A Mixpanel CSM On Making the Leap from Sales to Customer Success
Sales can be rough. I should know. That’s why so many of us make the switch into customer success. In this interview, Santhi Vinnakota shares her blueprint for switching from sales into customer success. She shares her reasons for making the switch, the highs and the lows she experienced while trying, and advice on leveraging transferable skills.
About Santhi
Santhi started her career in sales at Nutanix before becoming an Account Executive at Kustomer and then DataMinr. She didn’t love sales, so she enrolled in an MBA program to help set up a career transition, eventually deciding she wanted to transition into customer success. Today, Santhi is a Customer Success Architect at Mixpanel.
Aisha: Santhi, why did you want to switch Customer Success?
Santhi: What I liked about being in sales was that it was a customer facing role. I liked presenting the product and liked solving challenges, drawing out a roadmap for how the product can relieve pain points.
What I didn't like was that it was a high pressure role, and being successful in it was sometimes out of my control. There were highs, like big commission checks. But the lows were just as strong and I didnt have control over them. In sales, you have to be comfortable grinding through the drudge of sales. The cold calls, sending the same email to prospects, every single day, knowing that neither I, nor the person receiving the email, cared about the message. The role was contrived, it was all about the numbers on the board.
I craved intellectual stimulation. My STEM education meant I was partial to critical thinking and logic based problem solving, areas that can be lacking in a traditional account executive role. It wasn't as stimulating, and I caught myself craving more of that when I was an account executive.
The culture of most sales teams presented another compelling reason to make a change. In many instances, I was the only woman of color in the room and sometimes, the only woman in the room. Within my team, our personalities didn’t mesh. Back in the day, when we were all in the office 5 days a week, the sales floor was dominated by aggro, alpha dog men, and I didnt see myself fit within the team. I knew I needed to do something else.
Santhi clarified that the culture, stimulation aspect and the monotony in the role isn't always a problem, that all AE roles differ. These were merely components of the role she didn't enjoy.
Aisha: So where did you start when you made up your mind that you wanted to exit sales?
Santhi: I wanted to pick the right company before I set out to change my career. I started getting closer to the product, understanding the nuances, going deeper than the sales pitch. I wanted to understand “what am I selling?” “Is this something I'm excited about?” This helped me pick some companies I knew I believed in. This is why I specifically picked Mixpanel. It's a product analytics tool that helps people answer questions about their end user, and that's the direction I wanted to go in.
But before I landed a job at Mixpanel, I had to go through many, many customer success interviews. I was getting lots of interviews and making it to the final round. But I couldn't get an offer. This went on for quite some time. I was blowing through the interviews with my charm, but the reason why I wasn't landing an offer was because I was not spending time understanding what that specific customer success team actually does. This was the lost key. Customer success is a murky world. Sometimes it's professional-services-heavy, sometimes it's playing quarterback, sometimes it's an expansion focused role. I didn't spend enough time understanding how each team was structured, and what their specific needs were.
Santhi went on to describe how the right company will make the customer success role enjoy-able and emphasized the importance of doing due diligence on the needs of the team, and how they are a match for your skillset. She advised on making a list of the needs of the team and matching each item of that list to your strengths, if there are any visible ones.
Aisha: It sounds like picking the right company is a very important part of making the switch. How should one go about picking the right company to do customer success for?
Santhi: When I was an AE at Dataminr, I started with interviewing their customer success team to get a better understanding of the role, which served as a great starting point. What I learned there was that their CS team was focused on expansion and renewals, less retention and adoption plays and that wasnt of interest to me.
Another nuance to notice is the complexity of the product, while making your decision. Is it a plug and play product? Or is it complex and very technical to onboard? Pay attention to who the end user is and how they’re using the product. Is it easy to set up, or is there a long implementation cycle? Plug and play products that don't require as much customization can lead to simpler implementations, which means down the road, customer success does not play as big of a role in adoption. For the more complex products, your customers are going to come to you, the CSM, to help them learn how to use the product, how to set up the product. That's where customer success tends to play a larger role.
Another simple way to learn about the company is to read the case studies. These case studies are often written by customer success managers, or the CSMs gather information for the marketing team to write the case study. By reading case studies, you’re killing two birds with one stone, you’re learning about the product and how CSMs position it.
Aisha: Now let's get to the meat of this conversation- What are some transferable skills from sales to customer success that AE should highlight as strengths for the CS role?
Santhi:
Make the switch internally: Switching roles within the company is a great option because you are a known quantity. People know what it's like to work with you and can envision your strengths to work in your favor in the new role.
Choose a company in the same industry: If you’re switching roles, one of your strengths can be that you’re well versed in a particular industry. For example, if you’re in martech and specifically analytics, stick to analytics companies. You understand the language, the problems, and have dealt with similar challenges.
Multi- Threaded: Both AEs and CSMs need to be multi-threaded in an account. You have to talk to the product team like a product manager and at the same time, sell to executives on the dollars, because they don't care how the black box works, as long as it's bringing in revenue or helping cut costs. In your interviews, be sure to highlight how you can be a chameleon!
Resource Coordination: During a complex sales process, The AE is the quarterback bringing legal, product, engineering teams into the deal. They lead and create proof of concepts, SOWs. CSMs are similarly the quarterbacks after a deal closes.
Customers Success role with expansion built into their variable: Customer Success compensation comes in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes variable compensation for CS roles is based on a team goal, and sometimes it's based on expansion targets. Look for roles where expansion is baked into the customer success role through variable comp. The hiring managers are actively looking for sellers.
Customer facing experience: One highly effective transferable skill is, unsurprisingly, having customer facing experience. I emphasized how I handled complicated situations with massive pain points and drew a roadmap for how we could solve them.
Building Trust: Enterprise sales cycles are months long, and as an AE, you have to be savvy enough to play the role of a trusted advisor, and avoid coming across like the money guy. AEs are also very good at salvaging situations, which is a valued skill in customer success.
Executive Relationships: Another skill that's highly transferable is the ability to build and maintain executive relationships though the long sales cycle. Think about how you kept executives interested and how to manage their expectations in a long cycle. This skill directly applies to CS roles. AEs maintain these relationships post sales, and this is where CSMs and AEs collaborate in fostering the executive relationship.
Making the switch to customer success isn't easy, but is definitely do-able. I hope hearing about Santhi’s experience gave you insight into what the process looks like and how to play into your strengths to make a good case for why people should hire you as their CSM.