What Leading a Business Unit P&L Has Taught Me About Customer Success
After nearly seven years as a customer success leader, I recently stepped into a role overseeing a business unit with P&L responsibility—managing cross-functional teams across sales, product, customer success, solution engineering, and research. Being responsible for delivering a product to market has shifted my perspective on the optimal role of customer success.
The Traditional CS Dichotomy
While at its core, customer success is primarily focused on retaining customers and revenue, in my experience, customer success teams typically lean toward one of two orientations:
Sales-Driven CS: These teams focus on identifying new use cases, building executive relationships, and partnering with sales to execute on new opportunities. They often support renewals planning, negotiations, and drive expansion revenue.
Product-Driven CS: These teams serve as the voice of the customer within the company while acting as product specialists externally. They drive adoption, gather feedback, and ensure the product delivers value.
While both of these focuses should continue to have a retention target (both in terms of revenue and customer logos), retention is ultimately a lagging indicator. In both a sales and product focused role CS role, client value must be the first consideration in order to help drive that revenue retention.
Both orientations come with inherent challenges. Sales-driven CSMs risk being perceived as "too salesly" and focused on growth at the expense of customer value. Meanwhile, product-driven CSMs can easily fall into reactive support roles, troubleshooting issues without moving customers forward strategically.
The Product Maturity Connection
Ultimately, CSMs (as with any other role within the company) should be aligned to the company objectives and value. However, as I have taken on overseeing across multiple functions, including driving new product development to market. I realized when shaping the function and priorities of the CSM team, a fundamental consideration is:
"How mature is your product?"
This question has significant implications for how customer success teams should be structured and operate.
The Product Maturity Continuum
The right balance between sales and product focus should shift based on where your product sits on the maturity spectrum:
Low Maturity (Early-Stage Products)
You have an initial MVP or immature product
CS Role: Product Focused
CSMs should heavily emphasize gathering customer feedback, identifying product gaps, and ensuring early customers achieve baseline value
They become critical conduits to product teams shaping the roadmap
Medium Maturity (Growing Products)
Your product is in the market but still refining its product-market fit
CS Role: Product/Sales Mix
CSMs balance championing product improvements while beginning to identify expansion opportunities
They help validate new use cases while ensuring existing capabilities deliver value
High Maturity (Established Products)
You have an established product and are focused on market expansion
CS Role: Sales Focused
CSMs can lean more heavily into identifying new use cases, driving account growth, and supporting renewals
Product feedback remains important but becomes more incremental than transformational
Beyond Maturity: Additional Considerations
While product maturity provides a strong foundation for CS role definition, several other factors influence the optimal balance:
Team Resourcing: Larger organizations may support specialized CS roles while startups often need versatile generalists
Product Complexity: More sophisticated products may require greater product-focused guidance regardless of maturity
Customer Segment: Enterprise customers typically demand more strategic engagement than SMB customers
Competitive Landscape: Highly competitive markets may necessitate more sales-oriented CS to prevent churn
For more considerations about setting up your CS team, check out my Customer Success Organizational Assessment Form (coming soon).
