Train your Customer Success Managers in this underrated and important skill
Here’s an underrated knowledge to provide training for your Customer Success Managers.
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💸 Reading financial statements
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If you are a manager who struggle with CSMs not thinking “big picture” and “not strategic” enough, try providing training for some basic Corporate Finance knowledge.
Carve some time out from the usual role-play practice sessions to sit together and tear down a company’s P/L, discuss the business’s funding sources, how it generates value for its shareholders, etc.
From my point of view, there are two clear benefits:
(1) Better communication with C-level stakeholders
The CXO your CSM is trying to get buy-in is not thinking about your product. Instead, she is likely considering how to boost the bottom line or improve cash flow. This equips the CSM to speak her language.
(2) Be a better trusted advisor
Being able to read financial statements is like taking a helicopter view of your customer’s business, increasing your CSMs ability to spot business opportunities or risks that the customer may be too in the weeds to realise.
Here are some resources to build Corporate Finance knowledge:
📚 Book
1. Seeing the Big Picture by Kevin Cope and Kevin R. Cope
💻 Online courses
Keep to the basics. There is no need to obtain the customers’ financial statements since you may only have them if they are public.
The goal is to practice using financial statements as a framework to better “walk” in the customers’ shoes.
