By Rochelle Shearlds
It's time to reset. We’ve been moving at a rapid speed and deserve a much-needed vacation. Mid-year is also an opportune time to complete a strategic review: identify ways to increase productivity, assess customer health, celebrate team wins, and make adjustments. The end of the year will be here in a blink of an eye, and it's time to explore critical actions to help achieve end-of-year goals.
I don't need to sell you on the importance of strategic thinking; Customer Success leaders understand why it is critical, but we often let what’s in front of us decide how we spend our time:
Customer Escalations
Account planning without trend analysis
Employee support and engagement
These are important, but we also need time to step away from the day-to-day and shift our focus to identifying what is going well and pivoting what is not going well.
We will explore the benefits of prioritizing productivity, customer planning, and celebrating as critical pieces to a mid-year strategic review.
Productivity
Meeting Audits: Most folks would agree that we spend too much time in meetings and not enough time executing. Mid-year is a perfect time to assess how you spent the first half of your year and how you can find time for strategic motions. A meeting audit will help you identify where you are spending your time. Once you have a complete view of your calendar, you can determine which tasks or events should be given low priority.
Delegate: After identifying which tasks or events can be delegated, consider the individuals who may be ready to take on new initiatives. Based on their skills, decide who is best equipped to take the lead. Delegating tasks to your team can be a motivational tool. Not only will it give them visibility, it will also build a sense of ownership and autonomy. When you align this exercise with performance review conversations, it is an effective development tool.
Team Audit: Similar to your overbooked calendar, your team is likely doing tasks that are not adding value to customers or the organization. The Customer Success team sometimes falls into the junk drawer trap. In the next team meeting, poll your team to understand what takes up most of their time. If anything doesn't directly tie to a metric, consider if that task sits with another team in the organization. Talk to your cross-functional counterpart and create a transition plan with as little disruption as possible.
Customer Planning
Success Plan Analysis Meeting: Customer Success Managers spend much time collaborating with customers to develop success plans that help achieve organizational objectives. Your CSMs are best equipped to provide critical insights from success plans to identify opportunities to drive additional value to customers. Collaborate with cross-functional leaders to execute those plans effectively.
Strategic Account List Review: Review your strategic account list and reprioritize it based on fresh insights. Assessing your strategic list allows opportunities to improve customer relationships, identify expansion opportunities, and pair accounts with CSMs based on skillsets and experience. Doing so will enable you to get a head start on end-of-year planning based on value potential and strategic importance.
Roadmap Review and Recommendations: After identifying customer need themes during the success plan analysis meeting, schedule some time with the Product leader to discuss the discoveries unfolded. During the conversation, provide data supporting recommendations such as current and potential adoption and revenue ROI.
Celebrate!
If budget allows, plan an offsite mid-year planning and celebration summit for the Customer Success organization. There is a risk of it being costly and less effective than we intend, but there are ways to keep costs low, like being selective of the invitee list and selecting a central destination. Allocating time to plan should be prioritized, but remember to carve out time to highlight individual and team wins. Depending on your industry, the second-half pace is typically faster than the first half, so boosting team morale is critical.
By slowing down and becoming more intentional with your calendar, how you approach customer engagement, and involving your team in strategic planning, your second half will be successful and not by accident. Godspeed.
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that also offers a comprehensive CS Leadership Certification program. Hone your leadership skills with us! For more on these and our other offerings, visit TheSuccessLeague.io
Rochelle Shearlds - With more than 20 years of experience in post-sales success, Shelly is passionate about optimizing the customer lifecycle to drive revenue growth. She is currently the Senior Director of Account Management and Customer Enablement at Medrio, a Clinical software company supporting the Pharmaceutical, Biotech, and Clinical Research sectors. Never one to shy away from a challenge, she recently joined the founding team at Success in Black, an organization committed to fostering more diverse, inclusive, and equitable growth within the Saas community.