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Everything you need for a CSM job search.

Templates so you never stare at a blank page again. Templates so you are prepared for every opportunity. Understand the product's potential. Structure so you never lose a detail. Prepare yourself Product is a revenue center. Compare jobs and opportunities. Bring clarity to your decision making process.

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Why Ask Product Specific Questions?

A great product can create a great experience and professional fulfilment.A poor product definitely creates a poor experience for a CS professional.is great your life tends to be easier and that means you can work on solving different and more interesting problems and generally means your company is probably experiencing high growth of some sort.The focus of this section as a product-led CSM is to inquire about the customer experience. I have included a list of 10 questions that really helps you develop an understanding of the customer experience. The customer experience is the #1 way you will understand how your day-to-day job will be outside of any internal leadership challenges of the business. Basically, if the product is great your life tends to be easier and that means you can work on solving different and more interesting problems and generally means your company is probably experiencing high growth of some sort. If the customer’s are finding it challenging to use the product then you twill experience this challenge in your role. You can’t separate the a poor performing product for customers and a poor life for a CSM. The CSM responds to the challenges of the business on the front lines with the customer. This is the most crucial evaluation of the whole process - even if you have the best manager in the world they will not stick around if the product sucks and the organization is challenged with the inability to solve customer pain.

Templates for every digital format.

Whether you're updating formulas in Google Sheets & Excel, Notion pages, Confluence articles, or beautiful Evernote or Google Docs/Apple Notes, PLCSM has templates for everything—guaranteed to "hook" readers and keep them engaged.

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Everything you need to ace your Performance Review and make more money in
Customer Success.

A program for you to take ownership on every phase in the performance review cycle so you never stare at a blank page again. Your are prepared and informed on the results you drive with customers. One-click publishing to millions of readers. Analytics to track performance.

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How to interview for your next job product as a CSM

A program for you to take ownership on every phase in the performance review cycle so you never stare at a blank page again. Your are prepared and informed on the results you drive with customers. One-click publishing to millions of readers. Analytics to track performance.

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Learn how to run your CS team with Product Analytics

Product usage data isn't just for the product team. CSMs need to own customer data analysis to measure impact, drive revenue and improve retention.

Analytics to help you grow.

Customer Success need to be data-driven. The Product-Led CSM helps you find the type of content your audience enjoys.

Analytics to help you grow.

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How To Prepare For Your Next Interview As A Product-Led CSM

Intro And The New Era

We are coming at this from the SaaS business perspective - software as a service. It’s the Spotify model - pay for what you use and its subscription based. This guide is focused on your ability to evaluate the product and ultimately how your role will feel day-to-day if you are able to get the job. Not ever business you interview for is going to have 90%+ gross retention or 120%+ net dollar retention and that’s OK. You may be early in your career or simply not totally be aware of the impact of these metrics on the overall business. You need to start somewhere and so that’s why I’ve built this free guide for you to nail that next interview!Times have changed for interviews - less in-person and a whole lot more Zoom. Use your technology to make your life easier, especially if you find yourself with many interviews. You will want to ensure you are making a data-informed decision about your next role! This also means that you’ll want to try to build rapport and get transparency from the organization so that you can make a solid decision about your future and how you are a great fit for the organization’s needs. Get ready to ask real questions about the product and business - be comfortable and practice with a friend or simply copy&paste the below questions and read the screen and fill in the blank when you hear the answer.

Watch Out For Vanity Metrics

Sometimes the answers to your questions, specifically data points, will sound impactful even though they are not, especially if you are new to product analytics. MAUs are great but not in isolation. Does the product have a leaky bucket? Vanity Metrics are not real for your customer, this is the organization either a) not aware of the falsehoods of these metrics and b) inexperienced with product analytics user behaviour metrics for their product success.

Making A Data Informed Decision

Do you know the answers to all these questions for your current product? Is the grass greener? You will want to run a comparative analysis of these questions or go out and get the answers to the questions so you can properly compare the customer and product experience.

Top 10 Product-Led Questions To Ask At Your Next Interview

1. What is your retention rate?

Holy grail of the CSM role. How well are you serving your customers and do the customers return / repeat buy your product. Best in class retention rates are approximately 90%+.If you want to go deeper on the topic to include expansion you can ask about NDR or Next Dollar Retention. NDR is a crucial and foundational metric for a growing SaaS business with 120%+ marking best in class rates. Ultimately this means that the business is growing and retaining customers at a high rate. These are rare so count yourself lucky if you work for an organization today achieving 120%+ NDR.Listening for... how are things going this quarter, year, last few years with specific retention rates (eg. 78%, 85%, 92%). You want to understand the trend (up/down).Follow up question: How has the product hurt or helped this metric in the past 12 months? This question flows nicely into the next question.

2. What product features from last year did you release that customer’s absolutely love?

This is a game changer for a manager and a CSM. For a CSM you will want to know what you can show off to your customers that really solves their pain so that you can show value and continuea to develop a relationship with your customer.

3. What product feature would you deprecate if you were made CPO for the day?

Listening for...
a) how attached/invested the person you are interviewing with is to the product / customer experience and
b) the structure of decisioning at the organization. The latter is about how they first respond to the exercise in holding the power over the product and how this is a keen reflection of how the organization makes decisions about the product roadmap (eg. HIPPO or customer obsessed).

4. What is your customer's #1 complaint about your product?

What type of problems are you going to be dealing with and how much of a frustration are these problems with customers?Follow up question: Does the solution require engineering to solve? or how many customer problems require engineering to solve? Engineering is awesome though, they have a core job and it tends not to be fixing the product. You will want to understand the turnaround time for engineering to get involved. The more engineering has to be involved the worse the customer experience because delays are built in to the process. There will always be a product push, an end of quarter need to hit a milestone and that means that you may have to hold on to a steaming bag of problem for weeks or months without a customer solution.

5. What is your support SLA?

SLA or service level agreement is the #1 metric for Support organizations in SaaS businesses. Best in class.

6. What is your product's North Star metric?

A north star metric helps to drive your company's growth by highlighting a number that best demonstrates how your product is delivering value to customers.Listening for... Revenue is a lagging indicator of success and not a fit for customer value and how an organization can rally around a single metric - plus it is is terribly demotivating to only work for a revenue goal.How is the organization rallying around delivering customer outcomes? There is a maturity curve to having a North Star metric and frankly, there's a lot of organizations operating without this metric. As a product-led CSM it's important you are aware of this topic...

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- what is the support experience like?
- SLA %?
- what do customers say?
- What is your growth rate?
- What’s on the product roadmap?
- What determines the work that product and engineering teams work on?
- a lack of product growth means little excitement or career opportunity growth for csms. how can your business expect to thrive if its not changing to reflect the needs of your customers

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