Hiring a Customer Success Manager can be a nightmare. It’s a young profession – and, especially here in Europe, there are very few Customer Success Managers with SaaS experience that are looking for jobs.
I get that question every day: Do you know anybody? Here’s my tip for you if you just can’t find the right CSM for your team.
The key skills for a Customer Success Manager
Tools? Processes? You can teach these things relatively easily.
What’s harder to teach is attitude. In my book, a Customer Success Manager needs to excel at two things:
- Listen very, very well
- Be able to juggle many stakeholders at the same time
That sounds like a simple skillset, but it’s really not. Listening doesn’t mean simply hearing, but really trying to understand what the other person wants to achieve. Juggling stakeholders means being able to simultaneously understand what many different people want from you.
The good news? These are skills that you can actually find in other job roles, too. When I asked that question on Linkedin, here are a couple of the answers that I got.
So, still no idea who you could hire as a CSM? Look for these groups:
- Coaches
- Consultants
- Key Account Managers & Sales
- Customer Service Reps
- Teachers & Facilitators
- Advocates
- Press & Communication professionals
Are you hiring for a CSM? Shoot me a message and I can promote your job in next week’s update!
