1. Introduction and Course Overview - Emily Wright

COURSE TRANSCRIPT:

The account manager role is really focused on renewals and expansions within our customer base. Anything from conversations around contracts, understanding terms, to adding additional features, licenses, prospecting to identify cross-sell opportunities to different teams, as well as managing the entire renewal process. We're really the commercial contact for our customers.

It's really important to have, especially for our business, to have the CSM be the trusted advisor that doesn't have to focus on commercial conversations. One, from the skill set for each of the different team members. CSM is our focus on driving adoption, building relationships, and helping customers use the most out of the products. Whereas, the account manager can be more skilled in negotiating and those selling motions, especially with a complex product. Keeping those roles separate really allows us to focus on driving adoption from the CSM role and for the account manager to really focus on growing and expanding our customer base.

Knowing and understanding the customer's objectives and the "why," why they purchased, can really help you frame know all of those post-sales conversations around their goals. That "why." Including those experiences that we call Moments of Truth.

My name is Emily Wright and I'm a senior client account manager here at Gainsight. And this is my signature series.

Throughout your customers' experience with your product and your company, starting you know, before they even purchase, all the way through that initial sales cycle, to when they purchase onboarding and carrying them through the first renewal and beyond. There are key pieces that you want to have and key experiences that they need to have. And the CSM is responsible for developing that customer journey and that journey map. In line with what you've already laid out for your life cycle and making sure that they're delivering on the expectations and the promise for why that customer purchased. In this series, we're going to look at each of those moments of truth and deep dive into how to make those make or break situations successful for both you and your customers.

There are seven key moments of truth that happened between when a customer decides to become a customer and purchases all the way through that first renewal. There may be others that pop up along the way. Whether it be a new executive sponsor, or some other sort of change, risk or opportunity. We're going to focus on these seven key moments of truth in this series.