There is nothing more powerful than a mouse in the house to engage, inspire, align, and move me to act. With winter in full force in Colorado, for some reason mice are relocating inside my warm house. When my wife noticed the droppings under her favorite chair, she quickly engaged me to take action. I was definitely inspired to make her happy and we both aligned with the need to set traps. I moved quickly to cut the cheese. Unfortunately, SaaS companies can’t unleash a mouse to inspire their customers to rollout their service in a timely manner. Instead, companies use Customer Success Managers (CSMs). If CSMs are the single greatest asset a company has for ensuring successful customer adoption of a service, I wonder what companies are doing in 2016 to maximize the value of these employees?
The Colorado Customer Success group surveyed companies about their plans for 2016 and over 80% said soft skill training for CSMs is either on the list or needed yesterday!
But what do companies mean by “soft skills” training? Do we call it “soft” because we don’t want the training to sound “hard?” Luckily the same survey asked what specific soft skills training is needed.
Considering the above answers, it appears companies need CSMs that can "engage, inspire, align and move people to act." In fact, this is the same wording one would use for the job description of a CEO. The industry calls this “executive presence” and this skill set is just as important for CSMs. Learn more about executive presence at http://www.bates-communications.com.
Best practices in Customer Success point to the importance of a comprehensive on-boarding process for new customers that includes effective training. But how many Customer Success Managers receive a similar on-boarding process with executive presence training in their first year with a company?
No doubt the challenges facing your company in 2016 are numerous. With scare resources and limited time, soft skills training often falls down the priority list. A CFO once asked the company CEO: “what would happen if the company trained the staff and they all left.” The wise CEO replied by asking: “what would happen if we don’t train staff and they stay?” Unfortunately, you can’t train a mouse to do this work, so let’s cut the cheese, organize executive presence training for the CSM team, and grow your businesses this year.
