Customer Success Through An Entrepreneur’s Lens

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.

Building a Relationship with Sales

By Kristen Hayer

The ability to build strong cross-function relationships is an important skill in any field, but in the discipline of customer success, it is critical. Customer success is positioned in the middle of most organizations and needs to interact with almost every other team in the company in order to provide an amazing customer experience. From marketing and sales, to product and engineering, developing strong relationships with other groups will optimize internal processes, drive stronger customer engagement, improve your offerings, and boost your career.

Over the next several months I’ll be writing a series of blog posts on how to build strong relationships with other teams inside your organization. I’ll be discussing the goals that drive each team, the areas where customer success intersects with the group, and practical ways to improve the relationship. Since so many customer success teams experience friction with their sales department, I thought that would be a good place to start.

What Drives Sales?

My background is in sales, so I have a tremendous amount of respect for the work and effort it takes to bring in a new customer. Sales is typically responsible for taking leads and turning them into prospects, and then turning those prospects into new customers. A sales cycle (the length of time it takes for a sales rep to turn a lead into a customer) can be as short as a few days or as long as a few years. Throughout the process, sales reps are responsible for maintaining and reporting on their pipeline (the list of prospects they are working with). This helps company leadership plan for growth.

In most organizations, the effectiveness of the sales team is measured by a few factors. First, they are measured on the length of the sales cycle. Shorter is better because the less time that a salesperson spends on one deal, the more time they have to work on other opportunities. Second, they are evaluated on their close ratio. This is the ratio of deals won to the total number of deals in the pipeline. The higher the close-ratio, the better. Finally, they are measured by the number of new customers they bring in and the revenue generated. Salespeople are typically measured individually, rather than as a group, and have a large percentage of their total income tied to their success through a commission plan. 

Sales is the team that is always held accountable for hard numbers, and there is a lot of pressure that goes along with the role. If a salesperson has a bad month or quarter, they not only lose part of their compensation, but their job may be at risk.

Where Do Sales and Success Intersect?

Even though the role of a salesperson is very different from that of a success professional, there is common ground. First, customer success can provide access to customers who are willing to serve as references, and ensure that those customers are receiving value from the solution. This is a huge help to the sales team, especially if the product is a significant purchase. However, providing references is also useful for the customer success team: If a customer is willing to recommend your solution to a colleague, you can generally consider them a healthy customer. 

Next, both teams benefit from setting the right expectations for what will happen once the prospect becomes a customer. Nobody wants to lose a customer right at the beginning of the relationship. Often, there are terms called “claw-back” clauses in sales commission plans that take back any commission that was earned if a customer leaves. In addition, it is really disheartening for a salesperson to find out that a customer they worked so hard to close ended up leaving. Customer success benefits from correct expectations because they help get new customers off to a good start, and simplify the process of onboarding and building the new relationship.

Finally, sales and customer success share a connection to each customer’s desired business outcomes. Sales uses this information to identify messages and features that will resonate with a particular prospect, which helps them move toward an agreement. Customer success needs to understand the reasons the customer purchased the solution so that they can set goals to achieve the customer’s desired outcomes and build a success plan.

Building Strong Relationships

Create a References Tracking System – Most sales teams already use a CRM system, and if you can build something into the sales team’s tool that tags a contact as a reference, it will make things easy. Also consider the process you want the reps to go through. Should they look up references on their own, or do you want them to check with the CSM before they provide a customer’s contact information to a prospect? Plan a system that works for both teams.

Share Information on Customer Expectations and Results - Ask sales to document and share the reasons that a customer purchased your solution. Let the sales team know that you’ll be using this information to set goals with the new customers. In return, offer to share the results your customers are seeing from the solution with your sales reps. These success stories are incredibly useful during the sales process and can help prospects understand the value of your solution.

Clearly Define Roles and Responsibilities - If you are in a situation where your sales team is selling to existing customers, get together and discuss the roles and responsibilities of each group. While it is important to consider processes from an internal efficiency standpoint, also consider the customer journey you’re creating. If, from a customer’s perspective, things look choppy, discuss changes that will make the journey great.

If you’ve been struggling with the relationship between sales and customer success, try one of these ideas, and then grow from there. Keep in mind that you can’t just expect another team to know what you need – you have to ask. It also helps to offer something useful in return. Good luck!

Want to help your team understand and work with sales more effectively? The Success League is a consulting firm that offers a CSM Certification Training Program that includes selling-focused classes like Uncovering Opportunities and Managing a Selling Cycle. For more information on these classes and workshops, please visit 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.

The Best Account Plans Start in Sales

By Ashley Hall

It’s me again! Here to be your customer success conscience, reminding you how and why growth plans are a powerful and necessary tool of the trade.  

So far, you know the 5 elements that outline a strong account plan. You also have a firm grasp as to why they’re important as well has how they support your role and also your colleagues. Now I’d like to discuss how you can get account plans going before your first meeting with the client.

My most impactful account plans have greater context from our sales team on what was important to the client at the time of purchase and what their long terms goals were. More importantly they also include relationship details regarding the stakeholders and their purchasing team.

This information is amazing to have organized access to. Why? It’s a great snapshot of their challenges at the time, their main goals at a time when they were evaluating solutions, and a glimpse into their excitement about your product upon purchase.  This intel empowers you as a relationship manager from day one to have full context into their lifecycle with your product and allows you to drive the strategic relationship forward.

There are a number of ways you can kick off the account plan process in sales. In my current role, we pull certain fields from a won opportunity in the CRM into an object both in the CRM and into our account plan document in a collaborative sheet. With a minor investment in development and CRM magic you can be pulling the key data points important to your account plan automatically.

If this doesn’t sound like a feasible solution for your team, I suggest getting started with form submittals (Google Forms are super easy to set up!) or hand off meetings where the salesperson shares the story verbally. Regardless of the method, set up a standard set of 5-10 key points you need from the sales team regarding this opportunity and record it in a place that is accessible company-wide.

What should you be collecting? Here are some ideas on what to start collecting in the sales process.

Client industry

Previous solution your product is now replacing

Summary of the client’s business model

Top challenges the need to solve for now

Long term goals

Summary of their current tech stack or tools

Planned growth or opportunities for cross/up-selling

Special contract terms or agreements out of the ordinary

Immediate action items

Customer success and partnership is a team sport! While the success team may own the retention and expansion goals, every department participates in customer success. Building an open and communicative relationship between success and sales ensures that the client wins every time but also your customer-facing teams.

Curious about learning more on how sales and customer success can work together as a team in your organization? The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers a CSM Certification Program that includes selling-focused classes like Uncovering Opportunities and Managing a Selling Cycle. For more information on these classes and workshops, please visit TheSuccessLeague.io

Ashley Hall - Ashley loves to lead account management and success teams; from training newbies to building processes out of chaos. Ashley is one of the founding advisors to The Success League, and serves as a regular instructor for the company's CSM Training Program. She is a senior account manager for Copper, and brings her work experiences to her articles and classes. Ashley holds a BA from the University of Colorado, lives in San Francisco, and and enjoys global travel.