Impact Academy

Week 1 - Positioning

Positioning is critical to the customer’s perception of why  you exist in their world and what distinguishes you from other people they'll work with.

Positioning is the space you occupy in the customer’s mind;  it’s their perception of why you exist in their world. Positioning is what distinguishes you - the CSM - from other people they'll work with in your company like Onboarding, TAMs, Support, etc. Positioning dictates whether you’re viewed as strategic or just glorified support. It dictates how customers treat you, whether they listen to you, and whether they hold up their end of whatever plans you’ve agreed on. Ultimately, the way you’re positioned with the customer dictates their success. And yours. You’ll leave this week with a very clear understanding of why positioning is critical to the success of everyone involved, how to take back control of your narrative if others aren’t positioning you correctly, and a framework for creating your positioning statement.

Week 2 - Prioritization

Not everything can be a priority, but what should be? Knowing how to prioritize is the key to being a World-class CSM

Not everything can be a priority, but for Customer Success Managers this rule is often ignored. This leads to hustling, scrambling, and ultimately to burnout.  World-class CSMs, however, know how to prioritize appropriately and are realistic that when new priorities are stacked, something has to pop off the bottom of that stack. More importantly, World-class CSMs know how to properly advocate for themselves to ensure that they’re not overloaded and that not everything is top priority all the time. Prioritization seems like a very simple idea, but it’s one of those sneaky elements that’s critical but not talked about and generally ignored until it’s too late. You’ll leave this week with the mindset and frameworks necessary to take control of your day, your week, and your workload so that you can better advocate for yourself and ensure that you’re set up for success, not burnout and failure.

Week 3 - Productivity

World-class CSMs are able to take on more customers without negatively impacting their workload by focusing on being efficient

Work harder, not smarter. It seems to be the way many CSMs run their day. World-class CSMs, on the other hand, embrace the more popular “work smarter, not harder” ethos and are far more successful, avoid burnout, and ultimately make their customers more successful than their counterparts on the “work harder” team. It’s easy to say “work smarter” of course, but what does that really mean? In this final week of the CSM program, you’ll learn the difference between Productivity, Efficiency, and Performance, why those differences matter, and how you can leverage those to take better control of your day, week and workload, all while making your ever-expanding list of customers under management more and more successful. You’l leave this week with the mindset, checklists, and frameworks necessary to ensure you’re as productive as possible as quickly as possible.