Why Customer Success and Sales are the Perfect Match
Let’s start with the elephant in the room here.
There’s a lot of natural tension between Customer Success (CS) and Sales teams in organizations of all sizes. I’ve been on both sides of the coin and I’ve seen it in countless other organizations, as well.
Sales brings in new clients and passes them along to CS. CS nurtures those clients and passes them back to Sales as upsell opportunities.
Seems simple right?
What if Sales isn’t fully knowledgeable on the product and sells the prospect something CS can’t execute on?
What is CS doesn’t recognize the opportunity to upsell and leaves Sales wondering why they aren’t getting any opportunities?
What if CS is pissed they don’t get any upside for recognizing upsell opportunities that Sales gets all the credit for?
There are so many ways things can go awry and a lot of it is a matter of collaboration and understanding.
That’s why it’s so important as a Sales rep to have a strong understanding of the product or a deep understanding of how the CS team operates.
Sure, you can’t necessarily share your commissions, but there’s a ton of open space to make your CSM’s life easier.
Here are just a few things you can do to build trust and a strong working relationship:
Cover the support line/channel for a week or help your CSM with a few support questions coming from clients (this will help you define common pain points you can address in demos).
Sit on a CSM’s training calls for a week and take notes for them (this will also give you an idea of upsell opportunities).
Actively work with your CSM on defining better knowledge transfer sessions (hint a better implementation means a happier client that may want to buy more from you).
Treat your CSM like a subject matter expert (another hint…they are SMEs) and bring them in on opportunities where you don’t know the answer to key questions.
If you didn’t notice, all of these activities actually HELP YOU SELL MORE. There’s a beautiful relationship between CS and Sales and it’s up to you to nurture it.
Like I said, I’ve been in both of these pairs of shoes and have had to perform both roles at the same time (early stage startup life).
Every time I’ve worked heavily with my CSMs or had strong product knowledge my quota achievement has always seemed to be well over 100%.
Try it out. It may change your life.
