5 Reasons Why Sales and Customer Success Are Not Playing Well Together

Continuing our 5 Reasons series, this month we talk about what gets in the way of what should be a winning combination: Sales and Customer Success. I find that there can be considerable distrust and hostility between the two teams as accusations of botched customer communications, poor customer-solution fit, and even lost deals fly. Or worse, the two teams air out their differences in front of puzzled customers.

If your organization suffers from such ills, read on for diagnoses and solutions. If not, think of how lucky you are.

1. Roles and responsibilities are not well defined 

Most conflicts between the Sales and Customer Success teams are simple turf wars. Who owns the customer? And what does ownership really mean, anyway? Who can write what type of orders? Who is responsible for answering questions from customers? Who should deliver product and company updates to customers?

There are many possible answers to these questions and different situations call for different answers–but clarity matters. Define rules that work for your organization, ideally in conjunction with creating a robust customer journey. For instance: Sales own prospects through the conclusion of the sale, but Customer Success gets involved from the proposal stage onward; there is a formal handoff after opportunities close; Sales is invited to formal account reviews but Customer Success owns the relationships post-sales; Sales own all cross-sell opportunities; Customer Success closes renewals and upsells. Also, devise a mechanism to quickly resolve potential conflicts, usually by invoking leaders on both sides.

Lesson: Define roles and responsibilities throughout the customer lifecycle.

2. Handoffs to Customer Success are haphazard

It’s very frustrating to a CSM to suddenly discover that a promise was made during the sales cycle that they did not know about, and perhaps cannot deliver on at all. This is often the result of a non-existent or botched handoff from the Sales team.

Handoffs don’t need to be complicated or time-consuming: some of my clients do handoff through a structured note in the CRM highlighting business goals, key contacts, and use cases. For larger customers, a formal three-way meeting is probably best.

Lesson: Mandate a structured handoff from Sales to Customer Success.

3. CSMs are viewed as junior sales reps

Sales reps often look down at CSMs for being less skilled at selling than they are. This is often true–but the role of CSMs is not (pure) selling. They navigate deployment issues. They watch out for leadership changes that can cause churn. They coax reluctant would-be users to adopt the solution. They provide industry best practices, above and beyond the technical solution they support. And they often carry vast customer portfolios, requiring skillful multitasking.

Don’t allow the CSMs to be used as minions for the sales reps by highlighting their skills and contributions (in ARRs) to the organization and reinforcing the roles and responsibilities identified in #1, above.

Lesson: Focus CSMs on their core duties, not “assisting” sales reps.

4. CSMs don’t take the time to understand the clients’ goals and internal workings

Some CSMs are slaves to their usage dashboard and have a hard time thinking strategically. What are the customer’s business goals? What are they trying to achieve? What are the internal coalitions pro and against our solution?

Being ignorant of the political environment weakens the CSMs’ ability to maximize revenue–and builds a reputation of incompetence with the Sales team. Recruit and train the CSMs to think strategically.

Lesson: Train and require the CSMs to keep up with customers’ strategic and tactical goals.

5. Sales gets involved only when the situation is dire

Sales reps and sales leaders often conclude that CSMs don’t do much since they, the sales team, are the ones asked to rescue at-risk accounts. This situation reminds me of a comment made to me a long time ago by the head of the Engineering team who thought that her team handled a good portion of support cases since they touched many of the hot ones, not realizing that over 95% of all incoming cases were actually handled entirely within the support team.

Make sure that the Sales team is aware of all accounts, not just the ones at risk. Routinely identify the root cause of at-risk accounts to highlight product, sales, and account management issues. (And praise the Sales team effusively when they lend a hand, of course!)

Lesson: Ensure that the Sales team hears about successes as well as escalations.

What do you do to align Sales and Customer Success? Please share in the comments.

(And if you need help, we can help.)