The goal of Customer Success is to empower the customer and the company. Customer Success ensures the customers get anything and everything they can out of the product or service.
This long-term relationship has a lot of potential when it comes to upselling/ sales. CS has the potential to be a team to not just drive leads to the Sales team, but convert themselves.
But is it really wise to mix sales and success?
To learn more about the pitfalls and potential here, we asked six Customer Success experts the following question:
Should Customer Success teams have an incremental revenue goal?
The answer to this question gives insight into the good, the bad and the ugly when you mix Customer Success and Sales.
Graham Gill | Vice President of Customer Success, Maestro
The answer really depends on the size of the organization and the Sales & CS Model you are running. Once an organization is established and more mature, I believe CS teams should have incremental revenue goals. CS can be a differentiator if done correctly. Introducing a variable goal keeps everyone sharp and hungry. I would caution against setting aggressive revenue goals too quickly. Expansion and upsells are perfect goals to push for in a normal SaaS environment.
Jason Van Dusen | Vice President of Global Sales at Velocity Global
No. Upselling should live within sales. Any type of expansion or upsell should be organic and only based on what allows a client to achieve their best. True Customer Success is about listening, guiding, educating, and solving problems while working as one united team. Customer Success in its purest form can’t be accomplished with one hand on a client’s wallet.
Victor Paulinno | Head of Customer Success at Fix Pay
Considering CS’s focus on engagement and value delivery, I understand that commission may be having a bad effect on the team. As a manager, I worry about the team just chasing indicators that help with commissioning and abandoning other customers who needed help and would hardly bear fruit in commissioning. Having a sales-farmer team that handles negotiations with customers I still believe to be a good strategy. Together with the CS team, what helps to make the goals clear in the monitoring are the KPIs, In addition to helping to strengthen the company’s culture.
Vipin Thomas | Vice President Revenue Operations at SurveySparrow
I am a strong advocate of NRR as the primary performance metric for Customer Success teams as this helps Customer Success professionals to be more strategic in the way they manage their portfolio. Otherwise, if it is just retention then they would mostly be firefighting or if it’s just upgrade/cross-sells then they would become sales. NRR helps balance the two and enables you to truly be a strategic consultant.
Net Revenue Retention calculates total revenue (including expansion) minus revenue churn (contract expirations, cancelations, or downgrades). A good NRR to aim for would be anything above 100%, it means the business is healthy and is able to grow even without acquiring new customers.
Roberta Silva | Customer Success Consultant
If the objective is to position the company through recognized quality, then incremental revenue is a consequence, not the focus.
Your team will want to make sure there are no conflicting priorities. How many goals can the same person or the same team balance on a day-to-day basis? Do those goals compete for attention with each other? Will a customer success manager prefer to put a new sale on the base or solve a problem with a customer?
Ariel Benzakein | Senior Director, Customer Success at Central Reach
For maximum value, Customer Success should always own a number – either be directly responsible for expansion/upsell, or be the primary feeder of leads to Sales.
Bonus Tips for Balancing Customer Success and Sales Goals
1. Foster Collaboration Between Teams: Encourage open communication and collaboration between Customer Success (CS) and Sales teams. Regular meetings and joint planning sessions can help ensure both teams are aligned in their goals and strategies. This alignment helps in identifying opportunities for upselling without compromising the core focus of customer success.
2. Implement Customer Feedback Loops: Use customer feedback to drive both CS and Sales strategies. Listening to customers can provide valuable insights into their needs and challenges, enabling the CS team to tailor their support and identify potential upsell opportunities that genuinely benefit the customer. Sharing this feedback with the Sales team can also help refine their approach.
3. Use Technology to Your Advantage: Leverage Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and Customer Success platforms to track customer interactions, usage patterns, and satisfaction levels. These tools can provide data-driven insights that help CS teams identify opportunities for expansion and proactively address customer needs, leading to higher retention and potential upsell scenarios.
4. Develop a Customer Success Playbook: Create a playbook that outlines best practices for managing customer relationships, including strategies for identifying and acting on upsell opportunities. This playbook should include guidelines on how to approach upselling in a way that prioritizes the customer’s success and satisfaction, ensuring that any revenue goals are aligned with delivering value to the customer.
5. Focus on Customer Education and Value: Invest in customer education programs that help users fully understand and utilize your product or service. By providing ongoing training, resources, and support, you can ensure customers are getting the most out of your offerings. Educated and satisfied customers are more likely to see the value in additional features or services, making upsells more organic and customer-centric.
By incorporating these tips, you can create a more holistic approach to integrating Customer Success and Sales, ensuring that both teams work together to drive growth while maintaining a strong focus on customer satisfaction and value delivery.
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