From Adoption to Growth: A Leader's Guide to Customer Success
The imperative focus of this podcast episode is the transition of customer success from a mere retention strategy to a robust growth mandate. As we delve into the intricacies of this shift, we will explore how customer success leaders must not only declare the necessity for growth but also actively cultivate the means by which their teams can achieve it. It is evident that many leaders, while recognizing the importance of upselling and influencing renewals, often neglect to provide their teams with clear methodologies. This episode aims to furnish practical strategies that empower customer success teams to navigate this transformation effectively. By implementing defined visions, equipping teams with essential skills, and establishing clear organizational structures, we can ensure that customer success becomes a shared mindset that permeates every facet of the organization, ultimately fostering a culture of collaborative growth.
In recounting personal experiences, I share insights gleaned from leading a customer success organization through a similar transition. Highlighting the critical need for foundational clarity and structured frameworks, the discussion underscores the importance of aligning roles, setting measurable goals, and fostering an environment conducive to collaborative growth. The narrative further emphasizes that effective leadership is not merely about imposing demands but about cultivating a shared vision and empowering teams with the necessary skills and resources to succeed.
To facilitate this transformation, I propose three pivotal levers that customer success leaders can utilize to initiate a successful shift towards growth. The first lever entails defining a clear vision of what growth signifies for the organization, ensuring that all team members possess a comprehensive understanding of the metrics at play. The second lever focuses on skill development, advocating for the enablement of team members to engage in meaningful value-driven conversations. Finally, the third lever emphasizes the importance of structural clarity, ensuring that roles and responsibilities within the organization are well-defined and aligned with overarching growth objectives. By implementing these strategies, leaders can effectively navigate the complexities of customer success in this new era.
Transcript
Welcome to CS Shift, the podcast that goes beyond retention with strategists for customer success leaders navigating the new era.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Naldido Su, customer success executive with over a decade of experience helping enterprise organizations scale with purpose and passionate advocate for growth that is both measurable and human.
Speaker A:Having delivered more than 120% net retention return and millions in recurring revenue, my objective with this podcast is to help customer success leaders like you and me transform their organizations from adoption to growth without burning out their teams in the process.
Speaker A:On this show we cut through the noise and focus on what actually works.
Speaker A:How to lead your customer success team from adoption to expansion, how to drive net revenue retention and how to equip your people and yourself using frameworks, mindset, hard won lessons and technology to thrive through it all.
Speaker A:Because the shift is happening, will you lead it or break it?
Speaker A:Let's dive into today's episode.
Speaker A:You've heard it.
Speaker A:The new mandates for customer success drive growth, not just retain customers, grow accounts, expand value and boost net retention.
Speaker A:But here is what I see in many companies today by talking with some leaders or CSM or with what I've even seen when I've been hired to lead the shift in different companies.
Speaker A:Leaders declare the shift but don't necessarily lead it.
Speaker A:They tell their teams, you need to upsell more, you need to talk to execs, you need to influence renewals.
Speaker A:But no one defines the how.
Speaker A:The CS team is left scrambling trying to figure it out while being pressed for numbers they've never been trained or empowered to achieve.
Speaker A:Sounds familiar.
Speaker A:Well, if you feel well, Nandi, I've been this type of leader.
Speaker A:That's okay.
Speaker A:The goal is not to feel guilty, but the goal of this episode is really to share with you some practical steps that can change the story.
Speaker A:Before I go into some practical steps to start leading the shift, I want to share a little story with you.
Speaker A:When I first led a customer success organization going through this exact shift three, four years ago, I was told to drive revenue.
Speaker A:However, nothing was defined for customer success and my probation was at risk because at that time I decided to look at the foundations and to define, you know, some structure, ways to work looking at, you know, the portfolios, defining some segments and they're creating the enablement of the CS team.
Speaker A:And my senior leadership was telling me, well, we don't see your impact on the business.
Speaker A:And I understand, you know, why.
Speaker A:As a leader, maybe, you know, you just discovered the new objective driving growth.
Speaker A:You don't necessarily have time.
Speaker A:So that's why you go buy the KPIs and ask your teams to figure it out alone.
Speaker A:Now I was able to maintain that.
Speaker A:I believed that, you know, I needed this time.
Speaker A:I needed the first three months to focus on building clarity, aligning roles, creating enablement programs, setting shared goals with sales and product.
Speaker A:Because we had many frictions with the sales team at that time, many frictions in the onboarding team at that time.
Speaker A:And then when alignment was made, we started to see momentum and the customer success team was feeling very, very confident.
Speaker A:So I do believe that it's not about working harder or putting demands on the teams.
Speaker A:It's really about working together.
Speaker A:We don't necessarily need to know everything as a leader, but we can create the atmosphere, we can create the conversations in order to define, you know, how we're going to tackle the new mandate.
Speaker A:Now let me share with you three levers to lead the shift.
Speaker A:If you're a customer success leader today, here is where you can start.
Speaker A:Number one vision.
Speaker A:Define what growth actually means for your customer success org.
Speaker A:Is it net revenue retention?
Speaker A:Is it a specific revenue number the team needs to hit?
Speaker A:Is it cross sell revenue?
Speaker A:Is it a percentage of accounts expanding annually?
Speaker A:Make it very clear, measurable and shared.
Speaker A:This should be down understood and very clear because the team should know from where they're starting from how things are being calculated because we can manage what we can measure.
Speaker A:Number two is about the skills.
Speaker A:We as CS leaders we cannot expect our CSMs to sell value if they've never been taught how it's our role to enable them to on objection.
Speaker A:Handling value based conversations, navigating procurement and exec levels dialogues.
Speaker A:And if you work in a company where you know there is not necessarily an enablement team, well, you can work with your sales partner for instance in order to get, you know, some knowledge and learnings from them.
Speaker A:Work with your teams as well and define, you know, some first steps.
Speaker A:Look at those who are really doing well in the field and work with them.
Speaker A:There are many ways to do that.
Speaker A:But start somewhere with something they can lean on and they can start with in order to feel that they're getting supported.
Speaker A:Number three is structure.
Speaker A:It's important to have the right org design and incentives.
Speaker A:And when I talk about structure, you know, questions like our roles being very clear between sales and customer success.
Speaker A:There are many frictions that can happen when we don't necessarily know who own renewals, who own expansions, who own adoption, who is being made accountable for it, who is being measured on because when these things are not very clarified.
Speaker A:It's a problem.
Speaker A:And the customer at the end of the day will feel that and not feel supported in my turn.
Speaker A:And also thinking about compensation, is compensation aligned with the growth KPIs?
Speaker A:If we expect CSM for instance, to uncover potential upsells.
Speaker A:But you know, when those upsells are being contracted and they don't get any incentive on that, we won't necessarily see a lot of upsells being shared with the sales team.
Speaker A:So nothing should be lit.
Speaker A:Vague.
Speaker A:I understand that sometimes there are gray areas and that's okay, you know, because we, we improve what we start working on.
Speaker A:Structure is very important.
Speaker A:I want to say again, because it also helps to see that customer success is not only a department, it's a mindset.
Speaker A:And it's a mindset that should be shared with every business unit in the company, whether it's billing, its product, its sales, its operations.
Speaker A:Because if our customers are interacting with these teams and, and feel like think things are not done in a way that they feel supported and they feel the value, they're getting the value, you know, that will create issues when renewal, the renewals will come.
Speaker A:So by having the structure and by sharing, you know, those wins together, well, everybody feels part of the story.
Speaker A:And you know, at the end of the day not only the CSM teams wins, but everybody wins in it.
Speaker A:So some quick wins for this quarter.
Speaker A:Well, two actually.
Speaker A:Concretely, while you might do or what you can do, this is just examples.
Speaker A:Audit.
Speaker A:Ask your team to audit their current portfolio.
Speaker A:This is an exercise I always do when I join a company is to do the audit for them to be able to see where are the customers, where they see growth, where are the customers, where they see risk.
Speaker A:The customer where they don't know anything.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's okay.
Speaker A:And the customer where, you know, it's okay.
Speaker A:They can run with the flow and with these different type of groups, then you know, it's time to define how they're going to go about them, you know, in the quarter and where they need your help or the help of their managers so that a plan can be defined and then execution becomes very clear.
Speaker A:Number two, run a 60 minute, 90 minute workshop on value conversations.
Speaker A:This is very important to propose to your team a place where they can share what they encounter with their customers and how they can have those conversations.
Speaker A:This is a place where they can, you know, share their wins.
Speaker A:They can share some conversations that went very well and they can share some conversations that went not very well and then everybody can learn from it and then you can define also a playbook on those value conversations.
Speaker A:And if someone internally have already worked on that, you know this is a place where they can practice it before going in front of the customer.
Speaker A:I really believe that enablement beats expectation.
Speaker A:So again, these quick wins will be a way to tell your team that you are showing them how to grow their accounts.
Speaker A:So the shift is on.
Speaker A:Start where you stand and lead that growth.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening.
Speaker A:In our next episode we will talk about from pressure to performance, where to start as a CS leader.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening to this show.
Speaker A:Remember, the new mandate for customer success is driving growth.
Speaker A:And growth does not happen in isolation.
Speaker A:It's driven by strategic and operational leadership.
Speaker A:Subscribe and share this episode with an overseas leader, Ray ready to shift their strategy?
Speaker A:I'm Nendidosu and this is CS Shift.
