The 15 unspoken rules every CSM needs to know about their career (part 1)

You're doing everything right on paper. Your renewal rates are solid. Your customers love you. Your QBRs are thorough. And yet, somehow, that promotion still feels out of reach. If you're wondering why your hard work isn't translating into career advancement, you're not alone.

Here's the truth that veteran CSMs know but rarely share: being great at your job is just the price of admission. The real game happens behind the scenes, in the unwritten rules and invisible dynamics that actually drive CS careers forward.

These are part 1 of 3 of the raw, honest insights that successful CSMs wish someone had told them years ago. Some might make you uncomfortable. Others might challenge what you thought you knew about career advancement. All of them are based the truth that knowing how work, works is just as important as doing the work itself.

Rule #1: Your real job isn't Customer Success - it's business impact

Most CSMs fall into the same career-limiting trap: thinking that if they just work hard enough, hit their numbers, and keep their customers happy, success will naturally follow. Yet, when promotion time comes, or a new role opens, they're passed over.

Why? Because they've mastered the wrong job.

What's really happening behind closed doors

When leadership discusses promotions and advancement, they're looking far beyond your performance metrics. Your renewal rates and CSAT scores? Those are just baseline expectations. What they're really evaluating is your potential for higher-level impact.

Every time you:

• Simply escalate a problem instead of proposing a solution
• Focus solely on your accounts without considering company-wide implications
• Wait for direction instead of showing initiative

You're inadvertently signaling that you're not ready for the next level

What your job description says vs. what leadership actually wants

What your job description tells you to do:

• Handle day-to-day customer relationships and communications
• Meet quarterly renewal and expansion targets
• Help customers use the product effectively
• Run regular check-ins and QBRs
• Respond to customer questions and issues

What leadership is actually evaluating you on:

• Finding patterns across customers that could reveal market opportunities
• Creating solutions that can help the entire customer base, not just your accounts
• Turning customer problems into improvements that benefit the whole company
• Using customer insights to influence product strategy
• Building processes that other CSMs can follow

Breaking free from the performance mindset

Start thinking like a business leader, not just a CSM:

• When you spot a problem, come prepared with a proposed solution and implementation plan
• Turn your customer insights into actionable feedback for product and sales teams
• Create systems and processes that can scale beyond your own accounts
• Look for patterns across your portfolio that could inform company strategy

Examples:

When approaching QBRs:

• Basic approach: Following the standard template and sharing your success stories in team meetings
• Career-advancing approach: Testing a new executive-focused format, documenting what worked and didn't, then writing up a detailed playbook that helped the whole team elevate their QBRs to the C-suite level

When you spot a product gap:

• Basic approach: Finding a temporary workaround for your customer
• Career-advancing approach: Gathering data about how many customers face this issue and presenting a business case for product improvements

When handling a complex integration:

• Basic approach: Working with engineering to solve it for one customer
• Career-advancing approach: Creating an integration guide that helps all CSMs handle similar situations

Think of it this way – every interaction, every solution, and every process you create should serve both dual purposes:

1. Immediate impact: Solving the current customer need effectively
2. Strategic value: Creating lasting value for the organization

Rule #2: Being indispensable is a cage, not a ladder

Picture this: You're the go-to person for your portfolio. Every customer knows you by name. Your colleagues come to you for advice. You've got the highest satisfaction scores on the team. Sounds perfect, right? Actually, you might be sabotaging your own career advancement.

The irreplaceability paradox

Being the customer hero who:

• Knows every detail about every account without needing to check notes
• Is the only one who can handle certain complex customers
• Has special relationships with key stakeholders that only you can manage
• Creates custom solutions for each customer's unique situation

Actually signals to leadership that:

• Your success is tied to you personally and isn't repeatable
• You might be creating more work for others long-term
• You're not ready to take on a bigger role
• You're thinking too tactically about customer success

The uncomfortable truth

Being indispensable to your customers can actually hurt your career. If you're the only one who can handle your accounts, you've built a cage, not a ladder. Leadership needs to know your success is repeatable and scalable before they'll risk promoting you.

Building scalable success

Document everything:

• Create a detailed "how-to" guide for managing your accounts
• Write down your process for turning around unhappy customers
• Keep a playbook of email templates that work well for different situations
• Maintain notes about each customer's unique needs where others can find them

Create standard approaches:

• Develop a risk assessment checklist that any CSM can use
• Build a framework for handling customer escalations
• Design a repeatable process for quarterly business reviews
• Create scoring systems for evaluating customer health

Help others succeed:

• Share your best practices in team meetings with specific examples
• Train new CSMs on how to handle difficult conversations
• Create guides for common technical questions
• Document exactly how you've solved complex problems so others can follow your process

Real world example:

Sarah was known as the "customer whisperer" - she could handle any difficult client. But she kept getting passed over for promotion. Everything changed when she took a different approach with a challenging customer:

• Instead of just solving their issues, she documented every step of her approach
• Created a "difficult customer playbook" that broke down her process
• Ran a team training session sharing her specific techniques
• Built a framework other CSMs could follow

Six months later, the whole team's performance improved, and Sarah was promoted to senior CSM - not because she was irreplaceable, but because she made her success repeatable.

Rule #3: Your internal relationships matter more than your customer relationships

This might sound heretical, but your success depends more on internal allies than happy, or even successful, customers.

Here's why.

The hidden conversations that shape your career

Think about what's happening when you're not in the room. In meetings you don't attend, in Slack channels you're not part of, and in casual conversations between decision-makers, your reputation is being shaped in ways that directly impact your career:

• Product managers mention who gives the best customer insights
• Sales leaders discuss which CSMs they trust with key accounts
• Engineering leaders discuss who helps them understand user needs
• Senior leaders note who thinks strategically, not just tactically
• Department heads discuss rising stars in casual conversations

None of these career-defining moments involve your customers. Your internal reputation - how others perceive your value to them - matters more than your customer satisfaction scores. This means you need to be just as strategic about building internal relationships as you are about managing customers.

What each team actually wants from you

Start treating internal relationships with the same strategic focus you give to customers by helping them succeed. Here’s what they want, need, appreciate, and look for:

Product Teams Value:

• Detailed patterns backed by data: "40% of enterprise customers struggle with X feature."
• Real customer stories that illustrate why certain features matter
• Written use cases showing exactly how customers use the product
• Direct access to customers who can clearly explain their needs

Sales Teams Need:

• Actual stories and metrics they can use in their next demo
• Real timelines about how long implementations take
• Specific details about which customers succeed and why
• Clear warnings about potential implementation challenges to watch for

Engineering Teams Want:

• Clear bug reports with exact steps to reproduce issues
• Real-world impact of technical problems on customers
• Advance warning about potential technical challenges
• Documentation of workarounds that are currently being used

Marketing Teams Appreciate:

• Written customer success stories with specific metrics
• Direct quotes from customers about their problems and solutions
• Introductions to customers willing to be references
• Real examples of how customers describe their challenges

Leadership Looks For:

• Clear patterns that affect business growth
• Solutions to problems, not just problems
• Data that connects to company goals
• Strategic insights about the market

The career-changing questions

Instead of asking "How can I help my customers?" start asking "How can I help my colleagues succeed while serving my customers?" The difference in approach is subtle but the impact on your career is massive.

More specifically:

• "What insight can I share that would help this person succeed?"
• "How can I turn this customer situation into valuable intelligence for internal teams?"
• "Who else in the organization should know about this pattern I'm seeing?"

Rule #4: The skills that got you here won't necessarily get you there

The capabilities that make you a great CSM aren't the same ones that will earn you advancement. Think about the last executive meeting you attended. Did you feel completely confident contributing? Could you speak the language of business impact and strategic value? If not, you're not alone. Most CSMs excel at customer conversations but struggle when it comes to moving beyond their core skillset.

Essential skills beyond Customer Success

Project management that scales:

• Breaking complex problems into clear weekly action items
• Managing multiple stakeholders across departments
• Creating project plans others can follow and execute
• Setting and managing expectations across teams
• Running efficient meetings that drive decisions

Advanced problem-solving:

• Analyzing data to predict potential issues before they happen
• Finding root causes instead of just fixing symptoms
• Creating frameworks for solving common problems
• Developing hypotheses and testing solutions systematically
• Building business cases for major changes

Strategic communication:

• Writing proposals that drive action
• Presenting complex ideas simply
• Leading difficult conversations effectively
• Negotiating across competing priorities
• Influencing without direct authority

Real-world example:

Alex was great at handling customers, but struggled when tasked with leading a cross-functional project to fix onboarding:

Basic approach he tried first: "I'll schedule some meetings with each team and see what they think we should fix about onboarding."

What actually worked:

• Created a project charter showing the business impact of poor onboarding
• Built a data-driven case showing where customers struggled most
• Developed three possible solutions with pros and cons of each
• Made a clear timeline with specific deliverables and owners
• Managed stakeholder expectations throughout the project

The second approach got the project approved and demonstrated he was ready for bigger challenges. It wasn't his customer skills that won the day - it was learning to combine project management, data analysis, and strategic communication.

Rule #5: Navigate the influence map, not the org chart

The org chart shows who reports to whom. The influence map shows who really makes things happen. Your career growth depends on understanding this hidden network.

Imagine your company as a city. The organizational chart is like the official street map—useful but incomplete. The real action happens through unofficial channels, unwritten rules, and relationships that aren't shown on any formal document. Every company has two organizational structures: the one everyone sees and the invisible one that actually gets things done.

Breaking down the real power structure

Every company has three types of influence:

• Formal power - The official hierarchy and who makes decisions
• Informal power - The people others naturally follow and trust
• Network power - Those who control information flow and relationships

What does this mean?

• Some of the most influential people aren't always the highest-ranking ones - they're the ones others naturally consult before making decisions
• Critical decisions are often shaped before they ever reach an official meeting
• Major initiatives usually succeed or fail based on informal support, not just official approvals
• Resources often flow based on relationships, not just business cases
• Information travels through trusted networks faster than official channels

Understanding the power web means knowing who really drives decisions, regardless of their title.

Mapping the hidden network

Start by observing the patterns around you. Notice who gets consulted before big decisions, whose opinions carry extra weight, and who seems to know about changes before they're announced. Pay attention to which people are always involved in strategic projects or whose support others seek for new initiatives.

Key indicators of influence:

• Who gets invited to important meetings they "shouldn't" be in
• Who helps resolve conflicts across departments
• Who others look to for advice and their opinion
• Who seems to "just know" about changes before anyone else
• Who others grab coffee with before making decisions
• Who seems to mentor others informally
• Who gets picked for strategic projects
• Who leadership consults on strategic moves

Building strategic relationships

Once you've identified the key influencers, focus on building authentic relationships with them. Don't play politics - create real value. Share insights that help them succeed, ask for their advice on complex situations, and find ways to make their jobs easier.

Example:

Sarah was struggling to get traction with product requests. On paper, she was doing everything right - detailed feature requests, strong customer quotes, clear business cases. Yet somehow, other CSMs seemed to have more success getting their features prioritized.

Then she started paying attention during product meetings. She noticed that while the Product Director made the final calls, everyone in the room would glance at Mike, a senior engineer, during discussions. When Mike showed interest in an idea, it usually got prioritized. When he seemed skeptical, that feature request usually stalled.

Basic approach Sarah tried first: "I'll keep submitting detailed feature requests through the proper channels and escalate to my manager when they don't get prioritized."

What actually worked:

• First, she spent time in product meetings just listening to the types of questions Mike asked about features
• Noticed Mike often focused on scalability concerns that others missed
• Started framing her feature requests to address scalability upfront, using the technical context she'd learned
• During a product review, she raised a thoughtful question about scaling that caught Mike's attention
• When Mike later asked her for more customer examples around scaling challenges, she came prepared with clear, well-organized data

The relationship built naturally from there. Instead of forcing interactions, Sarah had positioned herself as someone who understood and cared about the engineering team's concerns. Six months later, she was often pulled into early product discussions because she'd earned respect by showing she understood both customer and technical perspectives.

The key wasn't just identifying the influential person - it was understanding what they valued and finding authentic ways to demonstrate shared interests.

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These first five rules reveal a crucial truth about CS careers: excellence with customers is just the beginning. The actual game happens in the invisible dynamics, unspoken expectations, and strategic moves that most CSMs never see.

But we're just getting started. In Part 2 of 3, we'll reveal five more career-defining rules, including:

• Why most career-making moments happen long before they're announced
• How to make your accomplishments impossible to ignore
• The truth about career conversations that most CSMs learn too late
• Why your manager isn't actually your career coach
• How your boss's problems are your biggest opportunities

Watch for Part 2 soon, where we'll explore the hidden dynamics that separate career-advancing CSMs from those who get stuck.