You're great at your job. Customers like working with you. But they're not really taking your advice, because they don't see you as a strategic advisor.

That's a solvable problem.

I made this transition years ago when I moved from Customer Support to Customer Success, and I've coached many Customer Success Managers to do the same. The shift from Service Provider to Strategic Advisor is a skill you develop and a practice you get better at over time.

The biggest shift for me was when I started assessing the relationship first, understanding that the customer relationship was as important, if not more so, than whatever strategic advice I’d hope to give. 

The Trust Test

A CSM on my team was struggling to get a customer to implement her advice. Another customer had taken her advice and was getting great results, but this one in particular wouldn’t budge. 

One of the first places we looked was trust: does this customer trust you enough to implement your advice? 

I like to use a simple Red/Yellow/Green framework to evaluate customer trust: 

• Red means you're still proving yourself, and your advice needs to come with external authority like case studies or documented best practices. 

• Yellow means you've influenced some behavioral changes, but decisions may still happen without your input, and they want to know what other customers are doing. 

• Green means you're recognized as a crucial input to decision making. You can redirect without fear and offer input as an expert in your own right.

The Power Map

In CS, we usually manage customers with multiple stakeholders. I worked with a CS Manager to improve his team's renewal rate. We discovered a clear pattern: someone other than the primary contact, usually a leader in the organization, was driving these decisions. 

To avoid these last minute surprises, he coached his team to map out the power dynamics at each company in their portfolio:

• Primary Contact: owns the admin and execution of your product

• Buyer: owns the buying decisions like contract and renewal

• Champion: can influence the buyer and other internal stakeholders

The Delivery Gut Check

When I was a CSM, I got a reputation for wordy emails. I couldn’t help myself: I wanted to cover every possible base, and anticipate all possible questions a customer could have. 

It became clear very quickly that my customers were not reading all that! 

So before I hit send, I started asking myself 3 simple questions to help me write more clearly, or switch to a better medium for the message:  

• Does this allow the customer to achieve their goal while being as concise as possible? 

• Could I explain this in less than 5 minutes on a call? 

• Do I need them to act on this or refer back to it? 

Becoming a strategic advisor isn't really about your ideas. It's about being thoughtful about who you're talking to, and how they need to hear it. And importantly, it’s a practice. It comes naturally over time and experience.