Best Practices: CS Commissions

Be sure to check out this discussion on "Commissions on Renewals" in The Customer Success Forum Group on LinkedIn. 
[u]https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1913401/1913401-6151825227958534147

[/u]Lots of great input from industry leaders, including our own CCO Dan Steinman. 

Hi Elena,

Most of the customers I work with and the companies I've worked for in the past don't directly incent their CSM team on a commission basis. The philosophy generally is along the lines that the CSM should be incentivized directly around the success of their customers vs. internal sales success. Therefore most of the metrics around measuring the effectiveness of a CSMs efforts would be related to retention, satisfaction, adoption and advocacy - indicators that the customer is achieving success with the platform and therefore indicating such via their behaviors or direct survey related feedback.

I have seen some companies incorporate incentives tied to upsell/expansion as an incremental to their baseline performance metrics. The companies that have done this will often have a certain number of upsell/expansion opportunities that they expect their CSMs to identify per quarter or fiscal year. The intent is to blend customer and company success into this incentive - with a focus on customer enablement and success, it wouldn't be a stretch that satisfied customers would choose to buy more product or services. 

In these cases there is usually a baseline number which when attained, achieves 100% of the bonus payout, with incremental incentive payouts for any added opportunities identified above the baseline.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Dan and Tracy! 

For companies where CSMs are responsible for renewals, does anyone offer spiffs for securing multi-year renewals?