Sarah Moir

Mandatory call reviews don't work. An enablement leader we work had an amazing idea that made them addictive instead: One Slack channel replaced their entire call review process. No more mandatory listening sessions. No more enablement-driven training. No more hoping managers would find time to coach. Here's how their Call Spotlight channel works: Anyone on the GTM team can spotlight a snippet from any call. They select from a dropdown who they want to highlight and pick a category: - Demonstrating value. - Asking good questions. - Handling competition. - Discovery techniques. But the big thing is that they can't just drop the snippet. They have to explain WHY it stood out as good. The result was organic peer-to-peer learning that happens in real time. Instead of enablement saying "Here's what good looks like," teammates are saying "Here's what Sarah just did brilliantly." This is the gangster approach because: - Recognition comes from peers, not managers. - Examples are fresh, not months-old library calls. - Discussion happens naturally in threads. - People actually want to listen to 30-second snippets vs. full calls. The best part was that it created competition for the right behaviors. Reps started asking better questions because they knew good discovery might get spotlighted. They put more effort into demos knowing peers were listening. For new hires, the channel became their real-time training library. Instead of ancient role-play videos, they heard exactly how current prospects were responding to current messaging. Plus, the enablement team went from content creators to content CURATORS. They built folders matching the spotlight categories, pulling the best submissions for formal training. Think about it...you turned call reviews, which feel like homework assignments, into something that feels like highlight reels. The difference? Nobody skips highlight reels.

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Interviewing for a Customer Success Manager role? Most CSMs wing it. Top performers come prepared, with STORIES. Here are the 7 most common CSM interview questions I ask (and how to stand out when answering them) 1️⃣ How do you define and measure success in your role? Talk about metrics like NRR, adoption, and product usage, but also strategic wins like building trust and creating value. Get specific, don’t just say that you had a 100% NRR rate. Talk about the details underneath, how much of that was driven by expansion, churn and what the total portfolio was you held. 2️⃣ Tell me a story of how you grew seat utilization or expanded an account. Be specific. Walk through the signals you saw, the conversations you had, and the value you delivered. 3️⃣ How have you handled a renewal that was at risk? Show commercial acumen. What data did you use? What stakeholders did you engage? What was the outcome? How did you plan the strategy out, did you multi-thread and how… 4️⃣ What are early warning signs that a customer might churn? Mention things like drop in engagement, exec turnover, missed QBRs, and how you take action fast. Show that you have a bias towards action. 5️⃣ What’s your playbook when an account goes dark? Go beyond just “follow-ups.” Think multithreading, value emails, and reactivation campaigns. How are you really adding value for your customers? 6️⃣ How do you partner with Marketing or other teams to drive advocacy? Share a real example of a case study, webinar, or customer story you co-created. 7️⃣ What’s one way you’ve sped up time-to-value or onboarding? Show your process thinking. How did you reduce complexity, improve documentation, or drive engagement early? Which of these would YOU want to be asked in an interview? Let’s hear your strongest story in the comments.

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Community groups are one of the most flexible, powerful, and under-leveraged tools for community growth. When I say “community group,” I’m talking about a focused corner of your broader community—where members can self-select based on what they care about most. Smaller groups, deeper connections. That’s the whole point. Some community groups will start strong and fade. Some will never get off the ground. And honestly? That’s okay. I’ve seen this happen more times than I can count—at startups, at Salesforce, and with clients I advise. You launch a group with the best of intentions… and a few months later, it’s a ghost town. But when a group does work? When it becomes a space where people feel seen, supported, and heard? It’s magic. And it’s also a ridiculously powerful engine for product feedback, customer education, CS scale, and even pipeline. Still, it’s really hard to do this well. That’s why I pulled together the 7 questions I get most from community teams trying to launch or resuscitate a group. Like: - Why do they fizzle? - What’s the right rhythm? - Can employees lead? - How do you know what members want? I don’t have all the answers. But I’ve tried a lot of things—and failed at enough of them—to know what’s worth your time. If you’re thinking about spinning up a new group (or breathing life into a stale one), I hope this helps: 👉 https://lnkd.in/gReh34VK

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The hidden truths of CSM life: (What no one tells you) You'll wear many hats: 👥 Therapist 📊 Data analyst 🎯 Strategic advisor 🚒 Firefighter ⚡ Change agent 🤝 Relationship builder Your superpowers include: ↳ Reading between the lines ↳ Predicting problems ↳ Finding quick solutions ↳ Building bridges What success looks like: ✦ Happy customers ✦ Growing accounts ✦ Prevented escalations ✦ Achieved outcomes But the real work is: ➟ Managing expectations ➟ Navigating politics ➟ Building influence ➟ Creating trust The unwritten rules: 1. Documentation saves lives 2. Proactive > Reactive 3. Relationships > Features 4. Small wins matter 5. Empathy is everything What keeps you going: ⚡ Customer breakthroughs ⚡ Team celebrations ⚡ Problem-solving wins ⚡ Growth moments The truth is: It's not just about managing success. It's about creating it. Not just monitoring health. But building it. Not just handling accounts. But transforming them. This is CSM life. Exhausting? Sometimes. Rewarding? Always.

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There’s no point in sugarcoating it. AI will terminate many CSM roles. It’s not because CSM can be fully automated. It’s because most CSMs are actually doing extended customer support. If all you are spending your days - firefighting, quick-fixing, and band-aiding - working through your inbox - checking boxes then I’m sorry to break it to you - you will become obsolete. AI can do it much faster and cheaper. As my friend Erika Villarreal Villareal said so eloquently: The future of CSM is strategic. If you want to survive the purge, you need to build abilities and capabilities the AI does not have. And will not have for the next decade(s). This is what you need in a nutshell: 1. A growth mindset ✅ Playing to win → Your mission is to maximize customer value ✅ Value for value → You are embracing commercial responsibility ✅ Less is more → You focus on the customers with the highest growth potential 2. Mastering the most powerful skills ✅ Active listening → Understanding customer needs better than anyone ✅ Problem-solving → Leading customers from the status quo to the promised land ✅ Teaching → Transferring knowledge so that customers can comprehend and implement 3. Building an accurate and repeatable system (amplified by AI) ✅ Discovering customer goals, problems, and skill gaps ✅ Transforming the discovery insights into an action plan (success plan) ✅ Enabling customers to solve the problems through high-quality inputs ✅ Tracking customer progress and intervening in real-time if they fall behind ✅ Demonstrating customer value to every stakeholder in their language ✅ Identifying customer growth opportunities and converting them into revenue The strategic CSMs will always see demand for their services. Have you started your transformation yet? PS: Want to close the gaps? Join the CSM Skill Growth Platform → https://remark-able.at

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Today, many teams are kicking off Q4. A quick framework I’ve used for quarterly content meetings that the PMMs actually enjoyed: For context, when I was leading content strategy for Sales Cloud at Salesforce, we had a VERY cross-functional team. PMM, creative, demand gen, and content/editorial all had their own stakes in the game when it came to our quarterly planning. Lots of cooks in the kitchen, and recent reorgs prompting a need for clarity on roles. Everyone developed an integrated planning template, and my team adapted it for a quarterly content planning and reporting meeting. We even had some of the PMMs start to tell us it was their favorite meeting. 👀 Here’s what we would share quarterly. REFRESHER: What is this meeting? I find that a lot of meetings jump right into the subject matter without establishing what success looks like in the next X minutes. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: Do we want questions at the end? Questions in the Google Meet Chat? Say how we want folks to engage. WHAT’S NEW? Everyone gets excited about innovation! What’s new since the last time we met? People updates are key. We shared things like new website and blog updates, team member changes, new authors or featured speakers, and a new top-performing social post to amplify (bonus points if people repostes during the meeting). PERFORMANCE: Quarterly and rolled up annual metrics. Show how we are performing against goals and, more importantly, what we will do differently and optimize because of the results. One of my favorite things to share in a quarterly performance update is “an anatomy of a great blog / social post” section. Pull up one of the team’s favorite top performers (can be a video, article, whatever you’re focused on) and point out all the things that made it great, whether that’s a strong hook, visual, and so on. INTEGRATED PLANNING UPDATE: Has the messaging changed? Are we still aiming for the same audiences? Share any cross-functional updates that change the high-level direction for the team. Another key thing to highlight here is roles and responsibilities. We did this in a “four wheels of a car” slide where we showed how PMM, content, creative, and demand gen were all critical wheels of the car to make it go. We showed a few quick bullets of what each team was responsible for to reduce confusion about swim lanes. CALENDAR UPDATE: Show what’s coming up next in the integrated plan! This is your roadmap for the quarter and the big bets everyone should know. In this section, you make all the high-level strategy real. Making it real is what leaders and practitioners alike get excited about. How do you run your quarterly planning sessions? I’m working on developing a couple frameworks around this for my new professional chapter, and would love to hear!

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I asked John McMahon (5x CRO & previous board member at Snowflake & MongoDB) for advice on how RevOps can shape the strategic GTM discussion. Here's what he told me: "Good RevOps people do not just report metrics. They are the CRO's eyes and ears.” What he means is: Spot GTM risks 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 the board does. “Yeah, but how do I do it?” Good news: John joined us on the RevOps Lab podcast - and turned it into a 45-minute masterclass on how RevOps can influence board-level strategy. Listen here: getweflow(.)com/revops-lab My top 3 takeaways for RevOps: 𝟭. 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 If new reps aren’t hired on time, revenue targets become impossible. By tracking ramp time, attrition, and hiring velocity alongside bookings, RevOps can flag problems before they hit the forecast. 𝟮. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻 Growth isn’t just about headcount. When one manager takes on too many reps, coaching suffers and people churn. Show leaders where ratios drift beyond 5:1 before productivity and retention collapse. 𝟯. 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 If headcount grows but logos per rep drop, your engine is breaking. Monitor logos per rep, ASP trends, and territory coverage. RevOps can spot risks in the data before it becomes a boardroom crisis. BOTTOM LINE: RevOps isn’t just about reporting metrics. It can shape the GTM system that decides whether the company scales. What would you add? Comment 👇 __ PS: Want our FREE RevOps Reporting cheat sheet? 1. Comment "Reporting" 2. Add me on LI (so I can send it to you)

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Being a CSM means wearing a lot of hats. But no one really prepares you for just how many. On any given day, you’re a: → Project manager → Relationship builder → Data translator → Renewal strategist → Customer advocate → Product educator → Escalation navigator → Feedback collector → Cross-functional connector → Cheerleader for both your client and your team It’s a dynamic role that requires presence, clarity, and a whole lot of context switching. And while it’s deeply rewarding to support your clients and drive outcomes, it can also feel overwhelming at times. If you read this and think: “I already do half of that in my clinical role” or “This sounds like the kind of impact I want to make in my next career move” Customer Success might be the right path for you. If you’re a clinician thinking about transitioning into a non-clinical role or you’re already working outside of patient care and looking for your next opportunity consider exploring CSM roles. I offer coaching for career pivoters who want to break into Customer Success. Send me a message if you want help figuring out if it’s the right fit for you.

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You win when you're the last one standing. In 2020 and 2021, tons of enterprise learning and enablement startups popped up. Today, Arist is one of only two left at our revenue scale, and the only one to our knowledge growing >2x YoY Why we won: We focused on outcomes. We knew back in 2020 that e-learnings and webinars were not the way of the future. Everyone else focused on these mediums, even though learning in the flow of work had far better data. We stuck to what drove the best adoption, engagement, and behavior change — even if that meant slower growth upfront. We went infrastructure-first. We knew that messaging and enterprise data management was really, really hard, and spent years building ironclad delivery and tracking infrastructure that no one else can replicate. We built with AI in mind. After seeing an early preview of GPT-3, we realized that AI would change everything. In our Seed deck in 2020, we pitched that eventually AI would create all Arist courses, and we built the course model accordingly. In 2023, we were the first AI course creation tool on the market — we launched just 6 weeks after ChatGPT. We hired great people. Everything I just mentioned took foresight by people far smarter than myself, and a willingness to stick with us when times got tough. The right people, culture and a strong sense of conviction make the tough times doable. Arist had many quarters with no growth. But we stayed lean, stuck to our core beliefs, and kept building great product with great people. And now, we're the last one standing.

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The Customer Success job market is shifting. A year ago, you could put almost every role into two buckets: 👉 The classic CSM 👉 RevOps (analysts & program managers) But that world is becoming outdated. We’re starting to see new roles emerge. Roles that don’t just manage accounts, but re-architect what success even looks like. Last week, I wrote about the Customer Success Engineer: the person designing AI agents to orchestrate the customer journey. This week, two roles jumped out at me: 🤖 AI Specialist CSM at Zendesk 👩‍🔧 Customer Success Engineer at Lexzur (inspired by Unconventional Growth!) It’s just two titles… but they’re signals. And signals matter. There's a wave coming. And we can't stop the wave. We need to learn how to surf it. The future of CS won’t be defined by clinging to the title “CSM.” It’ll be defined by those who expand what success means in an AI-driven world. The winners will be the ones who adapt, who lean in, who redefine their value instead of defending yesterday’s position. So I’ll leave you with this: Are you building the skills for where CS is going, or for where it’s been? 📩 Want to build the skills of tomorrow? Then you’ll love my newsletter. Unconventional Growth is for the CS pro who wants to deliver results and have real impact in the age of AI. There’s over 17k of us (and growing!). #CSM #CX #CustomerSuccess #RevOps #AIinGTM

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Just got asked about this one again recently. Salesforce Marketing Cloud's inbound mail servers accept mail, then discard it. They don't relay mail for spammers; any tests that say they're "open relays" are false positive, erroneous results. I've blogged about this over here on Spam Resource: https://lnkd.in/gF5xyheZ #salesforce #deliverabilitly #spamresource #sfmc #exacttarget

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We spend months interviewing to find the “perfect” CSM… and then set them up to fail. Here’s the reality I see too often: ❗ New hires are thrown customers after 1–2 weeks. ❗ Product training is rushed or nonexistent. ❗ SOPs are thin, outdated, or missing. ❗ Leaders don’t invest the time to set expectations or coach. ❗ And then KPIs are handed down that even seasoned CSMs struggle to hit. The issue isn’t the talent, it’s the lack of enablement. But here’s the good news: you don’t need a dedicated L&D team or endless resources to onboard well. You need intention. A simple enablement plan for new CSMs (even with limited resources): 1️⃣ Onboarding Buddy - Pair new hires with an experienced CSM for shadowing, Q&A, and feedback. 2️⃣ 30-60-90 Plan - Outline clear goals and expectations for their first 3 months. (Focus on learning before doing.) 3️⃣ Product Deep Dives - Host weekly “lunch and learns” where Product, CS, or Support walks through one feature in detail. Have them shadow customer onboarding or watch recordings. 4️⃣ Playbook Starter Pack - Even if you don’t have full SOPs, document 3–5 repeatable workflows (renewals, QBR prep, escalation handling). 5️⃣ Mock Meetings – Run practice customer calls internally before they ever face a real customer. 6️⃣ Leader Time - Block weekly 1:1s focused not just on performance but on coaching, context, and confidence-building. These aren’t heavy lifts, they’re discipline and focus. If you want your CSMs to succeed (and your customers to stay), stop spending all your energy on hiring the “perfect” candidate and start spending more on enabling them once they walk through the door.

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"I don’t even want my quarterly bonus. I worked just as hard last quarter and had high churn. This quarter, same effort but low churn. What’s the point?" That’s what one of my best CSMs once told me. And honestly… I got it. Completely. This is a universal experience for CSMs and CS teams. You pour yourself into your customers, every quarter. You stay late. You push through blockers. You deliver value. And sometimes… the results still don’t show up. Why? Because 𝗰𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗱. And retention isn't just about your work. It’s a lagging outcome of many factors:  • What expectations were set during the sale  • How well onboarding was run  • Whether the customer saw and internalized value  • How we measured and promoted results  • How proactively we managed the renewal  • How we addressed expansion needs before frustration set in When that CSM brought me that frustration, I did two things:  𝟭. 𝗜 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺'𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 because good, consistent work should be valued, and with the right processes will yield the desired outcome.  𝟮. 𝗜 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲, the team had been actively improving every driver of churn. He was finally seeing the payoff, not because of luck, but because of the foundation we were laying. And that’s the hard truth: Your results won’t change from one heroic quarter. But they will from 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗶𝘅𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Identify your leading indicators of churn Standardize how you measure and promote value Focus your onboarding on getting customers to first results Start expansion as soon as possible Improve the sales-to-CS handoff Work to address each one as fast as possible because they create compounding interest. Retention consistency comes when you remove the hidden sabotage that happens before your CSMs even show up. It takes time. But once it’s in place your quarterly effort finally matches your quarterly results. CS Leaders: If your team feels this way, it’s not a motivation issue. It’s a systems issue. What’s one lever you’ve pulled to reduce the gap between CSM effort and customer outcomes/retention? #customersuccess

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At Kernel, we've raised $14M to give enterprise RevOps teams CRM confidence with an AI-native alternative to Dun & Bradstreet's entity and hierarchy data. RevOps teams at Gong, Navan, Zip, Remote, GoCardless, and many others use Kernel's AI-native data at enterprise scale. ➡️ How did we get here? Three years ago, we started building an AI SDR, but we were solving the wrong problem. AI promised RevOps magic, but turned the spotlight on a fundamental truth: the data behind the data was broken. CRMs with 8 duplicates of Vodafone, missing subsidiaries, wrong company names, and the list goes on. The bigger vision wasn't about AI automation; it was about restoring confidence in the data foundation that powers enterprise decision-making and AI. In our experience, enterprise RevOps teams have only had one serious option to try to increase CRM confidence: buy Dun & Bradstreet, combine it with a mass action and cleaning tool, and perhaps add some AI enrichment. This setup creates unscalable manual data hygiene work for reps and RevOps, and undermines CRM confidence. ➡️ Why do current solutions not work? Dun & Bradstreet has extensive market coverage, but it was built in a pre-AI world. AI enrichment tools and mass action tools don’t have a notion of entities. Only human data correction can close the gap to build trust in the CRM. When you need human correction to hold together different tools at enterprise scale, trust in the CRM can break down quickly: 🚨 Your hierarchies don't match reality → territory disputes, reps not targeting the right accounts. Low close rates. 🚨 Your market coverage is a fraction of what you think → massive underinvestment in sales capacity. Missed revenue.  🚨 Account names and websites don't match → AI automation for the wrong company. Reputational damage. Sales reps spot obvious mistakes, and RevOps takes the blame. RevOps gets stuck in maintaining data rather than leading strategic initiatives. Alongside our Series A, we're launching the Kernel Platform: Tooling to clean, enrich, and complete your CRM like a human would, but at unlimited scale. Powered by our entity database, purpose-built for AI. What happens when the data behind your data works: ➡️ Reps target the right accounts because hierarchies reflect how they sell. ➡️ RevOps can plan confidently with complete market coverage. ➡️ RevOps can successfully deploy AI on clean entity data.  ➡️ RevOps stops defending data quality and starts building credibility through proactive insight. Our mission is to fix enterprise AI’s garbage-in, garbage-out problem at the source. Today, we're announcing that we've raised a total of $14M in funding through our $9M Series A led by Kinnevik and our Seed led by Moonfire. Special thanks to Tatiana Shalalvand, Charles Martin, Mathew Joseph, and Georgi Ganev from Kinnevik and Akshat Goenka, Mattias Ljungman, Mike Arpaia, and Alice Pillar from Moonfire.

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Support teams aren't valued enough. So I started sharing our metrics 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗹𝘆. Most companies treat support data like state secrets: ↳ Hide response times from customers ↳ Keep CSAT scores internal only ↳ Bury the numbers that actually matter Then Parker Conrad at Rippling changed my thinking. He posted their support metrics. Raw numbers. No spin. I thought: "If we're really that good, why are we hiding?" Here's what every support leader knows: • Everyone claims "world-class support" • Customers are numb to empty promises • Trust requires proof, not platitudes So we went radical. Full transparency. 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀. 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗹𝘆. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻'𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁. The results shocked us: ✓ Prospects trusted us before the first call ✓ Our team finally got the recognition they deserved ✓ Bad weeks became improvement sprints, not cover-ups ✓ Customers became partners in our success Here's the thing: If you're scared to share your metrics, they're probably not good enough. And that's exactly why you should share them. Transparency creates accountability. Accountability drives excellence. Excellence builds trust. Your support team does incredible work. Stop hiding it. What's one metric you wish your customers could see? P.S. Check out the full convo with Maxime Manseau 🦤 on The Support Lab (link in the comments)

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