#38: The 8 Skills Every CSM Should Develop

Nobody goes to "CSM" college. 

More often than not, people learn on the job.

But unless you are in a mature organisation, you don't have the benefit of structured onboarding, well-documented CS processes, experienced teammates who can coach others, an L&D team etc. 

That's why many CS Leaders struggle to help high-potential candidates develop into great CSMs.

And this challenge snowballs beyond training.

The same CS leaders also find it hard to assess CSM performance and promotion readiness.

Last week I shared the framework below that I use to understand a CSM's performance:

Skill + Effort + Results

Today, I want to dive deeper into it by sharing the 8 skills every high-touch CSM should develop and how a manager can use these to guide their CSMs to mastery.

👩🏻 What are the key CSM skills?

CSMing can be very different depending on the flavour of the role in your business (check out the 4 main flavours here). But, there are 8 skills that I believe will be applicable to any CSM.

#1 Product and Use-Case Knowledge

Knowing the product or service and how customers can use it to achieve their goals will be critical to driving value to customers. A CSM with low product knowledge will not be able to add a lot of value and will end up with low credibility with the customer. The less they know, the more time they spend finding answers and creating follow-up emails instead of helping customers on the spot.

#2 Consulting

You often hear that great CSM-ing is about relationship building. This isn’t a lie. However, you don’t build strategic relationships with customers by simply getting to know them personally (that’s how you make friends). Strategic relationships are built on a bedrock of compounding value delivery.

And how do CSMs deliver value? Through excellent consulting.

#3 Stakeholder Management

CSMs have multiple points of contact in their customer organisations and within their own company. Each of these stakeholders needs something different to succeed (see a breakdown here). Understanding the stakeholders, multithreading and ensuring each party gets what they need is a key aspect of delivering value and solving for the customer. 

#4 Business Insight

A CSM with business insight skills is able to combine data and context to make sense of challenges and opportunities. This skill comes across in many different environments, both in working internally in the org or externally with customers. It's when someone is able to quickly make sense of the situations and tailor recommendations depending on specific scenarios.

This level of insight gives customers and their own companies a competitive edge.

#5 Situational Adaptability

CSMs encounter so many different types of situations in their day-to-day. They range from introduction calls to escalations, to negotiations and so on and so forth. CSMs also deal with different personalities and levels of frustration from their customers. While it’s good to be prepared, in many cases they will have to adapt on the fly.

#6 Book of Business Management

Whether you manage 30 or 200 accounts, every install base has customers in different lifecycle stages (i.e. onboarding, quarterly business reviews, renewals etc.). CSMs need to have a deep understanding of the key stages of an account and the skills to prioritise based on these proactive motions, as well as the ability to react to reactive ones, which is essential for any customer success. 

#7 Communication

Communication is important in every role. But CSMs you are interfacing with customers to represent your organisation and help customers get the most out of your products. They will have to influence stakeholders and clearly demonstrate how your products help move the needle.

The better their verbal, written and presentation skills are, the more effective you will be.

#8 Forecasting

A CSM that owns a book of business, will be required to provide updates in relation to their customer’s renewals. Even when you are a start-up using a simple forecating tool is important.  This means CSMs need to maintain a good forecasting practice that provides visibility and accuracy for the business.

This allows CSMs to understand where they stand and get ahead of future risks with enough time to turn possible cancellations around.

👩🏻 Help People Develop These Skills

I've written this free guide for CSMs to practice these 8 skills, you can use this as a baseline to start working together to assess and develop these competencies. 

You can adapt these skills to fit your environment and expectations.

Make sure you share these competencies with your team, and ensure they understand how they can demonstrate these in practice. 

This isn't a "secret" scorecard. Everyone should be clear on what great looks like.

What's really important to note is that these are skills. They are qualitative and are not simply measured in numbers.

In order for you to understand where your CSM is at, you should be:

• listening to calls (ask them to submit the calls)
• attending QBRs (be a sponsor for a few accounts in each of your CSMs books)
• doing real plays and mock calls (use real case scenarios that come up 1:1)
• watching their participation in team meetings (observe how they advise others)

If you need help to make the most out of your 1:1 time together with a CSM, I wrote this guide on how to run effective 1:1s. 

As a leader, it's tempting to skip this. 

You are busy, I get it.

But you can't give feedback and help people develop skills that you haven't seen them in practice. 

It's also tempting to outsource this task and ask the team to give each other feedback.

These types of peer-to-peer spaces are very important and can be super beneficial for the team.

But one thing to be mindful of is the level of skill in those rooms.

You don't want to end up in a scenario where the blind are leading the blind. 

TL'DR

If you want to develop high-potential candidates into great CSMs, you have to invest in them

1. Understand the 8 Core CSM Skills (add or remove to fit your context)
2. Share them with your team for transparency
3. Tailor your team's onboarding, learning programme and performance reviews using them