What should a CSM focus on in regards to leveling up in their career?

The two areas I would recommend are 1) Sharpening your Sales skills and 2) Adopting some Product Manager mindsets. 

When working with customers and the further upmarket you go, the more enriched these conversations need to be and the immediate areas for many customers are to understand their contracts, how they can scale with your product, value alignment, and ROI. Supplementing this, customers want to know how your product will be evolving and how their feedback can influence the roadmap. Being able to cut right to the value of a product, requirements, outcomes, and how those align with the customer's values will set your customer and Product teams up for mutual success!

I am assuming this question is about career progression and movement to the next grade level. You should have a growth mindset and a desire to continuously improve, develop and learn. Here are some areas to consider focussing on.

1. Focus on results that matter for your current role (OKRs / MBOs) and look to exceed expectations on KPIs. Demonstrate the positive impact you are having for your company in what you do.

2. Develop a deep understanding of your customers, understand their goals and pain points and articulate how your company is helping them to achieve outcomes and obtain value. Be highly engaged with the right stakeholders in your customer base and be advocating on their behalf

3. Develop your leadership skills: To move to a higher level, your leadership skills will become more important. Take the initiative to lead projects (the more visible and impactful the better). Be available to mentor / coach others on your team. Have a clear understanding of your team's strengths and weaknesses and work to improve their performance. Step up to own areas that need improvement and drive change.

4. Expand your knowledge and skills: As the customer success function evolves, so must your knowledge and skills. Keep up to date with industry trends and best practices, and seek out opportunities to learn new skills. Apply what you have learned to improve your team / department / function.

Levelling up will also mean ensuring you consistently deliver excellent work against your core competencies in your role. If you are unsure whether you are doing this, ask your colleagues and manager for feedback. Make sure you put in regular reviews to discuss this if the company doesn't have a cadence.

My main suggestion to level up is to focus on developing business acumen. Understanding how the business works will help you tie your day-to-day activities to outcomes and impact on the business.

On top of the above, where I have seen CSM's levelling up is;

• Cross-functional engagement against a customer problem - Identify opportunities to drive a significantly positive impact for customers and ask if you can lead or bring together a team to help drive that initiative. It's rare that outsized impact will be driven by a CSM alone and will probably require support from other functions.

• Ask for opportunities - Levelling up is about demonstrating that you can act at the next level or above. Your manager needs to be aware that that's your ambition, so make sure you work with them to drive a plan.

Some of the things I would focus on to up level my CS career:

Sales Skills - Developing your sales skills will really elevate you as a CSM. Your ability to influence and strategically drive a conversation to mutually beneficial outcomes is the key to your effectiveness as a CSM. 

Understand How You Are Measured - You need to fundamentally understand how your individual performance is measured and be able to effectively tie that into your day-to-day activities.

Leadership Skills - Leadership skills are not just for formal managers! Your ability to lead others through your influence and expertise is key to your advancement in your career. 

Product Expertise - This goes beyond just understanding how the product works, but you should fully understand how the product solves your customer's problems. The better you understand both of these, the better you can advocate to the product team about the features or product changes you need. 

Understanding value creation in every activity you engage in. If you don't, you will be seen as a cost center.

For example, at the customer's strategy level, learn about how your services and products create value for customer's business strategy. At the day-to-day level, learn to understand what brings value to your client and convey it in every customer engagement. Can start by the simplest action where you avoid stating the obvious and provide insights on deliverables whether it'd be onboarding, product knowledge, operation policies, etc.

In terms of CSM certifications, there is no point completing courses just to add more credentials under your belt, unless, you're going to demonstrate what you've learned.

Practice what you've learned and record the results even the impact isn't that great. It will create a platform for you to review and grow your experience.

Lastly, hone salesmanship as CSMs are the closest to customers, we stand a good chance to bring in revenue to our company. Some XaaS companies do not tie Sales/Revenue KPIs to CS, thus if you're in it, it's a good opportunity for you to pitch change for revenue-holding CSM function.