Markus Rentsch’s Post

Regardless of your industry, achieving growth solely from acquiring new customers is no longer a viable strategy. According to a survey by Salesforce, only 28% of sales professionals expect to hit quota in 2023. Have your sales teams been able to attain quota in 2024? If not, perhaps it's time to look at a different revenue lever..growth from within your existing customers! It costs 5x less to sell to an existing customer than a brand new customer. Long-term success and profitability needs to incorporate a customer-led strategy that considers expansion of additional product, usage, services to more departments and business units. This latest research from Bryan Brown at GTM Partners provides a fantastic framework to align your teams customer growth. If you have questions on how to operationalize expansion and growth from your existing customers, let's talk. I can help you identify and quantify the ROI of your product/service, so you can earn the right to sell more to your customers. #sales #growth #customers

Our new framework is here… 🔥 The Guide to Unlocking Customer Growth 🔥 --> How to make the Customers success a #GTM priority! Time to reframe the "retention" conversation We need new 🧡 Metrics 🧡 Frameworks 🧡 Teams (not just cs dept and csm) 🧡 Growth Drivers Is your team aligned to drive customer growth? --> Take the assessment in the guide (whole leadership team) This is the path to efficient growth! Get the full guide on GTM Partners research hub! Shout out to Nick Mehta Scott S. Gainsight for working to make CS > CSM for many years. Nows the time! #customersuccess #CSM #CS #efficientGrowth #b2b #revops #customermarketing #nrr

Spending most of their time doing reactive work is burning CSMs out. The only question is whether it happens sooner or later as the - high pressure - long hours - angry customers - low success rates - lack of purpose are a lethal combination. 95% (opinion) of CSMs are stuck in reactive work because they are following an inside-out approach. The CSMs who are - celebrating wins with customers regularly - see personal and professional growth - backed by their company’s leadership - getting paid what they are worth have flipped the script and embody customer-centricity - uncovering customer needs - tracking customer success metrics - focused on scaling outcomes - providing solutions to valuable problems - leading customers to the promised land Life's too short to spend it doing reactive CSM. PS: Here’s the way out --> https://lnkd.in/d3Mk-wt3

If CSMs are going to truly drive impact, we need: 1️⃣ More Authority: Empower CSMs to make decisions, influence product roadmaps, and push back on account managers when they focus solely on upsells. 2️⃣ More Strategy: Stop treating CSMs like a support function and start treating them like the strategic partners they’re meant to be. 3️⃣ Less Micromanagement: Trust CSMs to act in the best interest of the customer without needing constant oversight or approval. If you’re still expecting CSMs to be everything from the product expert to the renewal machine, you’re missing the point. Let’s shift the narrative. Customer Success is about value and long-term growth. Anything less is just spinning wheels. ……………………………………. First time seeing my posts? I post regularly about: ✅ Customer Success Leadership ✅ Ways to Improve CS Operations ✅ Proactive Customer Success Mindset 🔔Hit the bell to not miss a post 👩🏽🏫Want to improve your CS operations?- visit https://successguardian.in #customersuccess #saas #cco 

Customer success is not a team-specific effort - it is company wide. Each department (marketing, enablement, engineering, product, sales, etc.) can and should look inwards into the part they play, and how we can drive improvement. Kevin Chiu always has solid content, and I particularly love this post for amplifying how multi-faceted CS is. When done well, CS can truly shape and mold the future of a company from product ideation, to informing future roadmaps, to revenue growth, retention improvements, and more.

Customer Success isn't one-size-fits-all. Recognizing the unique needs of each client is where the real magic happens. From technical handholding to inspiring narratives, as CSMs, we customize our approach to ensure every client reaches their goals. #CustomerSuccess #PersonalizedApproach"

I’ve lost count of the number of CS leaders that let me know they’ve been fired for poor retention. At the same time, I can’t remember the last time a product or engineering leader was fired for the same reason. Or a CEO. Critical board-level business metrics (ARR, NRR, GRR) are not delivered solely by one person or team. A CS leader can only control what they can control. 1) They can’t control if their competitors have better products.  2) They can’t control if the market thinks their product is a nice-to-have.  3) They can’t control if their budget has been shrunk in half by the CFO and are now barely scraping by w/ headcount to implement a technical & complex product with long time-to-value. 4) They can’t control if the product is buggy and unreliable.  5) They can't control if the customer shouldn't have been sold in the first place and was outside core ICP. What can they control? ♦️ Understanding customer-required outcomes in the sales to CS handoff process and understanding how they evolve throughout the Customer Maturity Model (aka customer goals change quarterly along with where they are in your value realization journey). ♦️ Delivering on those outcomes unique to the customer persona (a BTL individual contributor has different outcomes than an ATL decision maker) ♦️ Delivering multi-channel campaigns to each customer persona and A/B testing delivery & conversion. (aka, stop sending the same cookie-cutter emails that people don’t even read) ♦️ Tracking if the plays they are running are actually working or not. ♦️ Tracking customer health in a way that aligns with forecast methodology. Real health is not solely defined by usage and NPS alone. The reality is that the feature they are using... can be used somewhere else. Usage must be explicitly correlated to the decision maker's quarterly OKR. You must be solving real business problems if you want to be 'sticky.' An important pressure test question to ask yourself: What does my customer's CFO think about the product positioning and value messaging? Are my CSMs and content/messaging programs aligned to that? If they tried today, could they replicate your value somewhere else, cheaper? If so, there is major risk here awaiting you. ♦️ Recording CSM calls and training them on a weekly basis. Ensuring CSM teams are leveling up in Command of the Message, negotiation techniques, happy ears, give/get, deep discovery, etc. ♦️ Running proper renewal inspection with rigor and process. (aka not using next steps fields that are outdated).   If the VP of CS is not doing the above, then perhaps it’s time to replace them.  If the VP of CS is doing the above.. then you don't have a CS problem. You have a business problem. #sales #customersuccess #ceo

Most CS teams aren’t let down by their customers, but by their own organizational processes - or the lack thereof. Think about it. Is your CS team battling more internal red tape than actual customer issues? That's not just inefficient; it's the actual roadmap to CSM burnout and customer churn. The story is not about the lack of effort; it's the chaos of inefficient processes that holds back the potential and talent that we so carefully hire (after the 10 interview rounds and assignments!). The fix? - Start by identifying the bottlenecks - Automate the mundane continuously - Streamline inter-team + intra-team communications - Define clear roles & responsibilities across all teams (RASCI) - Simplify. Remove processes & flows that are stale/ slow things down - Create playbooks empowering CSMs to deliver outcomes consistently - Bonus: A feedback loop where CSMs can voice pain pts. - listen, adapt, streamline Your CS team is only as strong as the weakest process. Block 1:1/ team workshop today, let's review your processes & improve before it's too late - https://lnkd.in/gjQxGq7f #CustomerSuccess #CSM #B2B #SaaS #BusinessGrowth #Leadership #Innovation #CustomerSuccessManager #CS #Efficiency #CutTheCrap #CSLeaders #Founders

CSMs, do you want to gain your leadership's favor? Here’s what you need to do: Create a report that contains a breakdown of your performance and impact. 1. Revenue saved and recovered Showcase how you turned a customer at risk around and how you got churned customers to give your product a second chance. 2. Expansion, up- and cross-sells Quantify the value of the opportunities or, if you are closing the deals yourself, the revenue you've created from your existing customers. 3. Referral revenue Word-of-mouth of any kind is driven by successful customers. If marketing is tracking revenue by channel/source collect everything that is attributable to your customers. 4. Success Rate Your mission is to help your customers increase their revenue, reduce costs, improve productivity, etc. Consequently, your performance is reflected by the % of customers that have accomplished their goals. Demonstrating the value CSM brings to the company is not that complicated. You were just doing it wrong the whole time. Your leadership does not care about product usage, health scores, or CSAT. They care about tangible results. PS: Join 6.5k+ CS professionals and sign up for my weekly newsletter if you like this post --> https://lnkd.in/dtC7MEjP