It’s budget season, and chances are you’re losing sleep over next year’s Customer Success spend. Have you allocated the right amount for headcount? Technology? Enablement? How will your Finance team respond? Are you even in the right ballpark? Budgeting is one of the most stressful periods on any leader’s calendar—the stakes are just so high. What you need is an extremely practical, hands-on guide through the process from two experts who know the process as well as anyone—Gainsight’s CCO and CFO, Allison Pickens and Igor Beckerman. In this webinar, you’ll learn: How to scale your budget based on sales goals for new logos and ARR Best practices for per-ARR expenditure High-ROI investments for the next fiscal year Tactics for setting headcount and CSM account load And much, much more

1. 08.24.2017
How to Budget for
Customer Success

2. Why budget for Customer Success? “Proactive” or
“Predictive” Customer Success improves outcomes

3. Tips for budgeting

4. Tip #1: Budget for CS Operations
CS Ops function
• Owns reporting & analyses
• Develops processes for customer
engagement, external communications, as
well as risk management
• Owns 1:many processes
• Implements and manage systems
• Coordinates cross-functionally
• Owns CS enablement & training
• Why? → High ROI:
increases the productivity of
your CSMs so less headcount
is required
• When? → Hire when you
have ~5 CSMs
Check out The Value of Customer Success Operations blog post

5. Tip #2: Align with Sales and Marketing and staff
accordingly
● Wherever Sales goes, Customer
Success will follow: every new
customer needs support from CSMs in
some way
● Be mindful of the Sales team’s roadmap
and staff/budget accordingly:
○ International expansion
○ New segment (i.e. SMB)
○ New verticals
○ Reorgs
Sales
● Understand what Marketing is planning
for; leverage their capabilities OR fill their
gaps
○ Customer marketing
○ Customer communications
○ Webinars / interactive customer
forums
● If a gap exists, coordinate in order to get
budget for additional resources within CS
Marketing

6. Tip #3: Invest in and budget for training & development
Sales teams budget for kickoffs, professional trainings, attendance at conferences,
traveling to customer on-sites, etc. CSMs need many of these as well; don’t forget to
budget for:
Customer Success
attendance at Sales Kickoff
Professional training
Customer Success
conference attendance
In-house enablement
T&E for customer onsites
and entertainment
...and more!

7. Tips for getting
your budget

8. Tip #1: Know the difference between COGS and S&M
Product Training
Technical Support
Strategic Advice
Support & Training
COGS
Contract Renewal
License Upsell
Product Cross-sell
Sales
Sales & Marketing
Commercial
Responsibility
Department
Expense Type
0%
0%
0%
100%
100%
100%

9. Tip #2: Communicate the impact of Customer Success
on pipeline $$ generated
Renewal Expansion New Logo
Health score CSQLs CSQAs
Green/Lime Habits (i.e.
strong product usage)
linked to higher
probability of renewal
CS generated upsell
leads within existing
customers
CS generated advocacy
(e.g. sales references)
drives new logo revenue
Leading
indicator

10. Tip #3: Separate entering and exit Costs and budget
for where you will end up
● Team members will be hired
● Clients will sign and come on board
● Products will be launched
● New tech systems may be launched
A lot of changes will occur over the course
of a year (or even quarter) which will
change your cost structure
While you may target 12%
CSM cost as a fraction of
recurring revenue by the end
of 2018, it may take starting
at 16% to get there

11. Q&AQ&AQ&A