What is the best way for CS reps to manage relationships with accounts where the "champions" are always changing and the value of your business is always having to be restated to knew employees?

This is a tough one. I generally view these as “lite sales cycle” which it sounds like you do as well. If the account is large enough - a multi-level engagement strategy extending 1-2 management layers above your main champion would help.

I would also ask why these champions are changing - is the position being passed around in the organization because no one wants to own it? If so, why? Is it too time consuming? If so, perhaps there’s a way to reduce how time consuming it is or advocate for a dedicated role.

When it comes to maintaining positive relationships with customers – especially if your champion has changed and you need to restate your value proposition – I always think about three things as related to customer touchpoints:

1. You have to be intentional about building out a level of service that ensures every customer feels heard. It’s important to be as accessible as possible to your customers, especially as we navigate an uncertain market. At Salesloft, for example, we host live office hours every weekday, giving customers a guaranteed opportunity to speak live with someone on the CS team if they need to troubleshoot or discuss best practices, and receive answers in real-time. Additionally, something as small as ensuring your webcam is on when meeting with customers is another way to elevate their CS experience.
2. Create high-value, high-impact touchpoints. All your customers will have different needs, and if your champion changes, you likely need to adjust. Talk to your customers directly about their potential problems and specific needs and create touchpoints that provide them with the value they care about. There is nothing better than building out a success plan with your customer and then showing them how you’re going to get to the value that they care about.
3. Expand your definition of memorable experiences. People emerged from a pandemic era ready to connect and network once more. Whether in-person, or virtually, there are plenty of opportunities to create networking opportunities between you and your customers. As remote work continues to become the standard for many, the teams and partners we work with are more distributed than ever – sometimes even across continents – but there is plenty of opportunity to nourish these relationships from afar.

A champion changing regularly is a challenge and risk factor, but over-reliance on one individual is the problem. In an ideal situation, there is a clear, mutually agreed-upon value-driven reason why the customer purchased the product. I would suggest finding a way to capture this early in the opportunity close process. One of the core responsibilities of the CS rep is to be able to multi-thread within a customer account, i.e. interacting with more folks than just the champion. My suggestion to manage this issue would be on multiple levels;

• Capture the problem you are solving and the value statement the solution is solving for early in the engagement process and ensure this is made aware to multiple customer contacts.

• Introduce an executive sponsor from your organisation into the customer to bridge above the champion as a connection point (more relevant in Enterprise CS vs Commercial or PLG)

• Have a valuable cadence that brings multiple stakeholders from the customer organisation together to understand the value of the solution of your offering. Is there a regular readout you can provide that demonstrates this?

• Work with marketing on the campaigns you could run to drive additional engagement advocacy within the account.

The most important part: do not be single-threaded. Make sure you build connections with multiple people at the organization. Ask your champion who else you should talk with. If you struggle to get the champion to divulge that, share tidbits, insights, and other recommendations so your champion wants to carry those into the organization. From there, run EBRs with your champion and slowly, over time, build the trust to ask for other contacts. Ask again. During the renewal cycle, get in front of procurement, other executives, and users. As a CSM, you can also try to network with power users as another way to get involved in the company — reach out to them and solicit their feedback and product requests! From there, try to get connected with the champion, decision maker, and executive sponsor — that could be the same person or multiple persons.