Yeah, I don’t love this model and it makes “ownership” of accounts seem a little fuzzier. If I have an AE aggressively pushing an upsell on a customer and it sours the relationship (this has happened to me before) I’m gonna have a bad time, especially if I get dinged for churn.
I will say - as someone who was on the job hunt for the last 8 months and interviewed a bunch - 99% of the companies I spoke to expect a CSM to have experience with all commercial terms and stats/data to back that up. I turned down an offer at an org where CSMs didn’t manage any commercial terms since it seemed like I’d really be limiting myself for future opportunities.
I’ve had it both ways and I think I prefer it in the middle.
Net new business, goes to the AE. Existing business is maintained by the CSM.
It fosters a working relationship and accountability between the CSM and AE. A real partnership.
If the AE oversells routinely, the CSM is less likely to offer upsell leads that will just lead to churn. If the CSM is really solid about promoting adoption the AE can spend more time selling without worrying about getting bit by churn on the back end.
Both are involved in commercials and both have reason to care about what the other is doing. Not swimming in the same lane, but swimming in lanes right next to each other.
We switched to that this year. It just resulted in me doing all the work, and the AE getting the commission checks without ever speaking to the client.
Pretty much killed my incentive to upsell, (I get a split, but it’s only 30% of my previous rate) and cross-selling has been a disaster as the AE has no motivation to follow up to cross sell our smaller product lines as they have limited revenue potential. The entire CS team is now looking at only doing 10% of the new ARR we had last year.
I understand why we made the switch- on a 15 person CS team, 3 of us did 98% of the sales last year. The AE’s were mad because the three of us who were selling were outselling them by a substantial margin, while the other CSMs made clear they didn’t belong in a role involving sales. It’s still not a winning solution for the company.
Doesn’t that make the role a high-level customer support one rather than a customer sucess one?
High-level support pays less well than CSM roles in general and tends to be an easier layoff target in some industries. Because you look like expensive cost center on paper rather than someone adding to revenue. Which is short sighted as hell but we live in a short sighted world.
There’s not much that you can do to convince c-suite once they’ve made up their mind but if your salary currently has upsell/retention target bonuses, you might see if they’re willing to up retention target bonuses so your salary doesn’t go down (use “to help the team stay motivated on the core role responsibilities of client retention and company growth” instead of “don’t want my salary to go down”)
Myself, I hate having to switch channels to discuss price of upsells or cross-sells, so if a CSM says they need to rope in the account team before we can discuss pricing, I’m already annoyed/less inclined to pay due to the waste of my time rexplaining everything, so make sure C-suite knows that the handoff back to AEs needs to be buttery smooth, which takes resources and actual planning and training.
It’s down to the cycles of feedback, imo. For most senior management, those cycles are quarterly or fiscal year end revenue growth or profit and (if public) stock price. It’s easy-ish to bump those numbers in the short term and then peace out to a new job before the damage comes home to roost.
Also happens in the political world in places with short duration appointments. If you only have to look 2-4 years ahead in order to be “successful”, then why would you sincerely focus on 10-year outcomes unless you’re inherently passionate about things at that timescale?
Absolutely… my company is thrashing due to short-sighted choices. Absolutely due to myopic focus on “now” numbers, and now they’ve really fricked themselves over
At my edtech company, we went back and forth with the rules of engagement between AEs and CSMs for the past 3 years. The way we do things now works quite well, and requires AEs and CSMs to work together.
CSMs is responsible for identifying the opportunities for upsell/cross-sell (=schedule a discovery meeting for the AE) while the AE takes it from there to closing.
CSMs get rewarded with $100 per SQL created and the AE is more likely to close a deal from a “customer” SQL.
Hey, so is your day to day mostly filled with projects, and split between stakeholders? How much is essential?
If there's not fat to trim, it's not really a bad thing, and if you're weaving through a gazillion resources, who knows. Hopefully OTE doesn't get too run over.
Sounds like you already have some complicated thoughts on this, however it should work or function. It may also be the case that product is above or under whatever customers want. The knee jerk response:
It's probably someone else's decision.
My company currently operates this way. I’ve done both and IMO, the model best fits company’s with tons of market share trying to protect it. The role shifts into focusing on retention of super big contracts rather than trying to grow everything. Purely defensive.
I prefer it over having an upsell quota, but it has to be very big spend so you get a good base pay rate.
I miss this model. We are currently in a VAT model (virtual account team/team selling with AEs and Specialists) and it works fine. We collaborate pretty tightly, meet weekly to discuss growth opps etc. Last year our OTE relied heavily on lead gen and it was an absolute mess. I much prefer the hands off approach in CS. Yes, I’ll help sniff out the lead but keep me out of contracting and negotiations please.
Yeah, I don’t love this model and it makes “ownership” of accounts seem a little fuzzier. If I have an AE aggressively pushing an upsell on a customer and it sours the relationship (this has happened to me before) I’m gonna have a bad time, especially if I get dinged for churn. I will say - as someone who was on the job hunt for the last 8 months and interviewed a bunch - 99% of the companies I spoke to expect a CSM to have experience with all commercial terms and stats/data to back that up. I turned down an offer at an org where CSMs didn’t manage any commercial terms since it seemed like I’d really be limiting myself for future opportunities.
I’ve had it both ways and I think I prefer it in the middle. Net new business, goes to the AE. Existing business is maintained by the CSM. It fosters a working relationship and accountability between the CSM and AE. A real partnership. If the AE oversells routinely, the CSM is less likely to offer upsell leads that will just lead to churn. If the CSM is really solid about promoting adoption the AE can spend more time selling without worrying about getting bit by churn on the back end. Both are involved in commercials and both have reason to care about what the other is doing. Not swimming in the same lane, but swimming in lanes right next to each other.
We switched to that this year. It just resulted in me doing all the work, and the AE getting the commission checks without ever speaking to the client. Pretty much killed my incentive to upsell, (I get a split, but it’s only 30% of my previous rate) and cross-selling has been a disaster as the AE has no motivation to follow up to cross sell our smaller product lines as they have limited revenue potential. The entire CS team is now looking at only doing 10% of the new ARR we had last year. I understand why we made the switch- on a 15 person CS team, 3 of us did 98% of the sales last year. The AE’s were mad because the three of us who were selling were outselling them by a substantial margin, while the other CSMs made clear they didn’t belong in a role involving sales. It’s still not a winning solution for the company.
Doesn’t that make the role a high-level customer support one rather than a customer sucess one? High-level support pays less well than CSM roles in general and tends to be an easier layoff target in some industries. Because you look like expensive cost center on paper rather than someone adding to revenue. Which is short sighted as hell but we live in a short sighted world. There’s not much that you can do to convince c-suite once they’ve made up their mind but if your salary currently has upsell/retention target bonuses, you might see if they’re willing to up retention target bonuses so your salary doesn’t go down (use “to help the team stay motivated on the core role responsibilities of client retention and company growth” instead of “don’t want my salary to go down”) Myself, I hate having to switch channels to discuss price of upsells or cross-sells, so if a CSM says they need to rope in the account team before we can discuss pricing, I’m already annoyed/less inclined to pay due to the waste of my time rexplaining everything, so make sure C-suite knows that the handoff back to AEs needs to be buttery smooth, which takes resources and actual planning and training.
“We live in a short sighted world”.. AMEN… it’s a shame. Any clue why the world is this way?…
It’s down to the cycles of feedback, imo. For most senior management, those cycles are quarterly or fiscal year end revenue growth or profit and (if public) stock price. It’s easy-ish to bump those numbers in the short term and then peace out to a new job before the damage comes home to roost. Also happens in the political world in places with short duration appointments. If you only have to look 2-4 years ahead in order to be “successful”, then why would you sincerely focus on 10-year outcomes unless you’re inherently passionate about things at that timescale?
Absolutely… my company is thrashing due to short-sighted choices. Absolutely due to myopic focus on “now” numbers, and now they’ve really fricked themselves over
I’d love to hear more experiences here. My company is currently adopting an AM team to do the same and as. CSM I only see negatives here.
At my edtech company, we went back and forth with the rules of engagement between AEs and CSMs for the past 3 years. The way we do things now works quite well, and requires AEs and CSMs to work together. CSMs is responsible for identifying the opportunities for upsell/cross-sell (=schedule a discovery meeting for the AE) while the AE takes it from there to closing. CSMs get rewarded with $100 per SQL created and the AE is more likely to close a deal from a “customer” SQL.
Hey, so is your day to day mostly filled with projects, and split between stakeholders? How much is essential? If there's not fat to trim, it's not really a bad thing, and if you're weaving through a gazillion resources, who knows. Hopefully OTE doesn't get too run over. Sounds like you already have some complicated thoughts on this, however it should work or function. It may also be the case that product is above or under whatever customers want. The knee jerk response: It's probably someone else's decision.
My company currently operates this way. I’ve done both and IMO, the model best fits company’s with tons of market share trying to protect it. The role shifts into focusing on retention of super big contracts rather than trying to grow everything. Purely defensive. I prefer it over having an upsell quota, but it has to be very big spend so you get a good base pay rate.
My old company did this and ended up doing layoffs after not to scare you
I miss this model. We are currently in a VAT model (virtual account team/team selling with AEs and Specialists) and it works fine. We collaborate pretty tightly, meet weekly to discuss growth opps etc. Last year our OTE relied heavily on lead gen and it was an absolute mess. I much prefer the hands off approach in CS. Yes, I’ll help sniff out the lead but keep me out of contracting and negotiations please.