Help! Strategies for Value and Sales Alignment

Kevin
Kevin Posts: 2 Newcomer
Photogenic
in CS Org Conversations

Hi everyone! I’m new to the GGR site and looking forward to sharing ideas.

I have one question to kick things off. I’ve been at my current company for 5 years, and we have a revolving door of General Managers. Our current GM is clueless about what a CSM does. We have to keep defining the role of Customer Success for him, as he feels that CSMs are just note-takers. Annoying

What best practices or thoughts do you have on how to continually demonstrate the value of a CS team?

I’d love to hear your insights on how to align Customer Success with Sales. What strategies do you recommend for setting the right coverage model to support sales?

I appreciate any and all insights. I feel I’ve done it all and would love to brainstorm with others. Thanks!

Comments

  • Ed Powers
    Ed Powers Member Posts: 189 Expert
    Fourth Anniversary Photogenic 10 Comments 25 Likes

    Hey @Kevin —

    I suggest you start with what your new GM cares about: revenue and cost impact. Frame the team's contributions in terms of increasing the likelihood that customers will stay and buy more. Improving the odds by even a small percentage typically pays for the entire team, makes a substantial margin contribution, and generates attractive ROI—even without counting upsells or cross-sells.

    You might want take a look at an excerpt from one of the modules in my self-paced Udemy course, Advanced Customer Success, that describes how to make a simple, intuitive business case. It gives some top-down guidance for CSM coverage as well. I can send you the spreadsheet if you wish. If your environment is tiered or you need to show your team's impact empirically with hard data, I'm happy to help with that as well.

    Ed Powers

  • Anna Alley
    Anna Alley Member, CS Leader Posts: 71 Expert
    Fourth Anniversary Photogenic 10 Comments Combo Breaker

    Agreed with Ed. You need to be able to categorically show the value of your CSM team with clear metrics, so it doesn't matter who the individual is. Tie specific activities to their revenue impact, whether it's improved renewal rates, increased transactional volume, lower volume of cases and escalations, etc. You can also look at tangible activities like collection of testimonials, positive reviews, etc. as well. These are a bit more indirect, but are something sales and marketing teams can really leverage for new sales.

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