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Hey {{first_name | CS Pro}},
Somebody at your company announced that customer success now owns retention and expansion, and everyone nodded along. Then everyone went back to work and nothing actually changed. Same ticket meetings, same red, amber and green dashboard, same comp plan as last year. Your team didn't become a revenue team… it got a new label. This week on the podcast, I'm sharing the 4 things that have to be true before anyone can honestly say your team carries a revenue number.
But first, today’s sponsor
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A practical next step for closing each of the five gaps
The room every CS leader has been in
Picture a renewal meeting with your CRO in the room. Someone pulls up a big account and asks, what is this one doing at renewal, and are we getting expansion out of it?
And your CSM says… they're happy, they're using the product, the health score is green.
Then there's silence.
Not because your CSM is bad at their job… they're working off a 2019 job description. Nobody ever asked them to know who signs the renewal or when the budget closes.
That silence is expensive. It costs you forecast accuracy, which is the currency CS credibility runs on in an executive room. And it burns out good people who are held to a number with no skills or training to move it.
The responsibility moved. The operating model didn't follow it.
If your CSMs go silent the moment a customer says "we are just evaluating our options", my ROI storytelling and objection handling for renewals workshop is built for that. Book a call here and let's talk about your team.
Rhythm and radar: put money on the agenda
I call the framework the 4 R's: rhythm, radar, room and reward. If all 4 are true, you have a revenue team. Miss 1, and you just have a team with a new name.
Rhythm is your commercial operating rhythm. Once a week, run a 30 minute commercial block where the only thing allowed is money. Every renewal in the next 90 days by name (flat, up or down), every expansion opportunity with a next step and date, and every risk account.
Monthly, review your forecast with a commit number, then compare it against actual. Quarterly, every CSM presents their book of business in dollar figures: revenue in, revenue at risk, revenue available for growth.
Radar is account level revenue visibility. Can every CSM tell you, without asking anyone, each account's contract value, renewal date, and what the customer is entitled to but not using? For most teams, no. You can't ask someone to grow a number they can't see, so build the view. It doesn't have to be beautiful, it has to be current and belong to the CSM.
Room and reward: the skills and the signal
Room is the skill layer, and it's where this usually dies. It's a small number of sentences your CSM has to say out loud without feeling salesy. Where does the budget for this sit, and who approves it? Since we started, your team has taken that process from 9 days to 2, does that match how your team sees it?
Then there's multi-threading. Most CSMs work with 1 champion and fall behind with the executive buyer. If your accounts are single threaded heading into renewal, let's chat about a stakeholder mapping and multithreading workshop built around your real accounts.
Your team needs to practise these out loud until they're boring, because boring means it's has stuck.
Reward tells your team whether you meant any of it. If comp, promotion criteria and recognition look the same, they'll conclude this was a branding exercise. Variable comp tied to retention and expansion, around 10 to 20% of total comp, is the goal. Can't change comp this quarter? Write revenue into your promotion criteria and celebrate the expansion that landed or the renewal that closed early, with the name of the person who did it. Even just tagging revenue wins in a public slack channel is a small sense of reward.
Weekly challenge: the 4 question audit
Take 20 minutes on your own and score your team out of 4.
Rhythm: How many of your last 4 team meeting agendas had named renewals or expansions with a dollar value?
Radar: Message 2 CSMs and ask what their largest account is worth and when it renews. Notice if they had to ask someone.
Room: Listen to 1 recorded customer call from the last month. Count how many times money, budget, renewal or pricing came up, and who raised it.
Reward: Read your CSM promotion criteria. Is retention or expansion in there, in plain language?
Pick your lowest score and fix that 1 R this quarter. Most leaders expect to score badly on skill, then find their real gap is radar… which is often fixable in 2 weeks or a month.
That's it for this week! Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube. And if you want your team practising these conversations on your real accounts, book a call to design a team workshop.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.
Cheers to your CS success,
Anika
