Creating a Customer Success Elevator Pitch

By Kristen Hayer

Customer success is a relatively new field, and is different from the account management, technical support or professional services fields it is often compared to. Success teams also differ from company to company in terms of scope, function and key metrics. Unfortunately, this means there is often confusion at the executive level about what customer success does and the value it brings to an organization.  As a customer success leader, a big part of your job is making sure that everyone in your company understands the role and importance of your team. This positions you to get backing for success initiatives and resources for your group.

One simple way to do this is to think like an entrepreneur and write an elevator pitch. To get started, ask yourself:

WHAT PROBLEM DOES OUR TEAM SOLVE?

Think about how things worked before customer success came onto the scene. Was churn high? Were customers frustrated with onboarding? Were new users neglected? Choose the primary problem your team solves.

HOW DO WE SOLVE IT?

What’s special about what you bring to the table as a customer success team? Are you proactive? Do you have special knowledge about your industry? Think about what sets your team apart from account management or technical support.

WHO DO WE SERVE?

Do you work with all of your company’s customers or a specific segment? Are there certain stages of the customer lifecycle you focus on? If you have a larger team, you may end up with different pitches for different groups.

HOW DO WE MEASURE OUR SUCCESS?

Think about the strategic metrics you drive or influence. Are you responsible for churn? Does your team produce revenue from cross-selling efforts? High-level metrics like churn, revenue or NPS score resonate with executives.

WHAT IS A QUANTIFIABLE EXAMPLE OF A RECENT SUCCESS?

This should answer the “What have you done for me lately?” question. Think about the wins that you’ve had over the past quarter. Good choices are major achievements with high-level metrics or high-visibility initiatives.

Once you’ve thought through the components of your pitch, pull it all together into a concise paragraph. The idea is to convey a lot of value in 30-60 seconds. A good target is 4-6 tightly crafted sentences.

SAMPLE ELEVATOR PITCH

“Our customers buy our solution for a variety of different reasons, and without someone to help them don’t always achieve the outcomes they hoped for. Customer success works proactively with our enterprise customers to define the outcomes they hope to achieve, and helps them to create concrete goals to get there. As we work with customers over the course of their lifecycle, we make sure our solution stays aligned with their goals and initiatives. Our efforts help our company retain and grow our existing customer base, and secure contacts our sales team can reference with prospects. Last quarter we provided references to our sales team that they told us helped them to close 10 deals worth $2.5 million.”

Make sure everyone on your team is prepared to give the customer success elevator pitch. You never know when they’ll be sitting next to the VP of Engineering at lunch or riding up to your office with the COO. Every interaction with your company’s executive team is a chance for your team to share the value customer success brings to your organization, and can help you secure resources for your team down the road.

The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers customer success evaluations that are a great way to see what is working well and what needs improvement. For more information on our consulting services and training certification classes, please see TheSuccessLeague.io

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: Innovations in Leadership 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.

It's Management, Not Micromanagement

By Kristen Hayer

I’m writing this in the middle of the COVID-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020. Most people in the US, and in many other countries around the world are under some sort of quarantine or “stay at home” order from their government. In the tech industry, this means that most people are working from home. Most of these at-home workers have never done so for more than a day or two at a time, and certainly not for weeks or months.

When teams are working separately, many pieces of management that come with working together in an office disappear. You can’t overhear conversations with customers and coach your team in real-time. You can’t pull your team together for an impromptu standup when you’re facing an issue. You can’t tell if someone is having a tough day from their demeanor. From a management standpoint, it can feel like you’re flying blind. This can be especially challenging for managers who haven’t implemented strong management practices in the first place.

Many newer managers confuse management with micromanagement. One of my favorite books on the topic of micromanagement (My Way or the Highway) defines it like this; “Micromanagement is when participation, collaboration and oversight interfere with performance, quality and efficiency.” Unfortunately, management (oversight that adds to performance, quality, and efficiency) often gets confused with micromanagement. To ensure that they aren’t being a micromanager, new managers often go too far in the opposite direction and end up not really managing at all.

Great management doesn’t just happen. There is a discipline and structure to managing that ensures your team performs at its peak, and sticks around. Here are my top 5 management tactics that drive results and ultimately prevent you from being seen as a micromanager.

 1. Set metrics-based goals for your team. Some companies are great at establishing goals across their organizations, but most aren’t. As a leader, you can’t wait for your company to give you goals. You need to make sure everyone on your team has concrete goals that they understand. If you’ve never built goals before, start simple. Every company has a churn or retention metric that they are trying to hit, and your finance team can tell you what that is. Break that down into individual goals for team members, and hold each team member accountable for hitting their goal. As you communicate this with your team, be sure that everyone understands what they are trying to achieve, and how you think they can go about accomplishing their goal.

2. Hold weekly one-on-ones with all direct reports. For some of you this will sound like overkill, and if you’re a new manager it may seem pushy. One-on-one meetings are where you build professional relationships with your team members, where you talk about their performance, where you coach them, and where you help them develop their careers. Once a month or every other week isn’t enough to accomplish this. A weekly one on one demonstrates your commitment to making your team members successful: the opposite of micromanagement. In The Effective Manager, Mark Horstman provides a great outline for conducting a strong one-on-one meeting.

3. Make performance and metrics transparent. Everyone on your team should understand how they are performing at any point in time. Use your CRM or CS platform to create reports and dashboards that team members can use to see how they are doing. If they have to wait for an annual performance review, they can’t correct their course in a timely manner. Talking about performance should be something that happens in every single one-on-one meeting, so that there are no surprises. This may feel awkward at first, as a new manager, but over time you’ll see that your team appreciates knowing where they stand.

4. Provide active coaching. This is often neglected once a new team member has gone through their initial training. Coaching should be an ongoing activity. Everyone has room for improvement. Side by side calls and meetings are a great way to observe how team members are tackling their daily tasks, and give you great information on how your team has implemented the program you put together. Provide feedback to your team members immediately, and of course, provide your positive impressions along with any ideas for improvement. Reserve difficult conversations that need privacy for a meeting room or your weekly one-on-one.

5. Delegate tasks to team members who are ready. If you’re doing all of the above, you’re going to be busy. Very busy. Delegating isn’t about pushing work downstream. If applied thoughtfully, delegating helps you free up your time to focus on active management and provides development opportunities for members of your team. I categorize my activities into 3 areas: things I enjoy, things I add unique value to, and things I am good at. If an activity falls into all 3 categories, I should be doing that. If it only falls into 1 or even none, that’s an activity I should be delegating. Keep a list of activities you should be delegating, and when you have a team member who is ready, give them that task.

A final tactic that I want to mention is letting poor performers go. Poor performers are the ones who will think you’re a micromanager no matter what you do, because they don’t like being held accountable for their own performance. You can’t go easy on them, because the rest of your team is watching. If you continue to let them perform poorly, your top performers will get discouraged and ultimately leave, and all you’ll be left with is poor performers. This points back to tactics 1-3 above. Measure performance and let poor performers go as soon as you know that they aren’t motivated to improve.

The reason that management sometimes feels like micromanagement has a lot to do with the manager’s intentions. If the intent is to create a high performing team, whose members achieve great things and build their careers, it won’t feel like micromanagement. If you’re reading this while we’re still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, try these tactics now and start strengthening your relationships with the members of your team while you’re all working from home. You’ll find that your team will be better prepared when they do return to the workplace, and that you’re a stronger leader as well. Stay safe and healthy, everyone!

Bonus: Kristen’s Top 5 Management Books:

1. The 12 Elements of Great Managing

2. The Effective Manager

3. Multipliers

4. Strengths-Based Leadership

5. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Looking to add to your leadership toolkit? The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers a Leadership Training program designed for Success leaders. For more information on this and our other programs and offerings, see TheSuccessLeague.io

Kristen Hayer - Kristen believes that customer success is the key to driving revenue, client retention and exceptional customer experiences. Her areas of expertise include developing success goals and metrics, designing the optimal customer journey, selecting technology, training teams, and building playbooks. Prior to founding The Success League, Kristen built and led several award-winning customer success teams. Over the past 20 years she has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with growth-stage tech companies. Kristen has her BA from Seattle Pacific University and her MBA from the University of Washington.

The Difference Between Customer Success and Account Management

By Kristen Hayer

My most recent blog post covered the differences between customer success and professional services. This week I want to zero in on account management. Sometimes the terms customer success and account management are used interchangeably, so I’ll draw a line between the two roles, discuss intersections between the two teams, and share the pros and cons of combining the roles into a single job.   

What is Account Management?

Account management started as out as a sales role and was used to describe the person who worked with a customer after they had purchased a solution. In some cases, the original salesperson would also serve as the account manager, and in other cases, it would be a new person who worked only with existing customers. It is tough to effectively split focus between closing new customers and taking care of existing customers, so the most common structure today is to have different people serve in sales and account management roles.

Account management is a commercial role, with a large part of the focus on generating new revenue from existing customers. Traditionally, account managers were mainly responsible for closing support contracts and professional services deals. With the introduction of SaaS, account managers became responsible for all opportunities after the initial sale – renewals, cross-sell, up-sell, services and contract expansions. The goals of an account management team are usually entirely sales focused and include metrics like total pipeline value, close ratio, and revenue by category.

How is Account Management Different from Success?

The best customer success professionals act a lot like account managers and vice versa, so picking apart their roles can be a little tough. By my definition, the role of a customer success professional is broader than the role of an account manager, and success is focused on demonstrating customer value rather than on driving revenue. That said, demonstrating value to a customer generates revenue in several ways. First, you should get a renewal. Second, it opens up opportunities for expansion, in a way that is very natural. Someone who understands a customer’s business is well-positioned to talk about additional products and services that will help them achieve their goals. Third, customers who are seeing value are more likely to recommend the solution to other companies.

Proving value is sometimes challenging, and definitely involves work that is broader than an account management role. Success reps uncover a customer’s objectives, set goals with customers, track results, and lead strategic discussions. Revenue is an outcome of this approach, rather than the sole focus. As I mentioned above, great account managers will often take a strategic approach, acting like a customer success manager. They are going above and beyond the classic account management role.

Where is the Intersection?

Both account management and customer success teams need to understand customer objectives in order to be effective in their roles. Account managers need this information so that they understand where to best direct their selling efforts. Success managers use this information to develop goal plans that prove value to their customers.

Customer satisfaction is important to both teams as well. A positive customer experience sets up the customer to be open to selling discussions. A new product that is a great fit for the customer makes that customer more willing to participate in strategic planning sessions. The best account management and customer success teams work together to optimize the customer experience.

Product feedback is a third area where customer success and account management intersect. Customer feedback can have a profound impact on the direction of a product and company, but only when it is presented with a business case behind it. Both success and account managers have details on the customers who are asking for features, and are well-positioned to generate a solid business case for solutions that meet customer needs.

Should Account Management and Success be Combined?

I would argue that in many cases, you can smoothly combine the roles of account management and customer success into a single job. If you consider the journey from a customer’s perspective it generally makes more sense to buy something (account management role) from the person you have developed a strategic relationship with (customer success role). Likewise, a customer success rep is perfectly positioned to uncover customer needs, develop them and understand the right time to sell a solution. The main risk is that the rep will become focused on revenue, instead of on customer value as a revenue vehicle. This can be corrected through effective performance management and compensation plans.

Instead of talking about when you should combine the two roles, I’ll talk about when it makes sense to split them apart. When you have a complex selling cycle (big contracts, lengthy process) it can cut into the time that customer success needs to spend working with their customers on strategy, goal setting and measuring results. A complex sales cycle is a good reason to create an account management team focused on selling in concert with a customer success team focused on demonstrating value.

If the selling that needs to be done involves completely different relationships than the ones that the customer success rep has developed, it may make sense to have a separate team handle selling. Selling to new divisions or departments often looks more like a new sale than selling to an existing customer. A separate account management team can help keep the customer success team focused on the existing relationships.

Companies who choose to create separate account management and customer success teams should:

• Establish clear boundaries and escalation paths between the two teams

• Present both teams to customers as peers with different, but important roles

• Develop compensation and performance management programs that drive teamwork

Customer success is well-positioned to tackle the commercial components of a customer relationship, so unless your sales process is complex or you are selling to completely different contact points, consider combining the roles. Be sure to keep the focus on delivering value, which will naturally drive revenue, rather than strictly on selling. If you do opt for separate teams, take the time to clearly define both roles and develop complementary goal plans, which will create a strong alliance between the groups.

I hope you’ve found this series helpful as you consider the differences between support, professional services, account management, and success. I’ve learned that every company is a little bit different, so use the framework and my tips to create the structure that is right for your organization. Have a happy New Year!

The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers a Leadership Training program that includes classes such as Planning a Team Structure. For more information on this and our other programs and offerings, see TheSuccessLeague.io

Kristen Hayer - Kristen believes that customer success is the key to driving revenue, client retention and exceptional customer experiences. Her areas of expertise include developing success goals and metrics, designing the optimal customer journey, selecting technology, training teams, and building playbooks. Prior to founding The Success League, Kristen built and led several award-winning customer success teams. Over the past 20 years she has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with growth-stage tech companies. Kristen has her BA from Seattle Pacific University and her MBA from the University of Washington.