In this chapter, we will focus on knowledge mastery, which includes attaining proficiency in your industry, category, and product. Knowledge mastery is particularly important for you as a Customer Success Manager, especially if your company's product is in the early stages of maturation. In those formative years, a broad understanding of the industries and category your company serves will enable you to see associated pain-points, how your target market is evolving, and how your product aims to solve real problems.

The ability to comprehend these subjects goes a long way toward winning over early customers. However, as your knowledge matures along with your company, you may find the need to move from a broad and general understanding, to a more focused, specialized view. This could mean becoming more technically savvy with your products and evolving your industry and domain expertise. It is also important that you find mentors and use other methods of educating yourself to become the best CSM for your company, with your products, for your customers and the industries they serve.

How to Develop Your Industry and Category Knowledge

To begin, let's give some definitions.

• A category is a sector of an industry that includes a cluster of companies that are solving a recognized problem within it.
• An industry is a slice of the economy that includes business entities, knowledge workers, products, and services.

Categories can be both horizontal and vertical and cross multiple industries. Companies with products designed for a vertical category, like medical devices, would not likely be active in the oil and gas industry. For instance, Veeva Systems Inc. is a cloud-computing company focused on pharmaceutical and life sciences industry applications. Veeva serves a specific vertical category. Another example is Procore, which makes project management software for the construction industry. An example of a horizontal category company is Salesforce. It sells software solutions for Sales Representatives across numerous industries. Customer Success is another example of a horizontal category. Our own company, Gainsight, sells a suite of customer-centric solutions including Customer Success across a wide variety of industries.

If you are new to a particular industry or category and aren't familiar with its nuances, it can be intimidating to interview for CSM jobs in those areas – and ace it. If you've passed the hurdles of getting the job, it can be difficult to excel at your role without the requisite industry knowledge. Even if you are an experienced CSM in a particular industry, you can't only rely on your past acquired knowledge either. It is equally important for industry seasoned CSMs and new CSMs to keep abreast of developments and changes to regulations and laws that might have a significant impact on the industry you're working in.

A critical tool at your disposal is certifications. Many industries and companies offer certifications focused on roles in specific industries. For example, Google provides certifications in digital marketing and the AdWords platform. If you plan to serve as a CSM in the digital marketing category, you should seriously consider earning that certification. If your company sells products and services in project management, you should consider getting certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP), an internationally recognized professional designation offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). For CS professionals like yourselves, Gainsight offers an educational program designed specifically for the Customer Success category called Pulse+, with varying levels of advanced certifications.

Most companies will pay for their employees to get certified, either directly or via reimbursement. You should ask your human resources about professional development budget allocations and any other opportunities to advance your capabilities as a CSM.

While mastery of industry or category is necessary, it is also essential to know how people actually use your product in their daily jobs. That includes how the product is evolving for them. An exciting way for a CSM to gather information is to conduct what is called “chairside” interviews with customers. Think of chairsides as a 30–60 minute virtual or in-person session, where you sit with the customer's users, and have them walk through a typical “day in their lives.” It is a brilliant way for CSMs to develop empathy for what your customers encounter on a regular basis. You will see the challenges faced in their job and how it is evolving. Understanding their jobs more intimately will equip you to better help your customers use your product to their benefit.

As we contemplated the topic of knowledge mastery, it was important for us to bring a perspective from someone that has built a CS team that demands very comprehensive industry knowledge and a high level of product expertise. We approached Eduarda Camacho, Executive Vice President, Customer Operations at PTC, a provider of digital transformation solutions. We learned that when she joined PTC, she quickly figured out that there was a need for CSMs to have deep category experience, or as she calls it “domain experience”:

Customer domain expertise is an essential competency for our Customer Success Managers. It matters in the same way that business language matters. There must be a proficiency of both to thrive as a good CSM. At PTC, we now know that our customer-facing resources must have knowledge of the discrete manufacturing space. They must also be aware of the related business drivers. Our strategic customers and partners value our fluency in engineering and technical language. As we have diversified into other industries like oil and gas and medical devices, we recognized the need to speak their language too. For example, a specific fluency was needed for engaging shop floor factory stakeholders. The transformation of our approach further emphasized how important domain expertise is to our success as well as our customers'.

Mastering your industry knowledge enhances the CSM's ability to become a trusted advisor and establishes credibility. We also firmly believe our CSMs need to be product savvy to understand the use-cases and the implications to the business, not just “the points and clicks.” That is especially true with customers that have more mature implementations. They tend to need a more knowledgeable CSM to drive them through product adoption-related challenges.

What we needed was different profiles: relationship, domain, and product experts. We also learned the importance of properly matching the customer to the correct profile. It must be deliberate and will vary based on the engagement. Today we have a healthy mix of high-level relationship CSMs, deep domain experts, and product-expert CSMs. We needed this mix in our business to be successful. You too might consider a similar approach with your company. More importantly, as a Customer Success professional, it should always be your desire to learn more about the customers and industry you serve. Always pursue to increase your domain expertise no matter what!

On an individual basis, what can you do to improve your domain expertise? We know of one particular CSM that made it a point to attend all of her customers' annual conferences. It was a simple tactic but astute. Attending industry conferences serves three purposes.

• It helps you learn about the trends in the industry or category.
• It helps you understand how your customers deal with those trends.
• You network with individuals in the same industry or category, opening doors for more in-depth learning and possible mentor relationships.

Network with Mentors and Industry Experts

Finding a mentor can be life-changing. Mentors can take many forms, like a family friend, a seasoned colleague, or someone you met at a networking event. Ideally, you should find a mentor active in the industry you are trying to learn more about. Such an individual is able to provide the most up-to-date developments as well as share the day-to-day realities of the industry. Once you do connect with an industry mentor, ask deeper level questions like “What do you think are the biggest challenges facing this industry?” or “What are the big technological disruptions?” Also, make sure you put yourself out there. If there's a local event with a panel discussion or expert talk, this could be particularly beneficial to you. Treat it like a university lecture; be attentive, ask questions, and take notes.

When we considered adding a different perspective on this topic, we immediately turned to Chrisy Woll. Chrisy is the Vice President of Customer Success at CampusLogic, a student financial success platform that simplifies the student journey, driving access, informed borrowing, and completion. She understands the need for quality education and mentoring for up and coming CSMs. Chrisy shared her story of learning from one of her mentors and the importance of investing in learning about your industry to become the best in the business.

Having a mentor is as important as having professional goals. Mentors can draw advice and guidance from a wellspring of their vast field knowledge, product expertise, and best practice methods. They can also help you traverse the company waters. Find one or find a select few that you can turn to when you need them most. Also, consider seeking mentors that are not in your field. Remember, Customer Success is a company-wide endeavor, and mentoring is a part of that great work.

Aside from mentors, you should actively follow and participate in a variety of online industry and category community discussion groups. LinkedIn, for example, is a great place to find lively and relevant discussions of current trends in practically any industry and category.

Pro tips:

• Narrow your choices, favor groups with larger memberships or groups that are more local.
• Don't be afraid to post questions and ask for advice on topics relevant to that industry.
• Follow influential companies in the industry.
• Follow industry bloggers.

Go old-school: read books, subscribe to printed magazines or specialty industry newsletters. Find ones that appeal to you. WebWire¹ has a list of a wide range of trade publications by industry and category. Look for industry digital news sources. Leverage Google News alerts. Whatever it is, remember, your goal is to be the best Customer Success Manager for your customers and for the industry you and they serve.

Product Expertise Is Your Ticket to Greatness

When it comes to appraising CSMs, product expertise differentiates the best ones from the rest. Having an intimate knowledge of your product is a skill that will help you unlock value very quickly for your customers and build trust with them. Frankly, it's not optional if you want to rise to the top of your team and be the best CSM possible. We've encountered far too many CS professionals that believe success can be delivered to their customers strictly based on their industry experience or their ability to build empathetic relationships. While these skills are absolutely relevant and valuable, the most successful CSMs have deep product expertise in their repertoire. Consider this: your customers are paying for your product, not your affable interactions. They expect interactions with representatives from your company that can draw further value from their investment with your company and its product. The expectation of product expertise is even higher with their assigned CSM – you!

Of course, the amount of product knowledge required depends on the role description of CSMs at your company. At the very least, CSMs need to articulate the benefits of your product, and how they are differentiated versus your competitors. In some companies, CSMs are expected to technically assess the configuration and deployment of your product at a customer and provide a point of view on whether it adheres to best practices.

Here are a few strategies to increase your product knowledge:

1. Leverage available literature.

   If you search, you will probably find plenty of rich content already available within your company. Look for product or demo videos. Most companies have these available for their customers, so leverage the same material. If there is any virtual or onsite training available for your customers, ask to join the class. Ask your Product team to share the same materials they use to onboard their own new staff. Many companies have excellent “best practice” articles available on their support or customer community websites. Also, track down customer success stories and case studies from your Marketing team or recent conferences and trade shows. Review them to know how customers get value from your product.

2. Learn from your colleagues.

   Make friends with teammates in Solutions Consulting or Sales Engineering. They are the pre-sales technical teammates who work with the Sales Reps and prospective customers during the sales cycle. They are adept at talking about the benefits of your product, its competitive advantages, and can demonstrate the most relevant features of the product. Try joining in on some of their sales demonstrations. It gives a proper perspective on how they position and “pitch” the product and the types of questions your prospective customers might have. This vantage point gives you a first-hand perspective on what problems customers are trying to solve with your product. Don't stop there. Consider spending some time with your technical support team until you have an appropriate level of product mastery. This experience is an excellent way to learn the frequently asked questions about the product. It's also a suitable manner in which to acquaint yourself with go-to resources on the Support team that you'll occasionally need to lean on in your day to day as a CSM. The same approach should be applied to your product teams. Some innovative companies have a resource-sharing model where every Product Manager spends a couple of weeks with customer-facing teams. This time helps develop more empathy for customer situations.

3. Practice the sales demo and pitch.

   You will be asked often, as a CSM, to walk through a demonstration of your product with new customer stakeholders. It could even be to an entire group of new users. Sometimes this will happen literally on-demand and unexpectedly. You must be able and ready to articulate the product's value and purpose, and demonstrate its functionality with as much, if not more, precision as your best salesperson. It is advisable to actually practice demoing in front of a real group of people, such as your own CS team.

4. User group meet-ups.

   Many companies host regular user group meetings intended for their customers. It is generally a forum to network and share ideas and innovative ways of using your company's product. These meet-ups often afford you a unique opportunity to hear from a diverse set of companies, the various challenges they face, how they are using your company's products to solve real problems, and creative use-cases.

A big part of a CSM's job is to improve the product continually by being the voice of the customer to your own Product team. Customers will use your product in a myriad of ways. Eventually, they will encounter what appears to be a product-gap or shortcoming of functionality. Customers will then request product enhancements and often do so with a sense of urgency. In that situation, you must have a high level of product proficiency to even recognize if the request is something that can already be solved by the product in its current form. In other words, if you don't know the product very well, how can you know if it will or will not solve the customer's unique situation?

Even if you know with certainty that the product can't handle their particular use-case perfectly, your first reaction still shouldn't be “We need to put in an enhancement request.” Instead, your first reaction should be to exhaust the current capabilities of your product, putting your creative hat on, asking your peers about the customer use-case, and brainstorming a dozen different workarounds, all with the goal of solving the customer's problem. Enhancement requests should really be a last-resort option. Again, this all assumes you have a high-level of product competency to even discern the difference.

Please recall the Consumption Gap diagram (Figure 2.2) that we covered in Chapter 2. Your job as a CSM is to maximize the use of the product in its current state! Yes, you are expected to raise new and valuable inputs that help improve your product over time, but you have an obligation to filter through all of the noise and only surface to your Product team the most valuable and impactful product improvements represented across your customer base. Taking this approach, you will have a higher success rate in persuading Product and Engineering to listen to your needs, especially if they have confidence in your product expertise. It gives you far more credibility both internally and with your customers.

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In this chapter, hopefully, you picked up some tactical tips for developing industry, category, and product mastery and understand how they are critical to your success as a Customer Success Manager. Take these new insights as you progress to the next chapter where you'll gain practical advice on how to empathize and build relationships with customers. Combined with learning how to become a problem-solving consultant to your customers covered in Chapter 6, you will be on your way to Customer Success Management greatness.