Strategic Account Management for Customer Success

The tenser the economic times, the more focus lays on retaining and expanding relationships with existing customers. Especially through an investors lens, those retention metrics are more crucial than ever before. That’s exactly where strategic account management plays a pivotal role in achieving this goal, fostering long-term partnerships and maximizing customer lifetime value (CLTV). However, effective SAM requires a collaborative approach, one that seamlessly integrates the efforts of both Sales and Customer Success teams.

A Historic Look into Responsibilities along the Customer Journey

Traditionally, the responsibilities of Sales and Customer Success teams have been divided along distinct lines. While the Sales team’s primary focus is on acquiring new customers and closing deals, the classic CS team takes over once the customer has been onboarded, ensuring their satisfaction and driving adoption of the company’s products or services.

What we see in reality is oftentimes that this siloed approach, leads to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Customers no longer want a static journey, where they are handed from one point of content to the next without any logic transitions. Additionally, competition between both teams is created out of thin air by setting competing goals and priorities.

The Role of Sales in Strategic Account Management

Whether they come in form of a BDR, SDR or Industry Sales Manager, a Sales representent is usually the first point of contact a customer has with your business. With that, your Sales team plays a critical role in establishing the foundation for successful strategic account management. By establishing strong relationships with key decision-makers and gaining a deep understanding of their business objectives, Sales gathers and holds all those valuable insights that inform the development of tailored account strategies. Read on at Gartner to find more details on traditional account management in Sales.

The Role of Customer Success in Strategic Account Management

Once the Sales team has laid the groundwork, Customer Success takes the reins, building upon those initial interactions to cultivate enduring customer relationships. CSMs are primarily responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction and driving adoption of your products or services. They become trusted advisors, proactively engaging with customers to identify their evolving needs and challenges. CSMs also work closely with the Sales team to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities that align with the customer’s strategic goals. It is highly dependent on your individual organization set up, who then takes ownership over commercial tasks around cross-/upsells and renewals. We’d love to invite to read on in our recent blog post about the roles and responsibilities of a CSM.

A Collaborative Approach to SAM

The most effective strategic account initiatives result from a collaborative effort between Sales and Customer Success teams. By aligning their expertise and sharing a common vision for customer success, your teams can achieve remarkable results. Forbes also offers a deep dive into what additional best practices are important to adapt strategic account management to the digital space.

Here are some of our key principles for fostering collaboration in strategic account management:

Clear Roles & Responsibilities

Create a clear understanding for who carries which responsibilities and owns input and output metrics at each stage of the customer journey. There is no right or wrong in this, as long as there are distinct and well understood definitions with the related documentation.

Joint Account Planning

Establish regular joint account planning sessions to collaboratively develop tailored strategies for each key account. These sessions should involve stakeholders from both Sales and Customer Success, ensuring alignment and resource allocation. We bundled this up in our concept of Customer Obsession Teams, which we described in this recent blog post.

Shared Accountability

Implement a shared accountability model for strategic account management, where both Sales and Customer Success teams feel responsible for driving the success of each key account. This shared responsibility fosters a sense of ownership, encourages open communication and helps to align their goals.

Continuous Communication

Maintain open and transparent communication channels between Sales and Customer Success teams. Regularly share customer insights, updates, and concerns to ensure both teams are on the same page and can proactively address any potential issues. Customer Success Stories are a great tool for storytelling around the successful collaboration you are fostering.

Long story short...

Traditional sales and customer success teams operate in silos, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Our suggestions of a collaborative approach between these teams is the key for effective strategic account management. This involves clearly defining roles and responsibilities, holding joint account planning sessions, implementing shared accountability, and maintaining continuous communication. Forbes also offers a deep dive into what additional best practices are important to adapt strategic account management to the digital space. By aligning their expertise and sharing a common vision for customer success, sales and customer success teams can achieve remarkable results.