How to Break Into Tech as Customer Success Manager

Searching for a Customer Success Role, even using this newsletter, it can feel like there’s no way to become a CSM without experience as a CSM. For a typical B2B SaaS, this is mostly true: they don’t really value experience other than managing a customer lifecycle or closing a renewal, because that’s all they need from you.

However: there are highly specialized companies these days that need their CSM to bring learned experience and industry knowledge in order to properly manage the customer lifecycle or closing the renewal, and that’s where you can come in.

Why your industry experience matters

I worked at a company that sold to Sales teams. Our primarily buyers were sales leaders, and our primary users were SDRs and AEs. I came in as a practiced CSM, experienced with a product that worked similarly. I learned the product and the processes quickly, but by far the biggest learning curve for me was understanding our customers. I didn’t really know much about working with corporate Sales teams.

My dear friend and teammate came in the opposite way: he had worked as both an SDR and an SDR Manager actually at a customer of ours. He knew the product not just from best practices but from using it every day, and managing people that use it every day.

We leaned on each other heavily — while I could help operationally, he helped me with the jargon, he helped me understand the incentives and KPIs our customers were being measured on, and that Sales people like to negotiate everything. Even with my experience, I would have gone into customer interactions all wrong without that insider knowledge. And our team leadership understood this.

Lived experience can’t be replicated, and customers sniff out phony CSM behavior in a second. Industry experience brings an authenticity to the whole team that directly translates into revenue.

How to find the right role as a CSM

What’s your industry experience? No matter what, there is probably a company out there, serving people like you.

CSMs are usually found at companies with a subscription model, so start there: what software are you using day-to-day? What software is popular in your industry?

Let’s go through some examples:

Film & TV Customer Success Manager - Wrapbook
Remote | $74,000 - $100,800 Base

This Wrapbook job posting says specifically: “We are seeking an experienced Film and Television Paymaster to join our world class Customer Success team.” It calls for “3+ years of experience as a film and television paymaster with the ability to break timecards” and does not list any specific Customer Success experience.

This kind of role is exactly what I’m talking about: they' are looking for specific industry knowledge, and decided that it’s easier to teach this person how to do Customer Success than teach an experienced CSM what it’s like to be a paymaster."

Customer Success Manager - Arcadia
Remote

This role is specifically looking for vendor-side experience in IT, preferably in IT for healthcare.

Customer Success Manager - Olo
Remote | $54,668 - $78,377 Base

This role values restaurant experience equally with SaaS experience, so could be perfect for someone hoping to get into tech from restaurants.

Senior Technical Customer Success Manager - Recharge
Remote

This role values brand-side ecommerce experience equally to SaaS ecommerce experience.

Associate Customer Success Manager - Age of Learning
Remote

This role values in-classroom or administration experience equally to Edtech experience.

Other Journeys

If these roles seem out of reach, another strategy may be to target other roles at these companies, like Product Support or Business Development, where you can get your foot in the door and get promoted into Customer Success, but that’s an article for a different time.

Next Steps

I know these roles can be hard to find — this article took me quite some time to put together! I’ve created a quick survey, so you can let me know what industries I should be paying attention to for you.