I’m just going to say it: I don’t want my CSMs having commercial conversations.
I know that’s not what you’re hearing from most CS thought leaders right now. Expansion pipeline. Upsell targets. Revenue-driving CSMs. It’s everywhere. I understand the pressure — NRR is the number every board cares about, and CS is the function closest to it — but here’s what I’ve watched happen when CS leaders respond to that pressure by pushing their teams toward commercial conversations: They lose the one thing that actually drives revenue. Trust.
This isn’t a new observation. Outcome-based, value delivery has been the right model for as long as I’ve been in this industry. Back when Demandware (now part of Salesforce) was building its commerce platform, they priced their solution as a percentage of the revenue it generated for customers. They weren’t selling software. They were selling outcomes. Their commercial model was built on the premise that if the customer wins, we win. That alignment is everything.
Most CS organizations haven’t built that alignment into how their teams think and operate. They’ve built quota-carrying CSMs instead, and quota-carrying CSMs, however well-intentioned, eventually start every client interaction with one eye on the commercial outcome. Clients feel it. The dynamic shifts. The strategic advisor becomes just another rep.
The Story That Changed How I Think About This
Early in my career while at Gomez, a sales leader called me in a panic. A large, strategic customer had just notified him of their intent not to renew … three months out. We thought they were happy. We were wrong.
I was running Professional Services at the time. We didn’t have a formal CS function at the time. Health scores were being assessed and reported by the Support organization. When the sales leader called and asked how I could help, I thought about what my CFO had told me on day one: My job was to deliver services that resulted in higher renewal and growth rates than could be achieved without my team. Not to protect margin. To drive product revenue.
So the sales leader and I hatched a plan.
I sent one of my best consultants onsite for two weeks. Her job wasn’t to sell anything. It was to understand the client’s business: What they were trying to achieve, and whether our platform was actually helping them get there.
In the first week, she advised them to turn off half of what they had configured in our platform. It was redundant, incorrectly configured, or simply not aligned with the problems they were actually trying to solve.
We were a consumption-based model. Turn things off, and your price goes down.
The sales leader called me at the end of week one. “Your team is supposed to save this account, not reduce the ARR.”
I asked him to trust the process. We had another week to go.
During week two, the consultant recommended new ways to use the platform that were specifically tied to the outcomes the client was trying to drive. She worked alongside their team to configure as much as possible before she left. When she did, consumption was back to where it started, and there was a backlog of additional configurations they couldn’t finish — partly because of time, and partly because completing them required buying more.
The following week, the client called the sales leader.
“We’re going to renew, and we need to increase our contract by 30% to complete the work your team started.”
No pitch. No commercial conversation. A 30% expansion built entirely on trust.
Why the Sequence Matters
The Gomez story works because the sequence was right. Honest assessment came first. Recommendations came second. Expansion came third — as a byproduct of the first two, not as a goal in its own right.
My consultant turned things off before she turned things on. That act of honesty (recommending less before recommending more) is what made every subsequent recommendation credible. The client didn’t feel sold to. They felt advised.
That’s the sequence most CS organizations get backwards. They train CSMs to look for expansion opportunities and bring them into client conversations. The intent is sound. The execution poisons the dynamic. Because the moment a client senses that their CSM has a commercial agenda, the relationship changes. They start filtering what they share. They push back on recommendations they would have accepted from a strategic advisor. The CSM’s effectiveness — their actual ability to drive retention and growth — quietly erodes.
Think about your primary care doctor. They don’t walk into your annual physical ready to have a commercial conversation about buying an MRI. They take the time to understand what’s going on and recommend solutions to actual problems … as experts and strategic advisors, not as sales reps for the hospital group. When your doctor does recommend something that costs money, you take it seriously. The trust is already there.
That’s the dynamic great CSMs build, and it’s the dynamic that drives expansion — not quotas, not pipeline targets, not commercial conversation training.
The Mindset Shift: From Revenue Driver to Strategic Advisor Who Drives Revenue
There’s a distinction worth being precise about here, because it’s easy to hear “don’t have commercial conversations” and conclude that CSMs shouldn’t be accountable for revenue outcomes. That’s not what I’m saying.
CSMs must have a meaningful impact on GRR and NRR. That accountability is non-negotiable. What I’m arguing is that the path to that outcome runs directly through trust, and that most CS organizations are taking a detour that costs them the very thing they’re trying to build.
The mindset shift is this: Stop thinking of the CSM as a revenue driver who also builds relationships. Start thinking of them as a strategic advisor whose advice, when genuinely earned, drives revenue.
The difference isn’t semantic. It changes everything about how a CSM prepares for a client conversation, what they prioritize in an account review, and how they show up when they have something to recommend.
A CSM operating as a revenue driver asks: Where is the expansion opportunity in this account, and how do I advance it?
A CSM operating as a strategic advisor asks: What does this client actually need right now, and am I the right person to help them get there?
The second question, answered honestly and consistently, produces more revenue than the first. Every time.
The Operational Change: Build for Trust, Measure for Outcomes
Changing the mindset is the harder work. The operational changes follow from it, but they’re worth being specific about, because how you build and measure your team either reinforces the strategic advisor model or quietly undermines it.
Change the language you use internally. The words you use to describe the CSM’s commercial role shape how CSMs think about their work and how clients experience them. If your internal vocabulary is “upsell targets,” “expansion pipeline,” and “commercial conversations,” your CSMs will eventually start behaving accordingly. Replace that language with “earned recommendations,” “client outcomes,” and “growth through trust.” It sounds like a small change. The behavioral difference is significant. (That’s not to say you won’t be measuring those other metrics in your revenue model.)
Teach CSMs to diagnose before they recommend. The Gomez consultant’s most important move wasn’t the week-two recommendations. It was the week-one assessment and the willingness to turn things off before turning things on. Build that discipline into your team’s approach. Before a CSM recommends anything new, they should be able to answer: Does this client have everything they’re already paying for configured correctly and working? If the answer is no, fix that first. That act of honest stewardship is worth more than any expansion conversation.
Separate the identification of opportunity from the pursuit of it. CSMs should absolutely be identifying signals that a client is ready to do more: New use cases, expanded teams, evolving goals. However, surfacing that signal to Sales and closing it are different motions. Keeping CSMs in the identification and qualification role, and letting Sales own the close, protects the trust dynamic while still delivering commercial accountability. The moment CSMs are asked to close their own opportunities, they become salespeople. The moment they become salespeople, you’ve lost the strategic advisor.
Measure what actually predicts expansion. If you’re measuring CSMs on expansion pipeline, you’re measuring the output without understanding the input. The leading indicators of organic account growth are health score accuracy, outcome definition at kickoff, QBR quality, and depth of executive relationship. Measure those things, and the expansion number follows. Measure only the expansion number, and you’ll get CSMs who chase it at the expense of everything that produces it.
The Bottom Line
The best revenue move a CSM can make is sometimes to recommend less.
That’s not a paradox. It’s the whole model. When a client trusts that their CSM will tell them what they need to hear — including the uncomfortable things, including the things that cost you ARR in the short term — the recommendations that follow carry real weight. Clients act on advice from people they trust. They filter, delay, or ignore advice from people they feel are selling to them.
Your CSMs need to be the person in the room their clients trust completely. The one who tells clients what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. The one who will turn something off if it isn’t working. The one whose recommendation to do more carries weight precisely because they’ve never recommended anything that wasn’t warranted.
That’s not a soft skill. That’s your growth strategy.
Are your CSMs prepared to do what my consultant did? Do they know what success looks like for each of their customers? Are they equipped to have the honest conversations that lead to the commercial ones?
Andrea Mulligan is a B2B SaaS executive and advisor with 30 years of experience building Customer Success, Professional Services, and GTM organizations. She works with growth-stage companies on CS transformation, AI operationalization, and post-sale strategy. Start a conversation →