Griffin LaFleur

Companies say they want CSMs to "drive value, not just revenue." Then they turn around and pay them like glorified support reps. Here’s where the math ain’t mathing: You expect CSMs to own renewals, drive expansion, and increase product adoption… ...but you comp them like customer service agents with a small retention bonus. 🤷🏻‍♂️ That’s a fundamental misalignment. The best revenue leaders don’t just pay CSMs more. They pay them differently: - Base salaries at AE-level (or close). Treat them as revenue drivers, not cost centers. - Variable comp split: 50% retention, 50% expansion. Lagging (GRR/NRR) and leading (upsells, adoption). - Clear line between CSM & AM. CSM = Expansion & retention. AM = Negotiation & new product cross-sell. Too many companies lowball their CSMs, then wonder why: - Retention tanks. - Growth stalls. - Top CSMs quit to become AEs. If you want CSMs to act like revenue drivers, pay them like revenue drivers. It’s not a cost. It’s a growth strategy.

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37 Comments

Is your CPQ capable of supporting separate sales motions? Mary Wike, VP of Sales Ops at Quilt Software, scaled quoting operations while preserving the unique GTM motion of two parallel brands. With DealHub.io CPQ, Quilt were able to create a shared, scalable quoting foundation that adapts to each brand's needs. Read the full story here 👉 https://lnkd.in/dUY7xGE2 #SalesOps #GTMmotions #CPQflexibility

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Sales teams: if you’re still guessing who to follow up with, stop. The Breeze Prospecting Agent is starting to get really good, and all of our Sales Hub customers should start trying to leverage it in their GTM. It knows your rep, your prospect, and your company—and uses that context to help you personalize outreach and build pipeline faster. It researches your target accounts, pulls in insights from your Smart CRM, company websites, and recent news—and gives you a personalized starting point for outreach. All in minutes. Pro tip: Select a few target accounts, and let Breeze Prospecting Agent pull together the background for you—things like company updates, open roles, and CRM history. Then use those insights and your selling profiles to tailor your message. The more relevant your outreach, the faster your follow-ups turn into real pipeline. Learn more in the comments.

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There are two types of teams investing in ABM right now: 1️⃣ Those who are solely focused on activation, and in some cases deprioritizing the optimization of their process, technology, content, and are measuring MQLs. 2️⃣ Those who are making an ABM transformation, prioritizing ICP, data & technology, personalized activation, and focusing measurement on buying groups. While there are quick wins in launching segmented marketing programs against a targeted list, the real power of ABM comes from true go-to-market alignment across the entire organization. Takeaway: whatever you call it, ABM, ABX, or Account-Based Growth is most effective when treated as a go-to-market strategy, not another marketing tactic. #ABM #GoToMarket #MarketingStrategy #SalesAlignment #CustomerEngagement

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Your ABM strategy is only as good as your account list. And if that list is static? You’re already behind. Every successful #abm motion for net-new business starts with two non-negotiables: 1️⃣ A Great List of Accounts 2️⃣ Sales & Marketing Alignment on Those Accounts Miss either one and your ABM strategy is on thin ice from the jump. 1️⃣ Dynamic TAL That’s where Dynamic Target Account Lists (TALs) come in. They keep your lists fresh and your teams laser-focused. Static lists are outdated the second you hit “export.” Dynamic TALs update in real-time using things like: ✅ Website engagement ✅ Intent signals ✅ CRM updates (pipeline stage, industry shifts, etc.) With CRM data & tools like Demandbase, we ensure our TAL focuses on accounts that are ready NOW—not six months ago. 2️⃣ Sales & Marketing Alignment Even the best list is useless if sales & marketing aren’t n'sync. Dynamic TALs fix that by: ▪️ Giving both teams real-time visibility into account activity ▪️ Helping sales prioritize high-value accounts while marketing runs support on those accounts ▪️ Creating feedback loops to refine targeting based on performance The Results? When you combine a great list with tight #sales & #marketing alignment, powered by a dynamic TAL you get: ▪️ More Accuracy – You’re only focusing on accounts that actually matter ▪️ Higher ROI – Maximize resources by doubling down on high-priority opportunities ▪️ Stronger Collaboration: Sales + Marketing = One GTM Motion. 🔶Dynamic TALs aren’t just a tactic—they’re the backbone of modern ABM🔶 Bottom line. Be dynamic. Full stop. #AccountStrategy #DynamicTAL #SalesAndMarketingAlignment #GTM

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Is your marketing tech stack outdated for today's Buying Groups? Traditional marketing automation systems were built for single-contact funnels, not complex Buying Groups. It's time for an upgrade. Modern marketing ops means: 🔹 Unified visibility across leads, contacts, and accounts 🔹 Dynamic scoring that captures Buying Group intent 🔹 Seamless orchestration to align sales and marketing actions Discover how to modernize your tech and unlock stronger, data-driven engagement. #MarketingOps #BuyingGroups #MarTech #RevenueOrchestration #B2BMarketing #TechStackModernization

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I did an informal poll on CSM vs Sales commission splits. I was pleasantly shocked to see that over 95% of companies do not have Sales take a commission on renewals unless it’s a particularly challenging one; the AE is there to help with it as a “bounty renewal”. in this case, the AE gets a % but is not taken from the CSM. Other interesting data points: "Commission on upsells and renewal made up 30% of the total compensation package. However, the exact commission % was determined by dividing the 30% by $$$ into the total ARR managed by the CSM." What metrics should this be based on? Typically, companies that are earlier in their CS maturity will base this off a few leading indicators (adoption milestones, EBRs, etc.), and then move to comping on lagging indicators (retention, expansion, NRR, etc.) once their leading indicator activities have been proven. The following are examples of metrics you can use, not an exhaustive list: Leading: QBRs and/or EBRs (attained vs scheduled) Product adoption milestones (product dependent) Lagging: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - this is likely the most common Retention Expansion Advocacy (hard to make this scale across large teams and mixed portfolios - this is better as a SPIFF or annual metric to Bonus on) From there, you can determine the weight of each metric on the bonus. I'll give an example of using a bonus that is achieved by a renewal retention goal and an NRR goal. Criteria for 100% Bonus Attainment: 90% Renewal Retention (50% weight) 125% Net Revenue Retention (50% weight) "This keeps it pretty simple with two priorities. Retain and Expand Revenue. The Retention goal being assessed separately ensures CSMs don't have significant churn masked by massive upsells. In this example, if a CSM had 85% Retention and 115% NRR, they'd end up at 93.22% to goal for their overall commission/variable comp."

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Agentforce Partners: A new brand new Partner Learning Camp (PLC) Course has just been released! The Agentforce GTM Professional course is now open to all partners. This was truly a first-of-its kind cross OU collaboration to level up partner enablement and drive pipeline generation. Not only will partners learn valuable skills, partners that complete this PLC course will also earn points towards the Sales Capacity metric in the Trailblazer Scorecards. This now allows partners to earn Sales Capacity points at any time. https://lnkd.in/gdFuj-q7

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Is your partnership team struggling with seller activation? You’re not alone. After studying hundreds of top-performing partnership programs, I’ve realized most sellers aren’t intentionally avoiding partners…they’re drowning in complexity. Dozens of companies, same story – hours spent researching partner capabilities, struggling with manual coordination, and navigating disconnected systems. Sellers are overwhelmed. They lack the right intelligence to strategically engage partnerships when it matters most. And more training and more enablement isn’t the answer for two key reasons: 1. Traditional Enablement Doesn’t Scale When you have thousands of sellers and hundreds of solutions, expecting them to master partnership details months after training is unrealistic. 2. Legacy Platforms Move Data, Not Intelligence Most partnership platforms connect systems but don’t generate meaningful insights. Sellers spend hours researching instead of closing deals. Partner teams need to meet sellers where they are by leveraging AI to deliver contextual partnership intelligence directly in their CRM workflow when they need it most. I’ll be at Dreamforce this week, discussing how forward-thinking companies are solving this challenge and transforming seller activation at scale. Let me know if you’re here as well. I’d love to connect on how AI is unlocking partnership impact at scale. #Partnerships #SalesEnablement #AI #dreamforce

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I’ve been in outbound sales roles for 18 years now. Seen (almost) everything. Most outbound advice online these days? Generic (and useless for lead gen agencies). The “advice” summed up: “Personalize more.” “Follow up more.” “Send better emails.” It’s not wrong. But it’s 2025 and there’s a bunch of other things that “make outbound work”. → If 40% of your contacts are outdated, no subject line will save you. Fix it before trying out a “new strategy” you read online. (BetterContact solves the data problem.) → read your email. And ask:  “So what?” If it doesn’t make the prospect care in 2 seconds, rewrite it. → more emails DON’T = more meetings. Make them intentional and based on intent. → If they have to scroll past the first screen of your email, they won’t. Keep it short → Internal-style subject lines. Conversational tone. No fluff. Just value (you might’ve seen this one before too... but it works) → don’t start from “Who should I reach out to?”. Start with “Where did my last 10 meetings come from?” Then they find more of those. (it’s called reverse engineering in outbound) Main points: 1. Don’t send more 2. Send better 3. Don’t pay attention to generic advice. What’s one outbound fix that changed your results? 👇

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There’s no shortage of tools in Enablement…but which ones could you not live without? Over the years, the tech stack keeps evolving and so has my top 5! 1️⃣ Gong: The ability to gain insight into customer conversations, pipeline health, and rep behaviors is invaluable to informing and measuring outcomes. And the ability to scale coaching across the revenue team is key. 2️⃣ Articulate: When we need to launch something that learners will engage with and looks super polished this is one of my favorites. Bonus: the AI features are saving serious content development time now. 3️⃣ LMS/CMS: Being able to deliver content, eLearning and certifications for a distributed team is foundational to any enablement practice. And the more easily you can tie those assets and programs to performance metrics the better! (We use Mindtickle LMS currently). 4️⃣ Asana: Absolute must-have for managing projects, timelines, and capacity across our team. Keeps everyone aligned, on track, and helps me with visibility across all of our initiatives. 5️⃣ Luster: Practice makes progress. The ability to build hyper-realistic role-play at scale allows us to provide reps with real-time skill coaching without adding more to a manager’s plate. What’s one tool in your Enablement toolkit that you couldn’t live without right now? #impactenablement #enablementtools

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How to win at EdTech sales: –Target buyers who can say “yes” – Automate outreach instead of manually suffering – Solve problems before customers know they exist If you do this you'll end up with more renewals, more adoption, and fewer “we went with someone else” emails.

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As the VP of Sales Development at Demandbase for 10 years I was part of the leadership team that helped Demandbase grow from $10M to $200M+.  Growth like that is only possible with SDR teams consistently overachieving on pipeline targets to give the reps the coverage they needed to hit their targets.  In order to do that, you need a significant amount of your SDRs getting above quota month in and month out. Good teams don’t wing it. They know their numbers, optimize channels that work, and embrace new strategies to stay ahead of the game. Teams like this consistently get to 125%+ of their targets. One of those SDRs who embraces this strategy to consistently perfrom is Reilly Barry. Reilly recently received Demandbase's SDR Rookie of the Year award, and it’s easy to see why. He’s mastered what every successful SDR does: Knows his stats  📉 Reply rates? Industry averages are 7%, but he optimized further when his dipped to 3%.  ☎️ Connect rates? While the average sits around 4%-5%, he figures out ways to stay ahead, even when numbers fluctuate. Optimizes channels that work Reilly leaned into LinkedIn Voice Notes after noticing other outreach methods losing effectiveness. Why? 💡 They’re underutilized (almost nobody sends them).  💡 They allow more context and value than cold calls but feel less intrusive.  💡 They break through saturated LinkedIn inboxes.  💡 They don’t take much time to send. By sending voice notes to prospects showing high engagement and website activity, Reilly achieved a 30% response rate and 10% meeting rate. Incredible, right?   Here are 3 takeaways for SDRs wanting to level up: -Understand your numbers and find opportunities to optimize.  -Stand out in the prospect's inbox.  -Take note of outreach patterns that 2x or 3x success and double down. Big shoutout to Reilly for nailing this approach with his innovative tactics and willingness to try something new. 🎉 What other tactics have you seen that optimize outreach metrics? Drop them in the comments below! 👇 #SalesDevelopment #SDR #SDRSuccess #OutboundStrategy #SocialSelling #LinkedInVoiceNotes

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