CSM-specific and CS operations-specific skills

The final section of this chapter will focus on very specific skills for a subset of responsibilities of the CS organization.

What do we mean by that? CS is an organization with several responsibilities. Over time, companies have, through trial and error, concluded that the best outcome for their own business, concerning CS, is to specialize in certain areas rather than expect that CSMs will do everything. This conclusion should not be surprising in any way, given that any number of other business functions learned the same hard lessons as they went on to grow and mature in their capabilities and their thinking.

Let’s look at sales and marketing. Historically, and even for very small companies today, sales were just salespeople. They handled all aspects of the job, from finding leads to nurturing those leads and then closing them as customers until that strategy reached a natural ceiling in the capacity of a person to be able...