SaaS Sales and Customer Success link together so tightly that I find it hard to discuss growth without including both topics.

Whereas sales is a very known entity, with countless books on the subject, Customer Success is a relatively new role whose definition seems to be quite up for debate.

Last night I hosted the Toronto Software as a Service Meetup’s June event, where Julie Federman lead a group discussion on a number of topics on sales and customers success.

Julie has been with Linkedin for 6 years and after becoming one of the company’s top sales reps, she decided to apply her remarkable communication and consulting skills to the Customer Success org. This is where she feels she can not only perform beyond expectations but also do it with more passion.

My biggest takeaway from this discussion was that the distinction between Customer Success, and all other post sales communication roles, (e.g. Account Manager, Relationship Manager, Customer Support, etc. ) is that Customer Success is about offering strategic consulting to the customer. So, rather than shooting over a ‘How To’ document, the Customer Success rep should share an example of how another customer used a particular feature of the product to a particular KPI of their business.

Finally, where SaaS Sales and Customer Success meet each other, seems to be in the places where that consulting can assist a Sales partner to increase the LTV of that account.