There’s a lot of confusion on who owns the upsell, cross-sell, and renewal.
If you think it’s confusing for your sales org…imagine what it feels like for your customer.
⛔️ The problem
Customer: "Dude, I've gotten 3 emails from your team and a BDR calling me every week. WTF?"
Your hard earned customers are getting messaging from:
- The marketing team
- The BDR team
- The Account Manager
- The Customer Success team
Holy sh*t people, this has got to stop.
You're lighting revenue on fire when you treat customers like this.
There's confusion in two areas:
⛔️ 1) Lack of clarity around roles & responsibilities
You have to decide who owns:
- New Revenue
- Retention (technical support is in this bucket)
I get why you wouldn't want that to be the same person. The strategic seller can extract more revenue from a client. But their strength isn't customer service.
So split those roles.
The Customer Success person should NOT have sales conversions. They should not be prospecting into the account to upsell.
It's confusing to the customer, and it's not their skill set. Keep it to helping the customer get the best outcome from the solution.
Then bring in the AE or the AM as the "product expert" who can help with driving additional revenue.
⛔️ 2) Shared quota
I'm not sure who thought of this bright idea, but I'm seeing it all to often.
The CS team is required to help with upselling. And they share a quota with the AM.
Do we really need to talk about why you shouldn't have two separate parties owning the same number?
~~~
Does this setup already exist in a lot of companies? Yes.
Do they stick to distinct, split roles? Many don't.
For god's sake people—STOP harrassing your customers.