Question

Customer Success - Value realisation only or commercial to?

  • 14 October 2022
  • 9 replies
  • 60 views
SeanOcall

Hi All,

I’m interested to understand if anyone has switched from a CS team owning Renewals & Expansion to a singular Value\ROI focus and the decision factors that led to this change? I’d also love to know more about what opportunities you faced along the way, specifically in managing the perception of a non commercial team becoming just a cost centre (in the negative term).

For transparency I’m just trying to understand the reasons for and against as a thought exercise with my peer group.

Thanks in Advance!

Sean

9 replies

anirbandutta
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Moving it under the CS discussions area and looping in @cchung and @kiranpanigrahi 

It's an opportunity for engagement
matthew_lind
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Welcome to the community, @SeanOcall 

Your question reminded me of a recent LinkedIn post from Beth Yehaskel, who covers some of this ground. Granted, she’s taking a point of view generally opposite yours; she advocates for moving CS closer to the selling motion. That said, she covers a lot of the pros and cons you seek in your thought exercise.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/beth-yehaskel-4b71a_for-a-long-time-the-prevailing-thought-in-activity-6980576887379042305-ez1C?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Making people their best....currently disguised as a CS Ops Architect. How can I contribute to your success?
SeanOcall

@matthew_lind Thank you so much for the steer towards that post, it’s an interesting conversation that seems to be more split my personal opinion and maybe company dynamics more then efficacy. 🤔

SeanOcall

@matthew_lind Thank you so much for the steer towards that post, it’s an interesting conversation that seems to be more split my personal opinion and maybe company dynamics more then efficacy. 🤔

*split by personal opinion 

DougCaviness
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@SeanOcall, thanks for your question. Could you please share more what it means for your CSMs having a “singular Value / ROI” focus” and how this works in conjunction with the other teams contributing to this metric? -- Doug

anirbandutta
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@jean.nairon for his vast experience leading this function

It's an opportunity for engagement
SeanOcall

@SeanOcall, thanks for your question. Could you please share more what it means for your CSMs having a “singular Value / ROI” focus” and how this works in conjunction with the other teams contributing to this metric? -- Doug

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the engagement, I’d be happy to expand.
So I’m battling with my own internal monologue - Should CS be purely discovering ROI, defining VO’s and ensuring these are realised for customer or if they should also be leading commercial renewal activities and even expansion opportunities. Account Revenue/Segmentation would inherently alter this mix but in the higher SMB space I see pros and cons to both sides.
 

I’d love to connect with anyone that has previous had a commercial CS team and flipped to non commercial or vice vera to find out what tipped them to make the call.

 

Cheers,
Sean

 

tyler_mcnally
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@SeanOcall Nice to meet you.

 

A few resources from our journey shifting from a focus on adoption to ROI and Verified Outcomes (VOs)  - a direct statement from the decision maker of the value created by Gainsight for their company.  These are not public (but sometimes we may ask for permission).  They are incredibly useful and valuable

 

Here’s my walkthrough of our journey with Verified Outcomes and creating a true end to end value realization program that begins with sales identifying the outcomes and metrics.

https://www.gainsight.com/pulse-everywhere-2021/building-o2-lessons-learned-creating-gainsights-value-realization-program-gainsight-on-gainsight/

 

I hope it’s useful - let me know what you think!

 

tyler

DougCaviness
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Userlevel 3

@tyler_mcnally, thanks for sharing the presentation on Verified Outcomes, which makes a lot of sense to me.

@SeanOcall, as you explore perspectives it would be interesting to hear back on your view on if/how this impacts how CS reps should be compensated. I think I recall seeing something from the TSIA in roughly the last year that cautioned companies to do this carefully and provided guidance not to make greater than 25% of total target CSM comp be tied to NRR (or other sales metric), or otherwise they would start behaving more like sales people and less like a CSM. 

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