CSM Led or Sales Led Account Management

Peter Lyon

Looking to speak to VP's or Head of CS that have collaborated with Sales to restructure their Account Management Strategies. For example, we want to define with more clarity the role of CS, Expand Sales and Renewals across different segments of our customer base. Should our strategic accounts be more Sales Led supported by CS ? Should our Low Touch/small to Medium be CSM Led but supported by Expand Sales....

Be great to speak to someone who has a balanced view (i.e. not welded to one position but can see merits / demerits in different account management strategies).

Jay Nathan

Following this discussion. 

 

Also here's an article that Boaz Maor and I just published with some data on how folks are thinking about this. We're also gathering more data for those interested in participating in the survey (linked in the article). 

https://customerimperative.com/who-should-own-renewals-and-upsells-sales-or-customer-success-managers-csm/

Also another thread on this topic: https://community.customerimperative.com/post/5eab2bc7441e28151756178a

Peter Lyon

Fantastic  - Thanks Jay

Stacie Ward

Hi Peter - How we are currently handling it is evolving a bit with COVID-19 impacting our Sales and CSM teams.  In general, since we pay both CSMs and Sales on expansion we are fortunate to have channel neutrality.   Enterprise expansions are led more by Sales and Small-to-Medium by CSM with assist from Sales.   

However, lately, we have noticed more existing customers are evaluating other solutions in an effort to consolidate and potentially save costs.  CSMs are generally less comfortable with these situations than Sales reps.  Sales has become more engaged in our mid-sized expansions and "saves".  

In prior roles, we kept things very separate.  Happy to discuss live as well.  

 

Stacie

Jay Nathan

I just finished up an interim CS role at a company with large enterprise customers and here's how we did it. There were effectively multiple business units, and once we won that business, the CSM became responsible for driving the relationship in that unit while the Sales team owned the expansion opportunities in other units. CSM + AM collaborated very closely and were both incentivized to retain and grow the accounts. 

I think as the customer size gets larger, this structure also makes sense for current business with a customer vs. new opportunities with a customer. And on the SMB end of the spectrum Customer Success is responsible for all of it - with a stronger emphasis on the commercial aspects of the relationship - but with programmatic support for customer success, i.e. technical support, knowledge base, 1:many training, etc.. 

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

To me, it comes back to managing time. What is sales bandwidth already? If they are too busy, off load some of the smaller things to make room for them. If they are not too busy, it is effective to run CSM/AE plays where the AE pitches something, and in a seperate conversation, the CSM uses a consult conversation to uncover need.

Our AE staff is new logo focused 80% of the time, but they are allowed to keep 10 accounts that they exclusively sell to. These are typically accounts that they sold that didn't get 100% penetration yet, so there is room for growth. These are the actual accounts that the CSM is working versus an account manager in our firm.So, CS is cultivating and manufacturing need for more services or they are proving concept and enabling the customer to go from their pilot group to full implementation of the entire company.