SaaStr 061: The Optimal Relationship Between Customer Success & Sales, Why CS Is Not A Playbook Function & Why The Best CSMs Are Like Good Parents with John Gleeson, VP Customer Success @ Affinio

John Gleeson is VP of Customer Success @ Affinio where John was employee #1. 2 years and a half years later, John is the VP of Customer Success following their Series A and has seen the team expand to over 40 people and have offices in New York, Toronto, Halifax and Ireland. John has written a special blog post just for SaaStr listeners today outlining his ultimate guide to customer success reading, it is my go to guide for customer success. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did John make his way into the world of SaaS and more specifically customer success? John has previously described customer success as ‘The Analogue of Sales’, what does he mean by this? How does it affect the way he views customer success How does John view the role of sales vs customer success in large accounts? How do they partner to drive expansion? How customer success managers be truly productive at the enterprise level? How can they measure their success with this productivity increase? Moving downstream, why does John believe the $2m benchmark per CSM is the hardest phase? What skills do you need to be successful at this stage? With so many accounts, is it possible to be proactive? 60 Second SaaStr The biggest mistake most companies make when it comes to customer success? Most common questions asked by CSM leaders? Measuring customer success? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr John Gleeson This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com