Strategic Advisory Team for Expansion and Retention
Seeker 
Hi All,
I'm researching in-house Strategic Advisory teams within our organization. To be clear, these are not product advisors rather people that have worked in the industry that we sell to - i.e. customers. The reason behind this is that although we have brilliant CSMs, they are not from our customer base and therefore they can only take the "strategic conversation" so far. These in-house advisors would work alongside the CSMs doing high level workshops and staying very much on the business outcome level rather than product and features. We do with with partners that have the skills but we have now reached a stage whereby we want to build our own in-house capability.
in terms of cost recovery of such advisors, I am mindful of different approaches - Full cost recovery from fees, full cost recovery from expansion, sunken cost but assumed in moving the needle on retention upwards, etc etc .
Keen to talk to anyone that has built such a team up and any lessons learnt. In particular where such a team sits in the organization (and how did you stop Sales wanting them all the time....lol)
Thanks
Peter
I'm researching in-house Strategic Advisory teams within our organization. To be clear, these are not product advisors rather people that have worked in the industry that we sell to - i.e. customers. The reason behind this is that although we have brilliant CSMs, they are not from our customer base and therefore they can only take the "strategic conversation" so far. These in-house advisors would work alongside the CSMs doing high level workshops and staying very much on the business outcome level rather than product and features. We do with with partners that have the skills but we have now reached a stage whereby we want to build our own in-house capability.
in terms of cost recovery of such advisors, I am mindful of different approaches - Full cost recovery from fees, full cost recovery from expansion, sunken cost but assumed in moving the needle on retention upwards, etc etc .
Keen to talk to anyone that has built such a team up and any lessons learnt. In particular where such a team sits in the organization (and how did you stop Sales wanting them all the time....lol)
Thanks
Peter