Looking to get hired as a customer success
manager? Already working as a CSM but want to see if you have these skills? Whether you
want to be a CSM or you're already a customer success professional these five skills will
make you stand out. At Wahl+Case we've helped people land jobs at some of the biggest names
in Tech. In fact, Customer Success Manager is one of the positions I've personally helped
my clients with the most. I also spoke with our director Milos about what his clients are
looking for in the customer success managers they hire. Here are the top five skills that
get people hired as customer success managers. There's a lot to cover so let's get started. #1
sales skills or technical skills or both. People who get customer success jobs generally come
from two backgrounds either a sales background or a technical background. Let's start with sales
skills. This one may seem a bit counter-intuitive because in our sales guide I specifically said
that a CSM doesn't have sales targets, but part of your role will be to cross-sell and upsell new
features. This means you need to know how to use empathetic listening to understand your clients
needs and how your product will solve their pain points. Here's Milos talking about why sales
skills are important for a CSM. How do I know? Sales skills are basically skills of understanding
the current situation, environment, the person that you are talking to, their needs, their
problems. Skills of listening and understanding are crucial for working as a CSM, so they can
provide better service later on to their clients. How can you get good at sales if you're not
client facing? Here are some strategies on how to build these skills. Sales is not
just selling. Think back to your week, have you had to ask someone for a favor?
I'm betting you did and so did Dan Pink author of To Sell is Human a book that gives
strategies on how to make selling more huma. Give it a read or a listen to get started
on your sales journey. Ask More Questions. Today sales is more about empathy than ever before
so you need to hone your listening skills. How do you do that? By asking more open-ended questions.
Questions like how do you feel about that? What is on your mind and what else? You will be surprised
at how much people are actually willing to share. We'll dive deeper into this concept in the section
on coaching. Learn to Influence sales can be seen as exerting influence, so why not read the
book on just that? Influence the Psychology of Persuasion. Robert Cialdini wrote this book to
raise awareness on the tactics that sales people are using to influence us so it's a great place to
start. Technical Background. Many customer success positions will be at least somewhat technical. You
need to have in-depth product knowledge and the competency to communicate that expertise. Here's
Milos to explain why this is so vital for a CSM. The reason why technical background
is important for CSM is they need to understand technology. You need to have
in-depth knowledge about your own product, but also other products and the whole sector or
whole industry so that you can diversify between what you are doing and what others are doing;
what you are better at what you are worse at. Ideally you'd be working in a technical
position to develop this background, but if not, here are some places that you can learn code.
Code Chrysalis. I maybe a bit biased because we have worked with them in the past, but we've
helped their graduates get the kind of positions you're looking for. There are other coding boot
camps but I highly suggest you give them a shot. YouTube. Okay you probably could have seen this
one coming, but there are dozens of free coding courses on YouTube. In the description you'll
find a playlist of great beginner coding courses to help get things rolling. Product Demos. Many
SaaS, is it SaaS? I say "sauce" because it has two A's. You say SaaS? Many SaaS Solutions offer
product demos. If there's a company you would like to work for go straight to the source request
a demo and spend time getting familiar with the actual product you want to be working with.
On to number 2. #2 Customer Obsession. Customer obsession is probably the most obvious skill.
In fact, it's part of Amazon's 14 leadership principles. Customer obsession is not exclusive
to working in customer success but it is one of the core skills that you need to get hired as a
CSM. Think about how you've gone above and beyond for your customers, if you're a B2B tool this can
be your direct customer or the end user. Be sure to track the ways that you're able to improve
the customer experience and how you've adapted your service to the needs of your customers. A
big part of the CSM skill set is predicting the problems that your clients might encounter
down the road and preventing them from even happening. This combines product knowledge and
empathetic listening into what Amazon has dubbed "Customer Obsession" Here's Milos going over
what customer Obsession means for his clients. You need to dream about your clients. I'm
just joking. In order to understand how your customer think you need to think like them.
Obsessing about clients is a strong word, but thinking on a daily basis and continuously
improving that's what we should be doing. Although this may seem a bit abstract it's
important to remember that you can get better at understanding your customers even if you're
not directly interfacing with them. Here are some ways that you can become more customer-centric.
Practice Empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of your direct customers. What problem is your
product really solving for them? How can you solve even more problems? Can you identify the
bottlenecks that are affecting their business? Great now work on solving these issues within the
scope of your own work. If you're not sure where to start ask more questions. The Extra Mile.
If you are already in a customer facing role think about how you can go that extra mile for
your customers providing them with an experience so good that they want to share it with their
community and come back for even more. Internal Customer Service. If you're working in a back end
or technical position make a guide that leverages your expertise to help your customers better
understand the product or identify points of friction within your own organization that you can
eliminate to help boost the customer experience. #3 Data. SQL, R, and Python. You don't need to
be a data scientist but to get hired as a CSM you will need a familiarity with at least one of
these tools and really the more the better. It's easy to say that you're data centric, but this was
one of the most common reasons I saw people get rejected. After a few rejections I always tried
to make sure that the people I was helping could show that they were trying to learn these on their
own. You have to show that you really are trying to learn and understand how to deal with data.
There are plenty of free resources out there, but I've included the links to Udemy's and
Coursera's courses in the description below. #4 Coaching, Trainings, and Presentations.
As a CSM you will be the a living breathing instruction manual for your clients and
help them with any new features updates and any upcoming challenges that they
may encounter. Let's check in again with Milos to go over his thoughts on effective
coachings, trainings, and presentations. At the end of the day you need to keep attention
of of your listeners. They need to be engaged. Any kind of CSM needs to practice how to coach
people. It's a skill that is also learnable. yYou need to create conversation, a
dialogue that's how they will learn. This may seem hard to build if you're only working
in entry level position but you can get creative. YouTube Tutorials. Do you have a hobby that you're
passionate about? Start a YouTube channel diving into that knowledge you have around that hobby.
Focus on delivering things that you know your audience will want to learn. Internal Training
Sessions. Are you an expert on a certain area of your job? Ask your manager if you can host a
training to get the rest of the team up to speed. Teach Your Parents. Learning a new skill like
SQL, R, or Python? Take some some of the courses I mentioned and then try to teach your friends
or family the things that you've learned. This is a great way to test your understanding of those
materials. #5 Navigating High Level Conversations. This one is all about being assertive and having
confidence. Almost all companies currently have role plays in their interview process; one of
my clients was infamous for asking interviewees questions that they couldn't answer. On the
surface it could look like she was just trying to make them squirm, but what the interviewer
was really looking for was their ability to stay confident when that person was put under pressure.
They needed to see those assertive instincts to stay on track and cover the things that they know
need to be covered. So, here are a few places that you can build this skill set. Ask Your CEO Out
to Lunch. If you are friends this should be easy, if not, that's even better. You'll definitely feel
nervous, but that's kind of the point. It doesn't need to be an overly serious conversation, it
can just be a casual chat. Role Play the Role Play. If you're working with a recruiter ask them
for a trial role play and not to hold back on any of the more technical aspects of the interview.
This will help you practice covering the ground that you know you need to cover in any client
interaction. Any one of our career consultants here at Wahl+Case will be more than happy to
help you work on those communication skills. Talk to Your Customers and Your Clients. Often
when you're in a client meeting it will feel like they have all the power in the conversation,
so get practice being assertive and standing your ground. You need to make it clear that you are the
expert and that they should trust your insights. These skills will help you land a job as a
CSM, but if you want to see where a CSM fits and how they work with other positions in the
tech sales funnel check out this guide here.
