Selling as a CSM

By Kristen Hayer

I have heard countless arguments against having CSMs sell to their customers. Typically, those arguments revolve around things like, “It will erode their trusted advisor status.” or “If they have a variable compensation plan that rewards sales, that’s the only thing they will focus on.” or “They aren’t trained to sell and that is a completely different skill set.” I could go on, but those seem to be the biggies. I strongly disagree. In fact, I think that CSMs who don’t sell to their customers are not fulfilling their primary role as a CSM: ensuring that a customer receives the best possible return on investment from your solution. Shocking to some of you, I know. Let me explain.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR A CSM TO SELL?

Great Customer Success Managers are continually selling. It just might not be transactional. CSMs have to sell customers on adopting the solution they purchased, they have to sell them on following best practices, they have to sell them on workarounds. Sometimes, they are also tasked with up-selling to new product levels, cross-selling to other client teams, or selling new paid features. They are often responsible for renewals, which in and of itself is a sales process. If you think of “selling” as persuasion, you start to realize that sales is an enormous part of what a CSM does, whether or not they handle financial transactions.

WHAT IS THE RIGHT SALES APPROACH FOR A CSM?

CSMs are tasked with building and managing strategic relationships with their customers. One of the most important skills that a CSM can have is the ability to take a consultative approach to conversations. This enables them to truly understand a customer’s business, which helps the CSM to tailor your solution to the outcomes a customer is looking for. Consultative selling approaches tie in very nicely with this skill, and become a natural extension of the work that the CSM is already doing to understand the customer and their needs.

With all of this in mind, I want to debunk the myths I listed above:

Myth: It will erode their trusted advisor status.

A consultative conversation about one of your offerings that ties in with a customer’s business objectives will not erode their trusted advisor status, it will enhance it. In fact, what will erode the CSMs trusted advisor status is avoiding that discussion because it is “too salesy”. If you avoid the conversation, you aren’t doing everything you can to enhance the value the customer is getting from your solution. Salespeople need to build trusted advisor relationships with customers to sell your solution in the first place, so if selling eroded that relationship, nobody would ever sell anything!

Myth: If they have a variable compensation plan that rewards sales, that’s the only thing they will focus on.

There are some very terrible compensation plans out there in the world, so I completely understand why a leader might think this. However, if you’re designing compensation plans based on the goals of your team, you’ll take into account things aside from sales that create balance. For example, if you want your CSMs to both upsell customers and renew customers, you would set performance goals around both of those items and create a balanced variable plan that rewards both objectives. Also, a metrics-based management approach helps to keep CSMs aligned with all of their goals, which keeps behavior in balance.

Myth: They aren’t trained to sell and that is a completely different skill set.

Actually, it isn’t. As I explained above, one of the core skills of a great CSM is being consultative. This is also one of the core skills of a great salesperson. The best salespeople ask strong questions to understand their prospects’ businesses and the problems that they could help to solve. This is exactly the same kind of conversation that CSMs should be having with their customers. When a CSM is consultative, selling becomes a natural extension of these conversations.

So, is there ever a situation where a CSM should not sell? I think that there are two. First, if the product is so complex that selling anything involves tons of demos and technical explaining then that isn’t a great use of the CSMs time. You could handle this by getting the CSM a sales engineer to assist, or you could have the CSM pass these opportunities over to another team. Second, if the legal paperwork involved in getting a deal done is cumbersome and involves negotiation with a purchasing department or similar red tape this is also not a great use of the CSMs time. Note that in both of these cases removing the selling function from a CSM is about preserving their time for strategic work, not about their inability to sell.

CSMs who have done a great job of building strategic relationships with their customers are in the perfect position to sell. Because of their trusted advisor status they have the understanding of a customer’s business that uniquely qualifies them to suggest products and services that will enhance the return on investment that customer is getting from your organization. If you can avoid bringing in a separate salesperson, you’ll be creating a smoother customer experience, and enhancing the relationship that your CSM has built with their customer.

The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that also offers CSM Certification. One of our popular online training series, CSM Selling, focuses on driving and retaining expansion value. Visit TheSuccessLeague.io for more on this and our other offerings.

Kristen Hayer - Kristen founded The Success League in 2015 and currently serves as the company's CEO. Over the past 25 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with growth-stage tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 3 podcasts about the field: Innovations in Leadership, CS Essentials with Gainsight, and Reading for Success. Kristen serves on the boards of the Customer Success Leadership Network, the Customer Success program at the University of San Francisco, and the Women in Leadership Program at UC Santa Barbara. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.