Leading a GTM team

Should my CSMs carry a quota?

The short answer

Eventually yes, but not before your product renews reliably on its own merits. Paying a CSM on expansion when the product is still churning turns them into a bad salesperson and you lose them. Once renewals are predictable, a 70/30 or 80/20 base to variable split is the common shape, deliberately less aggressive than sales. The design detail that matters most: pay on gross retention as well as net, otherwise you get CSMs chasing upsells in the accounts that were going to grow anyway while the base quietly leaks underneath.

Go deeper, your way

5 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 5 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Advanced

Why we picked it Concrete splits (70/30 or 80/20 base to variable) and the key design warning: pay on gross retention as well as NRR, or CSMs will chase expansion while the base leaks.

The Ultimate Guide to Structuring a Compensation Plan for Quota-Carrying CS Teams

From CS RevSpeak by Angeline Gavino 13 min read

  • CS pay usually splits 70/30 or 80/20 base to variable, against 50 to 60 percent variable on sales teams.
  • A worked 80/20 plan: 80,000 base, 8 percent on upsell and cross-sell, plus 5,000 for hitting 90 percent gross retention.
  • One recommended metric weighting for the variable portion: NRR 50 percent, gross retention 30 percent, CSAT 20 percent.
Open csrevspeak.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it The Gainsight CEO on why CS should own an NDR number rather than just a churn number, including the idea of giving every CSM their own book of MRR to grow from 100 to 115.

8 Things I Learned from Dave Kellogg About Net Dollar Retention

From Gainsight by Nick Mehta 8 min read

  • Gross retention is ambiguous (which ARR is the denominator, is a product swap churn), while NDR folds churn and expansion into one number.
  • One cloud company cut NDR by acquisition channel (self-service, enterprise, channel) and found some sales motions were losing money.
  • Some accounts churn whatever a CSM does, so that time is better spent expanding healthy customers.
  • Break upsell into its parts: more of the same product, new products to the same buyer, new products to new buyers.
Open gainsight.com →
✍️ Essay
✓ Link checked Free Advanced

Why we picked it Kellogg's argument that churn has too many definitions to be trustworthy, and that private companies should measure NDR the way public ones do. The slides are the reference deck for this debate.

Churn is Dead, Long Live Net Dollar Retention

From Kellblog by Dave Kellogg 10 min read plus slides

  • Argues net dollar retention beats LTV/CAC because churn has too many definitions and invites gaming.
  • Notes PE firms recalculate all your metrics anyway, so use the measure public markets already trust.
  • Suggests private SaaS companies also start tracking remaining performance obligation (RPO).
Open kellblog.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Advanced

Why we picked it Lays out the three real ways to organise a CS team (by segment, by lifecycle stage, by engagement model) and what each one costs you, which is the actual decision a first-time CS leader faces.

Customer Success Team Structure: The Ultimate Guide

From Gainsight 16 min read

  • Names three scalable structures: embedded digital experience team, centralised content with distributed strategy, and community hub with program satellites.
  • Forrester's read is that most CS organisations struggle for lack of a clear charter and a segmentation framework.
  • Tie each program to NRR, gross retention, time to value, renewal forecast accuracy, and health score accuracy.
Open gainsight.com →

The same ground, at another level

How customer success and retention reads from a different seat.

When should I hire my first customer success person? Earlier than feels comfortable. The usual trigger is two or three customers big enough that losing one would hurt, plus a founder who is spending m... Breaking into GTM 5 resources → How do I build a customer health score that actually predicts churn? Start with four to six inputs, not twenty. The ones that earn their place are depth of product usage (not logins), breadth across the account, supp... Doing the work 5 resources → GitLab publishes its entire customer success handbook. What is worth copying? Three things. The renewal tracking process, because it shows what a renewal looks like as an operational pipeline with stages and owners rather tha... How the best do it 5 resources →

Terms in this answer

Customer Success Retention

People also ask

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