Why I wrote the book, Mastering Customer Success

John Wooden is widely acclaimed as the greatest coach in the history of basketball and every year at the first team meeting, the very first thing he would show his players is how to properly put on their socks and shoes.

You play on a hard floor. So, you must have shoes that fit right. And you must not permit your socks to have wrinkles around the little toe--where you generally get blisters--or around the heels. It took just a few minutes, but I did show my players how I wanted them to do it. Hold up the sock, work it around the little toe area and the heel area so that there are no wrinkles. Smooth it out good. Then hold the sock up while you put the shoe on. And the shoe must be spread apart--not just pulled on the top laces. You tighten it up snugly by each eyelet. Then you tie it. And then you double-tie it so it won't come undone--because I don't want shoes coming untied during practice, or during the game. I don't want that to happen. I'm sure that once I started teaching that many years ago, it did cut down on blisters. It definitely helped. But that's just a little detail that coaches must take advantage of, because it's the little details that make the big things come about.??? Newsweek - John Wooden: First, How To Put On Your Socks

I decided to co-write the book, Mastering Customer Success: Discover tactics to decrease churn and expand revenue, with Jeff Mar because I wanted to coach CSMs how to properly put on their shoes and socks.

For years, CSMs have been in the business (and especially SaaS) spotlight because of their importance in ensuring that products become sticky and that customers renew their financial agreements with the vendor. As such, they were, and are, bombarded with information about how to do their job. It comes at them from every angle. They get it from podcasts and from webinars. They get it from their bosses (as they should) and from their certification programs. They get hectored about it daily by people on LinkedIn, and now with AI breathing down their necks, they get to be tormented about it in their dreams too.

With only a small amount of editorializing, here's a sampling of what they hear.

“We’ll give you a dashboard so you can keep a laser focus on these High Priority Metrics.”

1.?????? Customer Health Score - “but don’t call it that because there’s a raging debate going on in the industry about this topic”

2.?????? Churn Rate - “probably your most critical metric, one that governs most of your performance rating”

3.?????? Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) – “the world ignores this but we want you to keep reporting on it”

4.?????? Net Promoter Score (NPS) – “the world ignores this even more than it ignores CSAT. Scratch that. Half the world hates this metric and the other half ignores it. And while we here at ACME Corp don’t hate it – after all, we are deeply committed to improving the experience of our customers - we ignore it too. But we want you to keep reporting on it”

5.?????? Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) – “no one really understands this thing ?– maybe marketing does, I’m not sure - ?but your ability to influence it is something we factor into your performance review anyway”

6.?????? Expansion Revenue – “this is easy peasy. Just get your customers to buy more”

7.?????? Time to Value (TTV) – “in and out, get ‘er done. Any questions?”

8.?????? Product Adoption and Usage Rates – “this is 100% up to you. Make these move in the right direction and you’re golden”

“Oh, and while you’re laser focusing on those metrics, you need to fit into your schedule the following critical tasks.”

1.?????? Onboarding – “it’s said this is the most critical part of the customer journey. If you F up here, the customer will churn and remember what I said about churn earlier”

2.?????? Regular Check-ins and Business Reviews – “but don’t call them check-ins or QBRs because people (not necessarily customers) love to hate on those terms”

3.?????? Customer Training and Education – “undoubtedly, this is the most proactive thing you can do but we have very little budget to educate you sufficiently to carry it out. Still, we factor into your performance review your ability to do this”

4.?????? Proactive Support and Issue Resolution – “yes, we have a technical support team but you need to do whatever it is the customer requires. Even try to fix things. It’s what we do in startup land. If you want the support of other orgs, go work for Behemoth Corp.”

5.?????? Advocacy and Relationship Building – “keep this as your north star (whatever that is). It takes years to see meaningful results and it’ll be tough to attribute your work to this kind of outcome but we want you to pursue it anyway”

6.?????? Gathering and Analyzing Customer Feedback – “surveys, surveys, but more than surveys. I know you know what I mean”

7.?????? Renewals and Contract Management – “we’re rating you on your ability to drive successful renewals but we don’t want you anywhere near the contracts. Nor do we want you to talk about selling or reselling”

8.?????? Cross-Selling and Upselling – “take every opportunity to educate the customer about other products that we have. We’re all salespeople in this company”

9.?????? Documentation and Reporting – “when you have time, try to fit this in”

10.?? Customer Advocacy Programs – “it’s not about persuading or convincing customers to say nice things about us publicly. But I’m not not saying that either”

Setting the joking aside, the list of metrics and tasks is accurate. It’s a lot, right? Especially since the guidance that’s most visible in the public realm implicitly sets the expectation that CSMs need to know it all. It would be as if John Wooden threw his extensive playbook at each player at that first meeting and said, “know this stuff cold by tomorrow.” I don’t think Bill Walton and Marques Johnson knew how to do such a pretty pick and roll on the first day as they did in their years playing together and so why are we expecting CSMs to be good at all these things without a grounding in a few basic skills. Basic skills like:

• Data curiosity
• Analytically inclined
• Empathy
• Humility
• Open-mindedness
• Authenticity
• Professionalism
• Communications clarity

All these basic skills can energize a CSM to thrive when encouraged by a framework that has customer value at the center, surrounded by strategy, which is, in turn, supported by products, processes, and tactics.

You see, I wrote the book as an homage to CSMs, and especially those who have been in the role for some time and want to advance. In my view, bombing them with information on a daily basis, much of it well-meaning, isn’t helping as much as we imagine. They need a grounding. They need to establish and refine the basics and grow up from there. Only when they do that will they be able to do all those things on the metrics and tasks list with excellence. Or, at least, they’ll be in a far better position to construct defensible arguments for why an improved list is necessary.

I wrote the book as an homage to one other role in the B2B equation, too. I wrote the book for customers because that’s who I think is really the most important player in the world of business. I believe the value that they perceive they are getting from the vendor will only increase when everyone in the enterprise - not just CSMs - can properly put on their socks and shoes.