115 - How to Drive Revenue as a Customer Success Team - Emma Aidanpää-Salmi

Are you looking to drive revenue as a customer success team? With Emma, we talk about exactly that along with setting effective team quotas and compensation plans. We also go into Emma's customer success journey. In addition, you’ll hear about her customer success team, how it has been achieving the quotas and what works well for her customer success managers.

Emma is Vice President of Customer Success at RELEX, building and scaling high-performing CS teams in a hypergrowth business environment. 

She’s passionate about building and scaling a world-class CS team that breaks boundaries and drives outstanding customer value and revenue growth.

What you'll learn from this episode:

• Strategies for driving revenue as a CS team
• What it means to be entrepreneurial as a CSM
• How to set team quotas and compensation plans
• Building business acumen as a Strategic Customer Success Manager

Although what first comes to mind about Customer Success is customer retention, advocacy and enablement, it’s worth highlighting that revenue growth is also among those main goals - hand in hand with efficiency improvement. So, make sure you put this episode of the Women in Customer Success podcast on your playlist and make use of the things we cover in it. 

Follow Emma! 

This episode was brought to you by Deployflow.

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About Women in Customer Success Podcast:

Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.

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Host Marija Skobe-Pilley

- Website - https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/

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- Get a FREE '9 Habits of Successful CSMs' guide https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/9-habits-freebie

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today we speak about revenue how to drive revenue as a CS team in your organization. What does it mean to be a commercial CSM? How does your day-to-day look like, how to set team quotas and compensation plans. What does it even mean to be entrepreneurial as a CSM and how to drive your book of business in an entrepreneurial fashion and, at the end, how to build a business acumen as a strategic customer success manager. I'm sure you will enjoy this episode as I'm joined with Emma Aydanpa Salmi, vp of Global Customer Success at Relax Solutions.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hi everyone, this is Maria Scobepile and you're listening to Women in Customer Success podcast, the first women-only podcast where remarkable ladies of customer success share their stories and practical tools to help you succeed and make an impact. If you want to learn more about customer success, get career advice and be inspired, you're in the right place, so let's tune in. It is such a pleasure to welcome Emma Aydanpa Salmi to the show. Emma is the Vice President of Global Customer Success at Relix Solutions, based out in Finland. Emma, welcome to the show. It is so nice to have you here.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Thank you so much, Maria. I'm super happy to be here and thank you for giving me the opportunity to enter your show. Super happy about that.

Speaker 1: 1:28

I heard Emma presenting on the big stage of a SASIUS conference in Melbourne earlier this year and I was so impressed and I knew that I wanted to bring Emma to the show to speak about her team structure comp plans. How do you get customer success team to be real revenue driven organization and what does it even mean? Like not only talking about it, we are revenue driven, but how does it translate into the day to day work of customer success managers? So that's what to expect in today's episode, but just let's use this opportunity to get to know Emma a bit better. Emma, where are you based?

Speaker 2: 2:13

I'm going to tell you all my secrets. I'm based in Espoo and, of course, everyone knows Helsinki, but Espoo is a town that is attached to Helsinki, so very close to Helsinki, in Finland, finland. So how many to Helsinki in Finland, finland.

Speaker 1: 2:26

So how many languages do you speak?

Speaker 2: 2:28

Four actually. So my name is very Finnish, but I'm actually Swedish, as I also revealed at the Stasius conference. So I have two native languages. So I speak both Swedish and Finnish as native languages, and then, of course, English as a third language. And then I do say that I speak German, but I think in reality I'm not using the language so much. So I understand almost everything, but it's definitely a language that I should practice a bit more. And then, of course, when I'm fluent in Swedish, I also understand, of course, Norwegian, A bit of Danish as well. So trying to, you know, keep up with all of the Scandinavian languages as best as I can.

Speaker 1: 3:09

That's so interesting. All of my Scandinavian friends are also just fluent in all of those languages, and when I ask, oh so, are they just so same and similar? Well, not exactly, but it's normal. You know them. That's something I really admire. So well done to you on that. You know them. That's something I really admire. So well done to you on that, emma. We have lots of amazing topics to discuss today. Why don't we start by you telling us a bit about your background and how did you enter into customer success?

Speaker 2: 3:34

Absolutely. Thank you, maria. You know I think a lot of my career has obviously been built at Relax, but I have been working now for almost nine years and I wasn't actually supposed to be a business professional. So when I was a younger girl, you know my teenage age my biggest dream was to become a professional athlete. So I was doing track and field, I was running sprints and hurdles and that was really my biggest dream, to you know get to the European Championships or get to run for Finland in the Olympics. Obviously I didn't succeed, because now I'm in the business and not at the Olympics, but but that was really the focus that I had and I think throughout the university, when I was studying, I was actually trying to do sports on the side, which was tough because, you know, you had a full-time job being a student, trying to get, get your master's degree doing your sports. It took a lot of time for me. So at some point, when I figured out, you know, okay, maybe this is not for me, my body is not going to take the high pressure of doing this full-time sports, I started thinking what do I actually want to do? And I think for me, leadership, leading people, coaching people. Being, for example, a team captain of my basketball team has always been really natural for me, so I think I wanted to work in a fast-paced environment with smart people. I wanted to work in an environment where people believe in me, where I can work quite freely and get a lot of responsibility and just run my race in a way that creates value for the company, and I found all of that in RELAX almost 10 years ago, and that's, I think.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Even though I have had a few jobs before that, after university, I think my career truly kicked off at RELAX and I always say that I have probably spent 20 years of experience during my nine years because working in a startup that has been growing from 11 million euro revenue to now more than 200 million euro ARR that transitional journey is just amazing. I get to do so many roles. I got to work as a consultant, a project manager, account manager, salesperson. I get to work with support, I get to grow the business, and I think that's the best learning curve for any person, because you get to do so many things and you become so diverse in what you do, and I think my path into customer success was actually through one of my first roles.

Speaker 2: 6:05

At that we called the business manager role, and obviously no one talked about customer success at that point. This was maybe 2017, 2016, or something like that. But what we were actually doing is I was leading a team of consultants and project managers and I was basically main responsible for how our projects are turning out. Are we delivering them on budget and on time? Are our customers happy with our solution? Can we grow and scale the customer account more? What kind of growth opportunities do we have? So I was actually doing all of the pieces that I call customer success today was embedded into that business manager role, and that was, I think, my first touch point to the role.

Speaker 2: 6:44

And then I also want to say that at Relex, customer success had always been embedded into our core values. So customer is a friend and we deliver measurable value are two really stepping stones of our customer success strategy. So I think at some point when I was given the opportunity to start building a team that we will call customer success, with customer success managers, it was basically just building on top of what we already had and started on embedding that strategy and, let's say, centralizing all of those customer success tasks into a role and that's my path into customer success. So I think it's very natural somehow, and I feel I have always been working with customer success at Relax, although we haven't called it customer success as such.

Speaker 1: 7:33

That's really interesting because in my conversations with so many women who started their career when we say back in the days right before the name customer success was popular almost everybody actually did it. There was just no department that was calling it. It was very similar to business values and business outcomes. I'm glad to hear about your journey and especially being in a company for nine years I can imagine so many different hats that you had and thank you for sharing your athletic background.

Speaker 1: 8:06

That sentence I want to run my own race, even in business, is really something that I believe will stuck with me for a long time. I do believe leaders when they manage their business within a bigger business, like when you manage the customer success team, that's exactly what you are doing. You're almost your own little company within the bigger company and you're running your race. So it's beautiful to see that relationship with your previous world of being in athletics. Would you like to tell us more about your customer success team at the moment? So what types of customers or segments are they working with and what are their typical responsibilities?

Speaker 2: 8:49

Yeah, absolutely. We're quite a big team today at Relax and I think it's good to put in a threshold here that when we talk about customer success in the shape or form of my organization, we actually talk about the pure customer success in the shape of form of my organization. We actually talk about the pure customer success role, so actually a team that is commercially responsible for the customer, driving up sales, qualifying cross-sell leads. We're working with account planning activities, we are responsible for growing and scaling the customer accounts, then this more traditional like onboarding, consulting, support those are separate functions in our organization and this is also, of course, because we are so big already. So in my organization that we call Customer Success, we are almost 100 people now globally, which is a big organization, of course, and what is included in that organization is, of course, customer success managers on different levels. We also have a team that we call Solution Success and that is actually our own dedicated pre-sales team. So they help us build our plans, they help us position the business cases in the best possible way with the customer way, with the customer. They really help us calculate what kind of value or additional value will the customer get from enlarging the product scope to also cover other areas than what the customer has today. Then, in addition to that pre-sales team, we also have development managers.

Speaker 2: 10:17

Of course, it's quite important that we would develop our processes, our tools, our best practices so that we can grow and scale the team efficiently and also onboard new CSMs. Is that like CS enablement? Yeah, you can call it enablement or development or whatever you want to call it, but it's basically enabling our people doing their job as well as they can every day Perfect. And then also the last role, the two last roles we also have a CS Ops Manager who is a part of our Revenue Ops team, but also, of course, reporting into customer success. That ensures that CRM and customer success tools are in shape for us. And then we also have the customer community team nowadays as a part of the customer success team, which I think is great, because community is all about scaling, delivering value to the customers also efficiently without having human touch, so also giving the customers more and getting them to share their stories with other customers and learning from other customers as well about the best practices.

Speaker 2: 11:21

So that's, in a nutshell, our team and Relics as a business. We work with the biggest retailers grocery retailers, wholesalers and consumer goods manufacturing companies around the a bit smaller, where we maybe then root those customers and have one CSM handling a bit more accounts at the same time. But it is, let's say, a one-on-one ratio. So we try to have a dedicated CSM for the majority of our customers, for sure, and that of course doesn't mean that we don't need technology and we need automation. Of course we need all of that. But I think it's extremely important when you work with enterprise customers that you have human touch and that we invest in our CSMs being at the customer, in front of the customer's team, talking to them frequently, because that's the way how we can deliver them additional value and that is also something actually that we have seen is a competitive advantage for us that we are truly there for the customer.

Speaker 1: 12:33

And that's the key. It's amazing to hear how it seems that Relax has recognized that the CS team is a competitive advantage for them and ability to be face to face with customers is something that will obviously attract new customers. Emma, you mentioned also different levels of CSMs. Can you just tell us quickly? It sounds like they all are high touch, but what are those different levels?

Speaker 2: 13:00

Yeah, I mean we have of course different kind of experience levels in our team. So we have analysts that are having, or associates that have been working a bit shorter time maybe, you know, coming into the business more recently and people and learn all of those aspects of the role, and then we have different kind of seniority levels, even up to enterprise level, where then our most experienced dsms take on the most difficult global enterprise accounts and then work closely then with the sales organization, because usually in those accounts we also have quite a lot of different types of sales cycles. As is quite common with enterprise accounts, you go in step by step and then you build that journey gradually together with the customer.

Speaker 1: 13:54

And some of your principal CSMs, how big would be their portfolio? Or you can just say in terms of customers or ARR.

Speaker 2: 14:04

I think it just varies a lot. I think a few years ago we were quite stuck in. You know that if you are on a certain level you have a certain number or amount of ARR that you are managing. But I think nowadays what we have seen it's more about kind of like, how strategic is the customer for us? How broadly are they utilizing our product portfolio?

Speaker 2: 14:32

So it's a totally different game to just use supply chain, which is one of our four product areas, than being a unified customer at Relax, where you're actually utilizing our entire product portfolio. And if you are an enterprise DSM who are handling one customer, that is, a global enterprise account with a full product portfolio, then actually you can be busy with only that, just one client, and then the ARR is also very high. So I think we are actually a bit moving away from setting two strict targets on having like 5 million ARR or 6 million ARR, but rather looking at the customer accounts from strategic importance. How many growth opportunities do we have at the customer and how big a share of the product portfolio are they utilizing today? And we are looking at those aspects and we are trying then to balance out how many accounts one CSM should manage. So it's a bit different today than compared to what it was a few years back.

Speaker 1: 15:31

But it's great to see how the amount of products you have it really gives CSMs opportunity to grow the accounts and be completely responsible for them. Tell me about their quotas, because my understanding is that your team is commercial. They have quotas on the team level. So tell me a bit more about when. Did you even start introducing the commercial aspect for CSM role. Was there any transition? Was it like that from the very beginning of the team? And how do you make sure that the team is really achieving the quotas? Like there's so much for us to talk about here. Yeah, let's start with one question, obviously. Yeah, how commercial are they? What does it mean for your team?

Speaker 2: 16:17

Yeah, for sure. I think you know the organization has been up and running now for a bit more than four years and I think it was one of the things that we maybe discussed the most when we were setting up the team, that you know what kind of metrics should this team have and should they be measured on, let's say, more traditional sales metrics as well, in addition to these traditional customer success metrics as satisfaction and net retention, right, and I think for me at least personally, it was clear from the beginning that to be able to have a team that actually drives value, independently on what kind of business situation we are in, because, let's face it, it's very easy to get a lot of investments for your customer success team when times are good and the markets are flowing and everyone are doing business, and then you can hire quite a lot of people. But then again, in more tough times, I think customer success teams are quite traditionally also teams that then get questioned that are you actually adding value to the company? Why do you need that many CSMs, for an example? And I think that is natural and I think that is a question that every leader should get in the business when times are tough. That, are you adding value and how do we ensure that every person in the organization is moving the bottom line? So for me, because I always want to ensure that my teams are moving the bottom line, that we are impacting the strategy and that we are known for doing things that helps our business grow I think that is extremely important if you work with customers.

Speaker 2: 17:51

So I had that as one of the prerequisites as well when we started talking about the role that, if I take on this role and we start building this new organization, it's important for me that we measure the CSMs on sales metrics as well, and I think how we have built it is that we differentiate between upsell and cross-sell, and upsell is when we enlargen the scope of the customer within the current product scheme where they are in, so it can be adding functionality or adding features within the product area where the customer already is. And I think that is the absolute sweet spot for CSMs, because you need to be very pre-sales in your approach. You need to build a business case, you need to show the added value, you need to be able to measure the value it's quite mathematical and you have to be also able to monetize that value to the customer and also be able to communicate that well. And since CSMs are quite good in the product as well, they can do that deep dive, like a pre-sales consultant almost, and go and showcase that value to the customer. So we have built a quota that is related to upsell. So how much upsell is the team delivering?

Speaker 2: 19:04

And note that I say team level quota because I don't personally believe yet this can change. Customer success is changing, the world is changing, but I don't believe that CSMs at the moment should have individual level sales quotas because that will drive, I think, the wrong kind of behavior and then that will make the team just chase sales cycles when you actually want them to work long term. And that's why I think a team level quote on upsell is excellent, because you will have a good result that will impact the company growth. And that's why that upsell quota should be on a team level and not on an individual level, should be on a team level and not on an individual level.

Speaker 1: 20:04

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Speaker 1: 20:55

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Speaker 1: 21:37

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Speaker 2: 22:24

We actually do as well. Yes, so we call them customer testimonials, and I think that is something that we are really proud of as Relaxians. That's from day one, almost in our business history, we have had customers that have been willing to talk about their results and talk about the value that they are achieving from the solution, and this is something that I think is also a perfect metric for any customer success team. So showcase and have a numeral target around advocacy stories, or customer testimonials as we call them, where the customer is showcasing and talking about the value that they have achieved. Oh, absolutely, because they are the value that they have achieved.

Speaker 1: 23:04

Oh, absolutely, because they are the best sellers of your product and when you start creating super funds, the job of CSMs is just so much easier. Plus, I like, as you said, you have community within your team as well. More than ever before now, communities of customers are important and I believe your customers love to get in touch with one, with each other, and meet and exchange some of the best practices, and CSMs, again, are best positioned to bring those stories and bring those connections to customers as well, as they are best positioned, as you said, to upsell on the current or existing offerings. Already, okay, they are responsible for upsells. What are other metrics or part of their quotas?

Speaker 2: 23:50

So then, if we look into the kind of like cross-sell area, which typically I would say that is of course a pure sales metric, and when we talk about cross-sell, then we mean that we are extending the product scope of the customer vertically to other product areas than what they are being implemented to today.

Speaker 2: 24:10

And this of course means, you know, there are new decision makers, the sales cycle is more, or there are new decision makers, the sales cycle is more or less like a new sales cycle, and I think these are the cases where customer success should be the ones qualifying the sales lead for the organization.

Speaker 2: 24:25

So, you know, building relationships, expanding relationships, finding the right people, doing those initial presentations and understanding is the customer interested and how we've been able to kind of like capture the interest of the customer because we can showcase them again, added value by going into new product verticals. So here we actually have a quota that is related more to qualified process and leads, and with a qualified lead we of course mean the customer has a budget, there is a timeline, we have access to decision makers and the customers have shown willingness. There is a compelling event for them to actually go in and start the cycle with us. So here we are again, targeting the CSMs on creating a qualified pipeline in cross-sell that is value-added and that is real, so to say. But after that case is qualified, we hand it over to the sales organization. There are two types of commercial metrics the ones that we are driving to closure ourselves and the ones where we are more working on qualifying cross-sell leads for the sales organization.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Okay, that's interesting. So how do you determine which ones are for CSMs to close and which ones are passed over to sales?

Speaker 2: 25:38

We have different levels of, let's say, monetary value. So there are some thresholds that when a deal becomes big, or when because sometimes it can be a bit blurry also is it upsell or cross-sell or something in between. And I think in the the end, we all as leaders have to ensure that we are doing decisions that are, you know, the best for the company. So here we shouldn't try to optimize, you know, personal benefits or or or trying to keep a deal in the customer success team just because, uh, we, we, we, you know, can or or want to showcase what we can do. But we always need to take decisions that are best for the company.

Speaker 2: 26:16

But here I would advise all kinds of business leaders that you still should have a compensation model that is fair. So if your CSMs are contributing to growth they are bringing forward these really high quality, qualified leads to the sales organization, they are helping and doing a lot of that heavy lifting you should also compensate them for doing that. I think the times are ended where CSMs are just giving a thank you for doing a good job. We should actually pay them commissions for working and contributing to these sales metrics, for sure I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Very often, as you said, well, thank you is good. They even get thank you. Very often there is almost nothing and so much work goes behind the scenes.

Speaker 2: 27:11

So what is your comp structure for the team at the moment? Yeah, so I would say that we have a three-folded comp structure, not maybe going into details, but all of the CSMs in the organization have a base salary, obviously. Then there is an annual bonus model for everyone that is related both to customer success metrics, financial metrics, and then more traditional sales metrics. And then, as a third component, we have the sales commissions that are then paid if either these upsell cases are closed or if they are contributing to building cross-sell pipeline. So those are the three components, which is, I think, also quite motivating for our team members, because they can really impact their earnings as well by adding value to the company.

Speaker 1: 27:55

And that's a win-win for everybody. It's not only selling, but it is really all based on the value and the relationship that they create with customers and again, celebrating those customers through testimonials and referrals. That is also part of their responsibility. That's wonderful. How do they perform? How does your team feel about being commercial CSM?

Speaker 2: 28:20

I think you know nowadays we're already on the fourth year of the strategy and I know building the team and I think now we have an organization where everyone are feeling that they are in the right place and they are working on the right things and they are contributing to growth. I think it was quite challenging, of course, in the beginning, during the first year, it was a big change. Let's put it like that. It was a big change because we ramped down account management on a company level as well, so we don't have separate account managers anymore. We have sales executives and then we have CSMs, but that account manager role doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 2: 28:55

And, of course, it was a big change for CSMs, who are maybe more traditionally working with more dissatisfaction and, let's say, the soft metrics of CS, to actually move in and being now responsible and being measured on more hard metrics as well.

Speaker 2: 29:10

And I think at that point you just need to be really open and honest people and say that this is what we are expecting from you. This is how we think that the role can add value to the company, and do you see yourself being a part of this role? And if not, then we are more than happy to discuss some other role in the company where you can use your strengths. So I think we had to have those conversations, especially in the beginning, to ensure that everyone knows what is expected from them and that they are motivated and see themselves adding value in the role as well. But I would say nowadays it's quite clear and I think the teams are super motivated and they are performing extremely well, and during the last four years we have been, I think, overachieving our targets every year, which has been really nice to see, and I'm really proud of my teams as well.

Speaker 1: 30:00

Congrats on that. I would be curious to know for every CSM that was going through the transition and had a chance to have a conversation did you notice any patterns of responses? In a way, if somebody didn't feel that they could do a commercial role, what would be the reason, whether they felt that they lacked skills or that they are not even interested in having those conversations or they need more training. Was there any pattern or how smooth was it?

Speaker 2: 30:33

Good question. I think typically people have a perception about what sales is. They think it's something scary, they think it's something you have to push on your customer. They kind of like somehow reflect on sales being cold calling and getting rejected and people think that is really scary. When I think a lot of those things we could battle by actually explaining that when we talk about customer success, when we talk about sales, it's actually getting and becoming a BFF with the customer. It is working long term with your customers and how rewarding it is when the customer comes to you and says, hey, you did a really good job, we're so happy with the solution, it helps us scale and grow our business tremendously and at the same time, you have been there as their trusted advisor and showcasing them how they can continue on that journey and what other areas they can explore together with us. And that's me sales.

Speaker 2: 31:34

So I think a lot of that was just like turning around a misperception of what sales means and when people understood that. But yeah, if this is sales, then I want to do that. I think that was a positive turnaround in many of those conversations. But of course we also had a few conversations where you know when laying it out honestly that this is the expectations and this is the way you're going to be measured. Then someone said, okay, this is not for me, and I really appreciate that as well, and I think it's super important that everyone, as professionals, are being honest to themselves as well, that where do you have your passion and what do you want to work with in the future as well and it's really a wonderful exercise of self-awareness and what people understand that they want to do as their role or they don't want to do, and it's great you all provided them an opportunity to have a choice.

Speaker 1: 32:30

Recently I've been doing lots of work with just coaching CSMs about the mindset shift, as you said very often, that perception of oh my gosh, I don't want to be salesy, I don't want to be pushy. I'm like am I doing cold calls? I don't want that many rejection, how am I going to do it? But at the end, csms are best positioned to sell and there's nothing wrong in selling and customers. Most of the time customers expect CSM to just tell them this is what we have new, right, or I see this is where you're making so much value for your business. We feel that this other solution would help you even more right. It's just really about matching the value that they are getting with the solutions and hopefully CSMs listening could get the feeling that, yes, once you're already, but once you keep delivering the value and customers continuously see the impact, they want more. They just want more and more and they want to build your products more and they just want more of that impact. It's nothing to shy away from, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 33:36

And I mean it's about having conversations with your customers. It's about having regular conversations where you talk about things that will improve the life of your customers. And then, of course, you know there is a piece where you have to know contract structures, you have to be good in negotiations and communications and things like that. But I think those are skills that can be taught and I think that's also what we need to do really well as customer success leaders to give our CSM sales training, because they don't know how to do sales tasks by themselves. So it has to be a strong sense of you know we invest in training and give that training constantly, because knowledge gets old as well. A strong sense of you know we invest in training and give that training constantly, because knowledge gets old as well. So you can't just get sales training once and then you know everything in sales. But it has to be constant and you have to help your CSMs to grow over time as well.

Speaker 1: 34:26

And it's such a great call out. When you expect CSMs to really be driving revenue, you do have to provide them with equal opportunities when it comes to training and development, as you do typically for sales team. As we are wrapping up, emma, one question I'm really interested to find out from you. Your team is working obviously very closely with customers. It's almost on a consultancy basis. They are their business partners. They know what's best for them. How do you help CSMs to build that business acumen that is really needed for them to have commercial awareness and just commercial responsibilities with the customers?

Speaker 2: 35:07

You know I think it starts from that each and every CSM needs to research their customers and you have to understand you know the concept of research their customers and you have to understand the concept of profit and loss. And you have to understand and be able to read a financial statement of your customers. So basically going in and understanding how is my customer doing financially? Are they growing? Are they profitable? What is driving their business? What is the key strategies of the company for the next year or for the next five years? And I think it's quite amazing that you know always. You don't get all of the details from a financial statement, but when you actually ask the customer, what are you planning on doing for the next five years, they will tell you. But if you never ask the question, you will never get the answer either.

Speaker 2: 35:50

I think this is the mindset we need to get to the CSM.

Speaker 2: 35:54

So you need to study your customers, you need to do research, you need to understand what's driving their business and how they are performing financially and then also you need to understand the customer business from the company perspective.

Speaker 2: 36:06

So is this customer profitable? What is driving growth and profits in my customer accounts and how does that split out on my customer portfolio? So you cannot be a good CSM if you don't understand how your customer portfolio is actually performing. And I think that's what we need to focus on a lot with the CSMs that if you get that groundwork right, then you have the kind of like business acumen and the right understanding of okay, this is how my portfolio is performing now. Where do I have the growth opportunities which customer will impact profitability in a positive way? Where do I get the best kind of customer testimonials which will then lead to me going in and presenting these testimonials to another customer who is interested in this topic is interesting in this topic. So you have to be really strategic and look holistically of your portfolio and be able to attach kind of like actions on the customers to metrics on the business level.

Speaker 1: 37:02

That's, I guess, probably a wonderful explanation of business argument that we had on podcast so far. Thank you, thank you for sharing this. I really like your emphasis on both. It is always two ways. You have to understand your customer. What works for them, who are their customers, what do they even do, and in so much more detail when you say it's reading financial statements to. On another hand, basically running your own business or running your own race, as you said at the beginning, as a CSM, just understanding your portfolio of customers, be very strategic about it, like, what do I do with each of these customers next quarter or in the next six months? Where do I do testimonials? Where do I do apps? All right, and you can plan your portfolio like that. So, emma, what would you advise CSMs? Where to start with that research about their customers? Simply because you know Google is a big world out there. What works well for your CSMs? Is there any top three resources that you would recommend? I mean?

Speaker 2: 38:06

I always say what you can't Google doesn't exist, right.

Speaker 2: 38:09

So start with Googling, but go into the company's homepages.

Speaker 2: 38:12

They have all of the information available there. If they are a publicly listed company, so you can just go and download the financial statements from their homepages, right? And then, of course, if you are a more, let's say developed company, there are, of course, services that you can buy as well, where you can get this information also as a service of different companies, so you can get this information also as a service of different companies, so you can buy that information as well. But I would say, 99% of the time, you can find what you're searching up from Google or from the company's homepages. What I also want to underline here is you know, gather that information into a CRM or your customer success tool, so don't just read about it and forget it, but this is the business data that you need to store somewhere. So, on at least a quarterly level or at least an annual level, twice a year, I would say, you need to go in and check your customers' information and update the CRF and have all of the information there.

Speaker 1: 39:09

I love that you're putting that responsibility on CSMs and I agree If you want to know your customers, make sure that you do that homework and that you're putting that responsibility on CSMs, and I agree If you want to know your customers, make sure that you do that homework and that you update your system, because it is in your favor.

Speaker 2: 39:21

Maria, maybe one last comment as well. I just wanted to touch upon what you said earlier and I think we need to be viewing our CSMs as entrepreneurs of their own businesses, right so? And entrepreneurs are CEOs, and CEOs drive profit and loss and they drive main strategy, and that's the mindset that you want to have in your CSMs. They are entrepreneurs owning their business and they are impacting that and driving the bottom line. So that would be my advice to the listeners of this podcast as well.

Speaker 1: 39:51

There is nothing to add to that. Be an entrepreneur of your own business. Thank you so much for coming to the show, Emma.

Speaker 2: 39:58

Thank you so much, maria, appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 40:02

Thank you for listening. Next week new episode, Subscribe to the podcast and connect with me on LinkedIn so you're up to date with all the new episodes and the content I'm curating for you. Have a great day and talk to you soon.