#54: Motivating Your CSMs in 2024

Earlier this week I spoke at an exclusive Pavilion's CCO School on How to keep a CS team motivated and driven in 2024.

Given how difficult 2023 was, I am not surprised this topic is top of mind for GTM leaders. 

We've asked our teams to give it their socks, and they've done it.

Yet, many of them have not been able to hit NRR targets and their compensation has been impacted. To add to the problem, the slowdown in growth means there are fewer promotion opportunities for them.

How can we get them to do it all over again in 2024, but better?

I am writing this newsletter to share ideas on how you can keep a CS team motivated in 2024.

Reward 

Let's face it... a big part of why people go to work is to get paid. 

People have physiological and safety needs. They have dreams, hobbies and families. Money is what helps them to live a good life.

Unless you pay your people fairly, you won't be able to use many of the tools I will share below.

But let's assume people's base pay is fair.  

What other ways can you reward people for their good work? 

• Attach a portion of their pay to their performance: High-performers want to reap the rewards of their work, and variable compensation is designed to help you do just that. I wrote this Ultimate Guide for CSM Variable Compensation.
• Competitions: If you want people to go above and beyond, it can be useful to create a little competition. Beware of the prize value though. Unless it's meaningful enough, you won't be able to motivate people. HubSpot has this guide with cool competition ideas.
• Extra Days Off: I am lucky to work at a place that offers unlimited time off, but most people are not. Having a few extra holiday days can be a driver for a lot of people!

Recognition

Who doesn't like to be recognised for their work? 

Being seen and appreciated keeps great people doing great work in the long term. Public recognition is also a powerful way of signalling to your team the behaviours you value. 

What are some of the best ways to recognise people?

• Promotions: Promoting your CSMs into Senior CSM roles and Principal CSM roles is the best way to recognise someone's consistency in delivering remarkable results and doing it in the right way. If you don't have well-defined career paths, check out this great resource. 
• Top Performer Awards: Rewarding excellence on an ongoing basis is also important. An idea is to implement a monthly/quarterly top performer award, giving these team members the visibility and recognition they deserve (borrow these cool ideas from Sales Teams) 
• Customer Showdowns: Customer Success is all about solving for the customer, so celebrating excellence when it comes to delivering value for customers is a great way to recognise and highlight CSMs that go above and beyond at that core part of their role. 

These are all things people can work towards. And having personal goals is really motivating!

Opportunities to Gro

I'm sure you've heard 'The reward for doing great work is more work.'

That's all well and good when you have new roles (with pay rises) to give to people. However, given the economic situation, hiring has decelerated significantly.

Just getting more work can be pretty demotivating if a CSM doesn't see the potential reward. 

To motivate CSMs, offer opportunities that demonstrate you're invested in their growth.

What growth opportunities will feel like investments in your team?

• External Coaching: A coach can have a significant impact on someone's development, especially if it's soft skills they are trying to refine. At the same time, coaches are expensive and a lot of people can't afford that. So it's a great tool to demonstrate you value the employee and believe in their growth potential (I offer CSM Coaching here).
• Tuition: Sometimes what people want/need to learn cannot be easily learned on the job. In this case, a course will offer a much better result. Paying for education (and giving people that time during the workday) can really motivate someone.
• Internal Mobility Programs: One of the main pieces of feedback I receive from CSMs is that it's hard to move from individual contributor to manager because they don't have the opportunity to manage. Creating a leadership program that gives classroom training and matches that with the opportunity to put it into practice is a great way to get a CSM who has been on the job for a long time. Other mobility programs can be a rotation into another team or something like Google's 20 % program where 20% of the time of an employee can be used in a side project.
  
  

Opportunities to Connect

With so many companies going fully remote or hybrid, there are increasingly fewer opportunities to connect with people.

But CSM-ing alone can be hard. 

You have hard call after hard call. You're fielding a ton of questions. You have to show up as your best self in every room you enter. 

Feeling like you're in this with a team is a game-changer

A great way to motivate your team is to invest in in-person connections that can help your team get together and have fun. It will make them feel like they are part of a team.

For some companies that's easy (ie. everyone is in the same country) for others is hard, it's a huge investment to fly people around, put them in hotels etc. At HubSpot, we recently got our teams together in 3 locations across the globe for our Flywheel Kick Off and it was awesome!

TL'DR

If you want to motivate your CS team in 2024, consider the following investments:

1. Reward the team through variable compensation, competitions and extra days off
2. Recognise them through promotions, top-performer awards and customer showdowns
3. Invest in opportunities for them to grow professionally
4. Invest in connection with their team members

See you next Friday!