Level Up: Core Processes to Help Develop

Sarah, a CSM at a growing SaaS company, noticed something frustrating: every new customer seemed to stumble through the same onboarding challenges, her teammates repeatedly struggled with the same unhealthy account patterns, and leadership kept questioning the ROI of their quarterly business reviews. She could have stayed in her lane, focused solely on her own book of business. Instead, she spent three months building repeatable processes to solve these problems organization-wide.

Six months later, Sarah was promoted to Senior CSM with a mandate to roll out her frameworks across the entire team.

This story illustrates a key career truth: to advance beyond individual contributor roles, you need to demonstrate impact beyond your direct responsibilities. While this can be a frustrating reality we have to ask ourselves, what is the most effective way to do this? Build organizational processes that solve real problems while showcasing your strategic thinking and leadership potential.

Let's examine three high-impact processes every ambitious CSM should consider developing.

The most successful CSMs I know have mastered the art of scaling their individual expertise into organizational assets. They've identified the three critical areas where standardized processes create the most value:

These aren't just operational improvements—they're career accelerators that demonstrate you can think beyond your own accounts and drive company-wide results.

Here's a sobering statistic: 89% of companies with negative onboarding experiences see customers actively evaluate competitors. Meanwhile, 90% of companies admit their onboarding could improve. This gap represents your opportunity.

As CSMs, you're uniquely positioned to solve this problem. You know which platform features drive early wins, understand the typical timeline for value realization, and see where customers consistently get stuck. The question is: how do you transform this knowledge into organizational process?

Step 1: Audit Your Current State (Week 1-2)

Step 2: Design Your Process (Week 3-4)

Step 3: Pilot and Refine (Week 5-8)

Success Metrics to Track:

This systematic approach to onboarding development demonstrates project management skills, strategic thinking, and your ability to create scalable solutions—exactly what leadership looks for in promotion candidates.

Every experienced CSM has those "go-to" interventions—the specific actions you take when you spot an at-risk account or underutilized feature. The difference between individual contributors and future leaders is the ability to codify these instincts into repeatable playbooks.

Your expertise in diagnosing account health and prescribing solutions is incredibly valuable, but it's locked in your head. Making this knowledge accessible to your entire team creates organizational value while positioning you as a subject matter expert.

Diagnostic Framework Development:

Content Creation Strategy: Working with your marketing team, develop both internal and customer-facing materials:

Automation Integration: Collaborate with your CS Ops team to create triggers that automatically flag accounts needing specific interventions, making your playbooks actionable at scale.

The beauty of this approach is that it amplifies your individual impact across the entire customer base while demonstrating your ability to think systematically about customer success.

Let's address this directly: business reviews are not dead, and they're not ineffective. They're poorly executed. When done right, business reviews are your best opportunity to demonstrate strategic thinking, data analysis skills, and executive communication—three critical competencies for career advancement.

The problem isn't with business reviews themselves; it's with how most CSMs approach them. Too much time spent on alignment (which should happen in separate discovery calls), too much fluff about company updates, and not enough focus on quantifiable ROI.

30-Minute Structure:

Data-Driven Storytelling: Your business review should answer three questions with concrete numbers:

Implementation Support: Create templates that make data gathering efficient, not burdensome. Work with your CS Ops team to automate report generation where possible. Most importantly, record yourself delivering these reviews so teammates can see the framework in action.

Developing a standardized business review process showcases your ability to communicate with executives, synthesize complex data into strategic insights, and drive alignment around business outcomes—skills essential for senior roles.

Building organizational processes demonstrates leadership potential, but only if you approach it strategically. Here's your roadmap:

Week 1-2: Choose Your Process Pick the area where you see the biggest gap between current state and potential impact. This is likely where you'll get the most organizational support and visibility.

Week 3-4: Document Current State Audit existing approaches, gather data on current performance, and identify specific improvement opportunities with quantifiable impact.

Week 5-6: Build Your Framework Create templates, define success metrics, and design the implementation plan. Focus on making it easily adoptable by other team members.

Week 7-8: Pilot and Gather Feedback Test your process with real customers and internal stakeholders. Document results and iterate based on feedback.

Present Your Results: Schedule time with your manager to present your process, the results from your pilot, and your plan for broader rollout. This conversation often becomes the foundation for promotion discussions.

These processes do more than improve customer outcomes—they demonstrate the strategic thinking, project management, and leadership skills required for advancement. You're not just doing your job better; you're creating scalable solutions that benefit the entire organization.

The CSMs who get promoted aren't necessarily the ones with the highest renewal rates (though that helps). They're the ones who can step back from their day-to-day work, identify systemic opportunities, and build solutions that create lasting organizational value.

Start with one process. Execute it well. Then scale it across your team. Your next promotion conversation will be a lot more interesting when you can point to concrete organizational improvements you've driven.

This article is part of CSin15's "Level Up" series, focused on the skills and strategies that drive CS career advancement.