This is a Playbook. Playbooks are strategic resources intended to help you take action in your Customer Success career, and they are only available for Insiders.
You’re great at your job, customers like working with you.
But they’re not really taking your advice, because they don’t see you as a strategic advisor.
That is a solvable problem.
I made this transition years ago, when I moved from Customer Support to Customer Success, and I’ve coached many Customer Success Managers to do the same. The shift to Strategic Advisor is a skill you develop and a practice you get better at over time.
There are three things Strategic Advisors understand: how to read and build trust, how to navigate power dynamics, and how to develop the insight that makes your advice worth taking.
How does your customer perceive you?
A CSM newly promoted from Support was struggling to get a customer to implement her advice. It was proven to work with other customers, and the customer wasn’t pushing back, they just weren’t implementing, and time was passing without improved results.
I asked her: how does this customer see you? Do they trust your expertise on strategy? What is different about this customer, and the customer that did implement your advice?
In comparing the two customers, we came to understand that each had a different perception of her role in the relationship, and that she hadn’t yet built the right trust in her expertise for this customer to take her advice seriously.
Strategic Advisors are constantly aware of the level of trust they have built with a customer, and how that trust affects whether their advice will be considered and acted on.
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