What type of skill sets and experiences do I need to build in order to strengthen my career and move from being a Sr. customer success manager to Director level and above?

Here are some core skills:

- Being an established expert in your field or are you making an attempt to get there with certifications, answering questions in your community, answering internal questions, etc?

- Being cross-functional with sales, services, support and product counterparts

- Work in lock-step with your sales counterparts for renewals, upsells and cross-sells. Have your sales team vouch for you!

- Thriving in the face of a challenge: Does your leadership trust you to give you the most demanding customers because they know you will turn them around?

- Operational excellence: How do you stand out? Are you able to call out organizational barriers that are stopping the customer from delivering value? Are you helping your customers achieve ROI?

- Process excellence: Are you following all the processes laid down by your leaders?

- Metrics over-achievement: Are you over-achieving your metrics?

- Team mentoring: Are you helping your immediate team members and your broader team in the face of a technical or strategic challenge? Do you take the time out for mentoring? Are you an established expert in your field or are you making an attempt to get there with certifications, answering questions in your community, answering internal questions, etc?

I am assuming this is while maintaining an individual contributor role.

• Consistently meet and exceed your KPIs. 

• Be the go to person for Customer Success within your organization. Mentor and Coach other CSM team members globally. Be the subject matter expert within your department for all matters related to customer success. Proactively share best practices and learnings across the department. 

• Leadership skills - motivate and inspire others in the team. Support management in driving continuous improvement for the organization. Be a champion for process enhancement and organizational development.

• Strategic Thinking: Understand the market, identifying trends, and anticipating future challenges and opportunities. Be at the forefront of industry best practices and knowledge for customer success. Introduce these as appropriate into your organization. Be proactive in identifying opportunities for improvement in your company and take ownership in driving these changes.

• Business Acumen - consistently take on larger,  more complex and demanding accounts. Develop in depth relationships and engage effectively with top management and C-Suite executives within your company and also your assigned accounts. Have high credibility with these leaders and be the ambassador for your company.

There are a number of key skills that will assist in making the transition from Senior CS Manager to Director+, that range from strategic thinking and decision making to leadership and critical thinking however I will elaborate on three of the core soft skills which have a high propensity to positively impact career development in the context of CS.

• Change management - change is constant and effective change management is a highly valuable skill for leaders at any level and especially for senior leaders who are responsible for large teams or departments. Yet despite this many leaders struggle in this area. Leaning into change management and investing in building your skills set here is worthwhile investment. You can gain change management experience by offering to work on strategic change initiatives or projects across the business or within your current team or department and can also develop your skillset through more targeted learning such as this great Udemy course .

• Cross functional alignment and collaboration - Building great cross functional relationships may seem like an obvious skill for any role however it is critical in customer success as the quality of customer experience is largely dependant on how effectively internal teams and stakeholders collaborate and work together. Stretching your cross functional collaboration muscle allows you to build your network, gives you a more holistic understanding of how the business works and ultimately enables you to have greater impact and influence.

• Growth Mindset - Cultivating a growth mindset allows you to embrace challenges as opportunities as opposed to obstacles, to seek feedback and learn from others regularly which is critical as you progress in your career and to maintain a high level of adaptability - developing growth mindset as a skill is quite broad and requires a combination of attitude shift, behaviour change and regular practices that together build the capability. Some tactics that have helped me personally with growth mindset are approaching situations with curiosity first and flipping the narrative on setbacks or failures so that I view them as learning opportunities and something which fuels growth.

Some things to consider:

• Able to influence internally at all levels of your organization

• Able to build rapport with customers at different levels in their organization

• Look at problems and solutions from a “outcomes” viewpoint first (what are we solving for)

• Break problems down to bite size pieces and systematically solve 

• Use data to back up hypotheses

• Create questions/draw conclusions from data

• Proactively lead projects/process improvements, be a resource to others

It sounds like you’re asking about how you move from being an individual contributor to being a people manager.

The first thing I’ll say is that people management is not for everyone! There are plenty of career growth opportunities in Customer Success as an IC. That said, some of the reasons you might want to be a manager in CS are:

1. You want to help others grow

2. You want to expand your impact

3. You want a new challenge

As a hiring manager, I would focus on internal candidates first if I’m considering a first-time CS manager.

With that in mind, here are some things I consider about in CSMs who want to move into people management:

1. Are you already acting like a leader? Does the team already see you as a leader? There are many opportunities to assume informal leadership roles in most CS orgs. Maybe there’s a project you can lead? Maybe there are some more junior team members you can mentor? I would actively seek out these types of opportunities to develop your leadership abilities and gain recognition. 

2. Do you have an opinion on how you can improve the business? Do you have ideas on how you can drive improvement across your team? Proactively share these with your manager if you haven’t already. 

3. How have you performed as a CSM? Are you on top of your metrics? Do you XFN peers have positive feedback? 

4. Can you advocate for Customer Success? Are you able to effectively advocate for your customers and team across the business?