In this podcast episode, Jeff Kushmerek and Lizzy Rosen engage in a dynamic conversation about how technical should Customer Success Managers (CSMs) be. They delve into the delicate balance between technical expertise and soft skills, the significance of understanding customer needs, and the potential of hiring internally. Here, we highlight the key topics discussed in this enlightening episode.

1. Understanding both the product and the customer's needs and challenges:

CSMs are critical in bridging the gap between the product and the customer. They must possess a deep understanding of the product's features and benefits, while also empathizing with the challenges and objectives of the customer. By aligning these two aspects, CSMs can provide effective solutions and drive customer success.

2. Leveraging technical experts for complex customer queries:

Rather than expecting CSMs to possess a wide range of technical and customer service skills, the podcast explores the potential of employing technical experts to handle more complex customer queries. This approach allows CSMs to focus on building strong relationships and ensuring overall customer satisfaction.

3. Building a "farm team" of future CSMs from within:

The conversation delves into the idea of hiring from within the organization, particularly from the support team, to create a "farm team" of individuals who have a deep understanding of the product and its customers. By nurturing and developing talent internally, companies can cultivate a pool of future CSMs who are already acquainted with the organization's values and processes.

4. Balancing immediate premium staff hiring with long-term training:

The podcast explores whether to hire premium staff immediately or invest in long-term training for existing employees. While immediate hiring may bring in external expertise, investing in the training and development of current employees can foster loyalty and a deeper understanding of the organization's goals.

The conversation between Jeff Kushmerek and Lizzy Rosen sheds light on the multifaceted skills necessary for Customer Success Managers. By understanding both the product and customer needs, leveraging technical expertise when needed, considering internal hiring strategies, and balancing immediate hiring with long-term training, organizations can empower their CSMs to drive customer success and achieve sustainable growth

Listen to the podcast here.

Transcript:

Jeff Kushmerek  00:00

 All right, I think we're done screwing around. So Lizzy Rosen. Thanks so much. It took me, what 1010 years to get you on the podcast. So

Lizzy Rosen  00:37

thank you for having me.

Jeff Kushmerek  00:38

You're welcome. And we live like very close, or we live very close to each other before you just moved in. So Lizzie and I worked together at Bright Cove a long time ago. Right. And so now tell everybody what you're doing?

Lizzy Rosen  00:54

Sure. So I lead customer success and implementation at vendor. Our goal is to change the way that people buy and sell SaaS and to create fair playing fields for people people to be able to move from intake to procure on buying different SaaS vendors. And we were really talking about how do we fix sales? And how do we make that entire process smoother for both buyer and seller. And it's been awesome. But Jeff mentioned that we work together, I got my first big girl job working for us. So super excited to be here when I was a project manager at the time on his Proserv team at breakup.

Jeff Kushmerek  01:34

Yes, and did an amazing job. Right? We

Lizzy Rosen  01:37

thank you.

Jeff Kushmerek  01:38

It was funny I was I was used that team as an example. It kind of gets into our chat for today of how you need a good balance on your on your team. Right. And obviously, we put Adrian on the most technical projects that we had, and he's gonna kill me. So working with Kate, so, you know, it was nice, like, Well, we had, okay, we've got Kirsten, who's maybe a little bit more on the PMP variety, and he's gonna, like really grind you down on the dates and everything. But then then there's more of a relationship person. And then yeah, and then you can probably learn from all of them and everything. So

Lizzy Rosen  02:18

yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a great experience. I mean, I just remember not knowing exactly what I wanted to do after doing the sales role and interviewing you interviewing everyone in your team and knowing that's the path that I wanted to go down. And then lo and behold, both of us end up in CS later,

Jeff Kushmerek  02:32

crazy. Well, we were doing I mean, as I tell everybody, yeah, I still feel heard, mostly CS back in the day to like, nobody was taking care of those customers, right? We got these customers that were more advanced, instead of just like buying the service and popping their credit cards in, they needed all whole experiences built. And then we kind of maintain those and things like that. So but so no vendor was just great. I have gone through a vendor procurement process with one of my customers so that I know the service. And that's great. So one thing and we literally just, we just, you popped up on a on a venture community that that we're both in, and I reached out, and we just say, hey, let's just check, right? And then then for some bizarre reason, we got into this super heated talk, like we're on the same on, we weren't opposing. But we were talking about how technical customer success managers should be, which I, which if I remember the timing in the people I was working with, at the time, huge issue. I was working with a company that actually were a couple of companies that make developer tools. And in you've done, you've worked in a similar thing, where where there was like we need all of our our CSMs to not just know the value that we're providing, but also write Python. I was like, Okay, great. Okay. Let me think about that. So I don't want to keep driving this down my agenda. So it was in love to get sort of your perspective on that. And just in general, what you're seeing out there and in your thoughts.

Lizzy Rosen  04:08

Yeah, I think it's interesting because like, no matter the company, I feel like, well, I shouldn't say no matter the company, a lot of the companies that I've joined when I've interviewed, you know, you ask so what's going on with this CSM team and you whether you hear it from founder or from someone on the product team, or even the CS leader, I always hear what the CSM is needs to be more technical. Like what does that mean? Like how technical how technical? And when someone is technical? How do we know that they're technical? And the thing that kind of I think you and I started kind of laughing about, which always seems to happen is you feel like you can never find these people. Because you need someone who's technical relationship, someone who can project manage something from start to finish and someone who can own in some cases, the renewal transaction, so they can actually negotiate deals too and it becomes huge.

Jeff Kushmerek  04:56

I think there's 1000s of those people out on LinkedIn unless you just see If you can't open up LinkedIn without finding those people looking for a job,

Lizzy Rosen  05:05

it's hard. It's hard. And then like, I think, yeah, you do find one of them. And then everyone says, Oh, just hire more people like that. That person was so hard to find. So I think like, you know, you posted about this on LinkedIn, we got tons of comments. A bunch of people had opinions about this. But I think it was all really similar that you want someone to be able to be technical enough to be able to speak to the persona that they're selling into. And then you also want them to be curious and curious enough to want to learn the things that they don't know. Like, whenever I'm hiring, I'm always looking for people to be self aware. Because we don't know we don't, we can't all know everything, right. But we can know what we don't know. And then you just have to be curious enough to go figure it out. Right? Or to ask the people who do have those answers. And so yeah, I think it's I think it's it's like a tricky balance of Do you want full on technical, but then you're potentially sacrificing the commercial savviness? Yes. Or do you want somebody who's commercially savvy, and maybe they're lacking the technical but then you think, okay, aptitude and intelligence wise, I could probably train this person, right?

Jeff Kushmerek  06:13

Yeah. Yeah. You did a great job of describing what I usually just do with my hands, which is like, they just outweigh each other, right? You can never find, you know, the more technical you get, you know, those that person writing the pythons not taking your customers out to steak dinners, essentially. Right?

Lizzy Rosen  06:28

Yeah, well, and I think too, it becomes really easy to get caught in the weeds, right? Like, I think it's really easy as a CSM, especially if you're a technical CSM, or you know, the product in and out to feel busy all day answering questions, I'm busy. So I'm accomplishing something, when actually some of those things probably should have done to tech support person probably should have been product features. And then you're spending less time on the technical or the strategic work and more time on the technical work, which actually might not be driving the ball forward. So even if you aren't technical, how do you hold yourself accountable towards driving strategic direction forward? And not just answering questions, they're

Jeff Kushmerek  07:02

just a little bit tactical in and so I have this guy just triggered off some I had this CSM that would spend hours looking through JSON. And if they had sent it to one support person, it would have been answered in like 10 minutes, right? Yep. And then next thing, you know, all the requests are piling up. And then this person is starting to get emails at like, 1:30 in the morning, two o'clock only? What are you doing? Like? Well, I'd catch up on my stuff and everything. I'm just like, Oh, my God. Yeah. So it's like, especially with technical stuff, when it gets into the real nitty gritty. If you're not doing that on an everyday basis, like you slow down, you got to look up everything. So there's a fine balance. You know, I mentioned before, when you're working on a very technical product, I can get a little bit more, but there's still levels, right? Like, if you hold, I still feel like if you sold like a million dollar contract, you know, something like this is massive money or anything, I would want more of a relationship person on that account. And then paired with a CS engineer, solution architect or something like that. I mean, but they still need to know the difference between, like, source control and like video, right? Go back to our back.

Lizzy Rosen  08:20

Yes, yeah, yes, I think it becomes different too. And we had this when I worked at Pluralsight, when you have multi product, yes, having like the CSM be the account owner, but then having specialists per product. Because if the products are really different from each other too then it can become nearly impossible to find someone who could be an expert in each. And so that's when you have the CS engineer that you're pulling in to become the product expert, to any given audience based on what the need is, right? In which specific products you're talking about.

Jeff Kushmerek  08:54

So what do you what is your usual, you know, fire back to the to the hiring managers and things like this when you hear that?

Lizzy Rosen  09:02

Well, typically, the question is, yeah, how will you like how technical is too technical? Or what is technical enough? Yeah. And trying to really understand that and then really poking and prodding, like, what do you expect them to be able to code? Do you expect them to do troubleshooting? Right? Like, some of this is just discovery versus troubleshooting. Right? I think those are different.

Jeff Kushmerek  09:23

Like support everything you just said. Everything you just said to be sounds like support.

Lizzy Rosen  09:27

I don't think discovery though discovery is if someone's asking you someone has a problem. You're asking like why that problem is a problem or what impact that has to them or what right I think that's different than saying like, Well, did you try this? Did you turn it on? Did you turn it off? Right, which is usually what IT tells me right? And that always fixes everything. Right, like so I think that's kind of the difference is like, can I have like a technical or strategic mindset to be able to ask why the question is an important one instead of just answering the question from a support, troubleshooting ones.

Jeff Kushmerek  10:03

Yeah, it's, I'm not all the way there with you. I, yeah, I just again, we can't cover like all companies and their sizes and things like that. I just, I'm thinking in large company mindset, well, if I if I wrote her and bring it back a little bit, I can see a little bit more of what you're saying like if you're in the A B round or something like that. which then triggers off the other thing to me, which is at that stage, the founders are just so relentless about this, and I just wanted just, yeah, you know, yell and scream. They're usually if it's a technical product, and a technical founder, you don't Greenlight these hires, and you wind up with people, you know, you've got people that are hired or whatever, and they're, you know, you're their case, whatever their their number of customers are just blowing up there. It's just never a good solution. Sorry. Yeah.

Lizzy Rosen  11:00

Yeah, I think it's hard, I think especially to to be like, in that early stage. It's like, I'm actually interviewing for grit and resilience, right? Yeah. It's like it's the curiosity the self awareness but also like we're gonna pivot on a dime and are you going to be prepared for that are gonna be able to handle it are gonna get whiplash. Chino is now getting away from technical, but it's like overall acumen I think you need to, or skill set to be a successful customer success manager in an early stage company.

Jeff Kushmerek  11:29

Yeah, yeah, the resilience is a big thing. And then, and then imagine is adding in the, you know, as I said, something like, a technical product, like API's or source control, or this and that, I just find I, it's hard for me to see, like your classic school teacher that has transitioned into CSM, and then suddenly they're on these types of products. I just don't see that either. I'm just trying to figure out what the middle ground is. Because you do want them to be able to say, you bought for these outcomes, these are the outcomes that you're getting? Are you getting those outcomes and be able to speak in that language? But then if it goes the next level down, they're not going to be able to talk to a lot of things. And then how do we support those people at that level? And that's where I usually have solution architect engineer or something like that. Did you do that at Pluralsight?

Lizzy Rosen  12:19

Yeah, so we did start having, we had CSMs per product. So we had acquired a company that had more technical product. And so then we had CSM that were specifically focused on that product. So that was like an overlay model, which I think worked pretty well, especially given that it was a very technical audience, very technical product. Yeah. But then I've worked at single product companies where it's a very technical product. And we really struggled with that. It's like how to find people can do both the commercial savvy and the tech savvy. And we found a few of them. We did, but it was definitely you know, for for, you know, one hired would one type of person would really have to upskill on the commercial side, and one type of person would really have to upskill on the technical side. So how can you find diverse teams that can be able to like, train each other or just decide we're going to have two completely separate separate roles and they work in Dental?

Jeff Kushmerek  13:19

Art? This isn't the soft skills that are harder to train, like, isn't that harder to train a more technical person how to be more commercial savvy than it is to get a commercial salary? I don't know. That's, that's a tough one.

Lizzy Rosen  13:31

I mean, I think I think soft skills are harder. Yeah. I think if you have the gift of gab, like, you can't really teach someone to have the gift of gab, right?

Jeff Kushmerek  13:40

Yeah, yeah. I think I've seen studies I think it was the soft skills that are a lot harder to teach as well, too. So yeah, it's great. We so we had a question on the Washington Post we should probably dive into because when I'm when we originally were talking about this, I can't remember I posted it No, no, because I we had chatted, I said I should write this and then and then somebody came up with a question or two. So what's what's what's good for I forget,

Lizzy Rosen  14:07

okay, the question let me just pull it up. It was around what to do? Oh, of course, now, I can't find it. It was about like what to do when you see job postings that look more like engineer job descriptions, when they're actually CSM job descriptions?

Jeff Kushmerek  14:27

So I guess that that question is with the for the for the person who's looking for a job if they see something that looks more technical, I would say just just walk away and not go for it unless you're technical, right? Like

Lizzy Rosen  14:41

I think like it just goes into bias in overall job descriptions, right like you see job descriptions like looking for hunters only rock stars, like you know if you're not a plus player don't apply which are like very biased towards you know, one gender over the other right whereas on It's almost like on the very engineering side of like a CS role, it could be biased towards one or the other too. And I think in this job market, people are starting to put these crazy job descriptions together, because there is so much talent out there, that they're trying to find the best of the best. But then at the same time, sometimes creating roles that are unattainable. But I mean, if you are interviewing at one of those, I would ask the questions that I said before, like, What do you mean by this? Like, how technical do expected if a customer comes to me with this type of problem? What's your expectation of the CSMs? What's your ramp period? How do you help CSM skill up on your products, I would probably ask those in which I would ask to speak to a CSM appear, I would want to talk to somebody who's in the role to understand what their experience is, if they feel like they understand the product. And if they feel like the job description is accurate to the work that they're doing.

Jeff Kushmerek  15:51

I remember doing that one time, and it took them like two weeks to get back to me. They're like, Okay, we're gonna chat with someone you can tell he was coached appropriately and everything. Oh, my God. There's a lot of great stuff that you just said in that comment that pull back the especially the enablement and the ramp period, right? Because it's hard enough just learning a product in and out, right. And this gets into that whole should CSMs know how to use the products and everything too. And I'm like, Well, again, you know, if it's an API product that's headless. So you're expecting CSMs to be writing API call, and get responses back and things like that, versus, you know, and then who's doing the training is another good question. Like, okay, what's the implementation look like? And then I know, you run implementation, too. So, you know, it's, again, are they are they implementing? Are they are they doing the training during? Are they just working on the use cases? So much to get into on that one? Right. So you're getting asked a lot of questions. I think people are scared to do that, because people are looking for jobs.

Lizzy Rosen  16:59

Yes, yes. And I think like, we're talking about a lot of problems here. We haven't really talked about a lot of solutions, but I think it's really company specific product specific. Yeah, Persona specific of who your buyer is. So I don't know that there is a one size fits all answer. I mean, I like CS engineer, I like CS architect. I like all of those things. I like product specialist. But I really think it just depends on the stage you're in and how big your company is and

Jeff Kushmerek  17:27

and I've worked in helped plenty of companies that don't need any of that right it is CSM don't even need implementation teams, right? Like, it's that easy. You're just you're just helping them. I signed up for this product. Jasper AI, which helps with a lot of like writing and stuff like that. I swear to God like the best, like onboarding and CSM digital outreach you've ever seen in everything that's CSM that does all the recordings and let me know if you got a question and this and that and everything. Again, that's something you go in and learn during training and everything like that. I just, I really struggle with these, like super complex tools and things like that. Yeah, it's, um, I, I can almost, you know, one other model that might work for that, because I do want to recognize that you can have some really complex tools out there, right? And that you could have people that are more in developer like but then maybe you bring in sometimes people bring the sales team back in for that stuff, or they bring in like a renewals expert. I don't know if you've gotten to the stage where you're just bringing like an ADR for renewals or something like that.

Lizzy Rosen  18:35

Yeah, I've done that in other companies. We don't do that vendor. We have CSM owning renewal transaction right now. But yeah, I mean, I've definitely seen it. I think that it's interesting though, that you say it somebody else commented on your post to saying, well, we don't expect sales to know the product and now they have sales engineers do their demos for them. Which is interesting, right? Because then you talk about, okay, we're asking CSM to own relationship, own implementation own rollout project, manage the customer lifecycle, own renewal transaction, own upsell, be technical. Make sure they're getting fierce, loyal customers that are going to provide case studies and references. Like,

Jeff Kushmerek  19:15

wow, that is. That's that's an amazing point. And I remember when that came through, the dimly lit light bulb went way over my head and everything because I think you just summed it up. All right there. Right. That's an amazing point. Wow, I think that might be their answer. Right there. Right.

Lizzy Rosen  19:35

We're asking CSMs to do too much. Yeah, that would it is.

Jeff Kushmerek  19:39

Yeah, I think that's I think that's what we're gonna. Again, it's very tough when you're trying to smooth this out and standardize across all by I hate it depends questions in that. But I'm going to I'm going to I'm going, I think so my recommendation, you know, to just get very much into the details here is if it's a very technical product, I do believe in having CSMs, being able to understand the space, understand the outcomes that people are expecting. I had, we had a very interesting model at Virgin which I bring this up because it is applicable for that solution, which is we had developers that were a couple years out of school. In May, they weren't good enough to be on like the product development team. They're not good enough. Like they're just like a level behind that they made amazing. They said, You know, that's not for me or something like that. Those people understood everything that we're talking about. And they would be now we call them CS associates. But this could this is before people started calling them CS engineers, those people would be on all the account calls. So if somebody started asking these in depth questions, you know, because we had all these configuration bells and whistles that you could talk about, and then write some code and do some stuff, that person wouldn't be able to speak to those. But they were, they were kind of like paired as an account team. There were usually our larger accounts as well, too. So I want to look at the model, we had big accounts. And the CSM was paired with a CS associate slash CS engineer. And oh, what goals? Are you trying to get to? Oh, these are the outcomes that you want to do. Okay, let's look at your let's look at the way your account set up right now. Currently, you're not set up to do X, Y, and Z. And then the CS associate would come in and be like, right, so we need to be able to do this, or can you provide this type of data over to this and then it started getting like super technical. And, and that was not that technical. There was some technicalities to it. But nothing like we were talking about with like, oh, where it had was API product, or were dev tools, or x or y. That's the only thing I've been able to come out to, especially when we're looking for all these perfect employees. These unicorns that are out there, they're super hard to find super hard to find, as you said, you'll find one super expensive. And then suddenly, if you just did the straight up math on this, let's just do round numbers here. Imagine your your CSM has had an OT of 120, right, just as normal thing. That's now you have to pay to get these this type of skill. So you're probably playing 171, eight or something like that, versus paying people at the 120 and then bringing in these associates. And it's a scale, it's a more scalable model to you know, so you're configuring and tweaking and doing all that stuff as well. So

Lizzy Rosen  22:38

yeah, and we did like the overlay model with the more technical product at Pluralsight. We did like I believe it was one per team, right? So say I had five CSM teams with five CSMs. On each, there was five of the technical overlay resource one assigned to each team. So they weren't on every customer call. But they were on the ones that you know mattered for. It's from a technical perspective. And so I liked that model. They had more accounts in their portfolio, but they were really kind of like, if you think about the CSM, quarterbacking the deal right there, which is pulling in the right resource at the right time. Yeah. And I think to like you mentioned they need to, you know, CSMs needs to know the outcomes, what they're trying to drive, I also think it's like, it's incredibly important for them to understand the problems that that persona they're selling into faces, right? It's like, you need to know the product, like maybe a super user level, if it's not, like you said, are super technical product. But also you need to fiercely know your customer, and fiercely know what they care about and what their problems are. So then you can prescribe the right solutions to them within the product. So on that note, we're going features right, yeah,

Jeff Kushmerek  23:44

I know. Um, I think you can still hire a really good CSM. So you know, those tools I talked to you selling into develop? Well, you're talking to like a CTO, but the people you're working with, like development managers and things like that as well, too. You can certainly I think get up to speed with what these people's issues and problems are. I want my teammates form faster. I want them to work, you know, in a faster and more scalable thing you want to productivity numbers, what are you trying to get, you know, more with less and all these other things? Those are business conversations, right? And how to enable them with your product. If it's if your product super technical in the background, I would just rather bring in somebody who can assist them with that instead of finding these unicorns out there to do that job.

Lizzy Rosen  24:32

Yeah, totally agree.

Jeff Kushmerek  24:34

All right. Are we just gonna convince ourselves Yeah, I don't try. I always try and come out with like one or two other alternatives. So it doesn't sound like this is the way but you know, I guess the other one is just hold out and wait and find the people or you bring a developer you bring somebody in that skill set and bring them over. But then again, you're gonna have to teach them these very hard, soft skills and then you might again, again, everything that we talked about You're bringing in another role to help out with a deficiency? Yes.

Lizzy Rosen  25:02

Yeah. I mean, or, you know, you could build a farm team, right, you could start hiring CSMs from your support team, right? They're more technical board, and then you you do like a whole path for them to be able to move into that role where they're training over time. It's just a matter of investment. Right? Do you spend two years training someone to be ready for the role? And they are that unicorn now? Or do you pay a premium to bring in someone now who could do it immediately?

Jeff Kushmerek  25:30

You do a little bit of both, I think and, you know, if I was pressed, right, and, you know, I have a new add to ensure amazing greatness and everything, you know, I might hold out for the unicorn as a as a patch solution. And then I really like bringing people up from support bringing people up from implementation, or the path of the path be support implementation or whatever. And that's all it that's a more scalable solution. 100% And so yeah, yeah, you're bringing that one up as well, too. All right. Problem solved. What are we doing for the rest of the summer? What's what's what's, what's one fun thing that you're doing before school starts and everything? I don't know, because I

Lizzy Rosen  26:12

yeah, my daughter is going to be in kindergarten in the fall. And we're going to California and a couple of weeks for our 10 year wedding anniversary. Oh, that's a really nice wine country. No, no kids. No, not a wine country. No, we can't bring your kid to Napa.

Jeff Kushmerek  26:31

That's awesome. Oh, that sounds that sounds relaxing. And it's a little cooler up there. So

Lizzy Rosen  26:36

I think so.

Jeff Kushmerek  26:38

Um, do they have the humidity that we have right now?

Lizzy Rosen  26:41

Yeah, it's pretty brutal. It's, uh, I haven't really been outside today. But I think

Jeff Kushmerek  26:45

it's about 87. And then you get the bright sun. And then you get about 95% humidity outside right now.

Lizzy Rosen  26:53

Great.

Jeff Kushmerek  26:55

Just trying to sell it for you. Yeah,

Lizzy Rosen  26:58

yeah. You're doing a good job.

Jeff Kushmerek  27:00

You are close to the water that I am. So

Lizzy Rosen  27:03

I am yeah, we have a good breeze. Yeah.

Jeff Kushmerek  27:05

Awesome. Well, is he it's so great catching up with you. I'm going to grab your stuff to put it into the podcast links and everything. And this is awesome to always chat with you and one minute here and we'll, I'll hit stop for one second.