Commercial responsibilities for Customer Success/Relationship

Lisa Pratt

Hello - We are in the process of evolving our customer relationship role to remove the commercial (cross sell/upsell and renewal) responsibilities.  The thinking is that this allows for more time for the relationship manager to be focused on helping customers achieve value with their existing solutions.  I am curious if others include commercial responsibilities in the customer relationship role or not.  Thanks.
Lisa

Andrew Marks

Lisa,

Personally, I'm a fan of separating the two. CSM's should be focused on value creation and delivery. When commercial terms and negotiation enter the mix, you risk damaging the "trusted advisor" relationship that you're trying to build and maintain with your customer (are you really being a 'trusted advisor' or are you 'selling' to me because you have a number to hit?). The value of maintaining the trusted advisor relationship is so much more important. If the CSM's are doing their job correctly, it should make the commercial aspects of the transaction that much easier.

But the responses are likely to be all over the map. It could be that CSM's own the commercials because a company is too early stage to have a separate 'Account Management' or 'Renewals' team in place to handle the transactions. It could be because of the organizational culture. It could be that the nature of the pricing model is such that 'negotiations' don't really happen because pricing is pretty cut-and-dry. 

My advice to you is to make your decision based on what you believe is best for your customers and your CS team. 

My two cents.

Andrew