help you build credibility with others. Whether it’s taking amazing notes and next steps to how you tell stories with data or your ability to be positive and calm in the face of uncertainty.
Foster *real* relationships.
Get to know your customers and your colleagues beyond the surface level. In the work that we do, relationships matter and genuine relationships are gold. You’re not going to be besties with everyone but finding points of similarity and interest can help you go deeper and build more meaningful connections.
Finally, put it all together and become an “influencer”.
No, I’m not talking about a social media influencer, although you can do that too. Influence means to be able to affect an outcome or decision. This is the goal of leading without authority. Do you have the trust, credibility, and respect to have people willingly take your advice and recommendation? Do your colleagues willingly support your ideas and initiatives, putting up and committing their time to support you? These are examples of leading without authority but with influence.
It can be hard to do but it’s what CSMs are often asked to do. This is why I call them mini-CEOs.
To be clear, CSMs do not have the same job as a CEO of an organization. The scope and level of responsibility and risk are greater for CEOs. But CSMs are still asked to do some really difficult things, without the explicit authority or span of control (i.e., people reporting to them). We should revere CSMs as much as we do our CEOs.
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Ejieme Eromosele - Ejieme is a career customer advocate and advises companies on customer-led growth. As VP of Customer Success & Account Management at Quiq, she helps the world’s best brands grow awareness, increase sales and lower customer support costs through conversational AI and messaging. Prior to Quiq, she was Managing Director of Customer Experience at The New York Times and spent over 8 years in management consulting at PwC and Accenture. She has a BA in Economics and an MBA from NYU.