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How early do you involve Customer Success in the sales cycle, and for which deal types or segments?

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4 Answers
Customer Success / Sales Alignment
  1. John Brunkard
    John Brunkard

    Salamander Advisory Customer Success Advisor | Formerly Adobe, Sitecore, Red Hat, Symantec, Blue Coat, Intel, Dell, Dialogic • 6mo

    I suggest that there are two completely different playbooks depending on whether it’s an existing customer or a new logo. Existing customers (expansion / upsell / cross-sell) The CSM owns discovery and qualification – they are closest to the account and surface the majority of the best opportunities. Once the opportunity is qualified, the CSM hands it to Sales to run and close. The CSM stays actively involved (attends key calls, advises on use cases, pricing objections, stakeholder map, required ...Read More

    433 Views
  2. Natasha Evans
    Natasha Evans

    Hook VP Customer Growth • 7mo

    I LOVE this question!!If I had the resource, I'd involved CS in every deal pre-sales. But sadly, I don't think any of us do. So we try to get involved in as many of the Enterprise deals as we possibly can. This usually looks like 1 of 2 things, occasionally both:1. An overview of post-sales partnership. Run by me, or by a CSM/AM in my team. This helps the customer get a feel for what the experience will be like with us after becoming a customer, but also helps us with building a connection and r ...Read More

    498 Views
  3. Aishwarya Dwivedi
    Aishwarya Dwivedi

    Adobe Director Customer Strategy & Success • 2mo

    Customer Success is involved early across all deal types to ensure alignment from the outset.

    CS engages during solutioning to align on business outcomes, define success criteria, and shape the path to long-term value. In close partnership with Sales, CS also helps refine use cases, informs adoption strategy, and preps for a seamless onboarding, early wins, and accelerated time to value.

    352 Views
  4. Conor Holmes
    Conor Holmes

    Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • May 27

    While the ideal is to involve Customer Success as early as possible, doing it universally burns out the CS team. To help frame decisions to map CS involvement strictly based on deal complexity, segment, and post-sale resource requirements, below is an example framework; Enterprise / High-Complexity Segment (Involved Pre-Sale: 3/4's way through the deal cycle) The Trigger: Deals requiring custom Professional Services, heavy integrations, or where the AE hands over full relationship ownership post ...Read More

    384 Views

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