Customer Success Leadership Tip of the YEAR!

Most startup Customer Success leaders responsible for creating new CS departments don’t have a “budget” to help build out the process and infrastructure they need. To even think about asking for money to implement best practices, source technology, or even prevent Customer/revenue churn, causes anxiety. Unlike Sales and Marketing who often have several vendors helping them with lead acquisition, SEO, and external marketing campaigns, CS leaders try to do it all by themselves.? Often in their spare time.

CS leaders are left with multiple unfinished projects and half baked processes that cost the company far more in lost efficiency and missed opportunities than they save

We all know ‘spare time’ is a myth at a startup! In reality, startup CS leaders are left with multiple unfinished projects and half baked processes that cost the company far more in lost efficiency and missed opportunities than they save. Yet several of these same leaders are hiring employees. Said another way, these leaders, with no budget to implement the infrastructure that drives employee efficiency, Customer satisfaction, revenue retention and Customer upsells, are responsible for and control hundreds of thousands of dollars (in some cases millions) in payroll expenses.??

Here is the tip of the year for leaders who need help setting up the infrastructure that will enable their Customers and employees to be successful.? When you get approval to hire, ask for the earliest date the payroll can start. This innocent but specific question is a way to build a budget for additional items you desperately need, but have a hard time getting your leadership to fund. Every day after the payroll can start, but doesn’t, generates additional ‘budget’ for you to get the help you desperately need.?

Example: An $80,000 CSM role, fully loaded (benefits, payroll tax etc. = 1.3)? $80,000 x 1.30 = $104,000 cost to the company annually. ?

When recruiting takes longer than you think, you have $2,000 in avoided payroll expenses every week! (in some cases much, much more) Inevitably, hiring takes longer than you expect and turnover happens. If you keep an eye out for it, you can free up much needed funding for other projects that are critical to your long term success. It is very hard for a CFO to claim this money isn’t budgeted, because it was already going to be spent in your department.??

Note:? You should never intentionally go short staffed, but sometimes it is unavoidable. When it happens, use that money for good! (and when your CFO comes back and says “we included some of that down time in our planning” or any other deflection question, just ask to see the numbers. After all, it was supposed to be spent in your department!)??

1. As a leader, you get the help you need to build out your department (this is your responsibility along with solving Customer problems)
2. It demonstrates your solution oriented commitment to building your department in the right way (you’ve asked for help and provided a way to pay for it)
3. It forces your company to think differently about budgeting (and allows you to eventually get a budget)

Of course you still need to provide the return on investment for the initiative you want to launch, but it certainly helps when the budget was already slated to be spent somewhere else!

If you had extra ‘budget’ in CS, what would you spend it on?? Please share in the comments.?

About the author: Daniel Hoesing is the creator of the Predictive Customer Behavior Playbook? development process, a tool used to create and implement Customer Success playbooks, policies and procedures for SaaS, ecommerce and subscription based organizations with limited Customer Success infrastructure.? Daniel also created the Predictive Customer Behavior Index? assessment, a tool used in assessing Customer Success capabilities that is indexed specifically for the size and growth of the organization.? This tool reduces the learning curve for new leaders by months!

Daniel is an accomplished leader with over 20 years experience in management & leadership; working in the SaaS B2B industry for over 12 years for fortune 100 companies as well as pre-equity startups. Predictive Customer Success identifies gaps in current capabilities and reduces the complexity by narrowing the focus and providing a list of prioritized projects, as well as a roadmap of future capabilities to consider as the organization scales.? Results are guaranteed!? Please reach out to him for more information Daniel Hoesing on LinkedIn