Sales and Customer Success teams working well together is key to generating revenue for your company. But it takes a well-oiled machine for the customer to enjoy a seamless experience. How do you get the post-sale transition right in a small company? Who's responsible for renewals and upsell? Here's the experience of Justine, Head of Customer Experience at Hiveo and co-organiser of Engage Paris.

Could you briefly introduce Hiveo?

Hiveo is a SaaS platform that helps its customers digitise the administrative monitoring of their suppliers and subcontractors by collecting, chasing and archiving administrative documents.

The solution has been on the market for almost 3 years, and we now have between 100 and 150 customers, from SMEs to large groups.

I head up the "Customer Experience" team, which covers CS, support and marketing. There are 3 of us in this hybrid team, and around fifteen employees in the company.

How does the move from pre-sale to post-sale work for you? Does the CSM take over the whole relationship after signature, or does the salesperson stay in the loop?

One of the first processes I set up at Hiveo was precisely the handover between sales and CS, even though at the start it was just one salesperson and me!

I created a company profile template, which serves as my working basis and is available in our company-wide knowledge base. In it, I ask the salesperson who closed the deal to tell me what was sold to the customer, the key decision-making and operational contacts, the industry and the commercial context.

I also ask them to specify what they know about expectations and opportunities: does the customer have a particular expectation in terms of goals or product development? What are the account's strengths and weaknesses?

In this profile, the salesperson also says whether they've already spotted growth opportunities: is it a regional roll-out before a national one, or a test phase with a limited set of third parties? Have options such as APIs already been mentioned?

The profile has evolved since the early days, but the goal remains the same: when I first speak to the customer on the phone, I need to know who I'm talking to and, as far as possible, why they're here and which direction our relationship could take.

Especially when there's been a long sales cycle and the relationship is already under way: it has to be simple for the customer.

Alongside this working document, the salesperson formally introduces me to their customer contact(s) and I take over the relationship. From then on, I'm responsible for the customer relationship itself, but the salesperson is never far away: they handle the renewal and follow up on any upsell I spot, notably thanks to the groundwork they've done.

Why did you choose that approach?

By keeping upsell follow-up with the sales team, everyone can stay focused on their own priorities. This set-up may change in future, but for now my priority is making sure our customers are satisfied, and that means delegating upsell to someone qualified, even though, as a CSM, I'm on the front line for working out with my customer how we could work together even better or drive adoption with additional features.

At Hiveo, we don't intend to grow the team much, so my focus is making sure that, at our size, we can meet our challenges and goals, which means not spreading ourselves too thin.

How do you make sure customers know where they stand and who to contact about what?

In my first conversation with a new customer, I'm very transparent about my role: what I do and what I don't do, particularly when it comes to technical support.

If a customer has a commercial question, for example, I simply redirect them to my colleague. Same for support questions: I reply and copy in our team so they can take over directly.

For me, what matters is that we're aligned internally on our responsibilities. So if an incoming question is more CS than support, my colleague passes it on to me, and if a customer asks me something that might interest the sales team, I pass it on.

Most important of all is that it's as seamless as possible for the customer: their experience with the Hiveo team matters just as much as their experience with the Hiveo tool!

In your view, should Sales still mean "selling" in the customer's eyes after signature?

What seems important to me is that we all act in the customer's interest. So if someone from the sales team gets involved during the run phase, it may be because, as a CSM, I've identified an opportunity for our customer to benefit from additional features that will help them get the most out of our solution.

My aim isn't to sell a feature to my customer at all costs if it isn't in their interest. It's because I have a relationship of trust with them that I'm in the right position to identify a need and help them put it into words!

For me, CSMs need training in selling, in the sense that they must be able to understand the customer's needs and ask the right questions so they can make proposals on upsell, and above all know how to bring up the commercial side: how do you show your customer the value of the product so that, once the groundwork is laid, the salesperson only has to close the deal? That way, when the salesperson is brought into the loop, yes, they're there to sell, but ideally to a customer who's already convinced!

At Hiveo, we've recently been moving more and more in this direction, and we're starting to see the effects, even though there's still room for improvement.

In practical terms, how do you pass opportunities on to Sales?

As I'm the only CSM and I talk to all our customers, I pass opportunities on to the salesperson who manages the account, directly in Slack or via Confluence, our customer information tool. It works very well when it's simply a matter of changing the scope of the customer's subscription just before launch.

Alongside that, we hold check-ins on recently renewed accounts and upcoming renewals. How often depends on the type of account. They give us a chance to talk about accounts, customer expectations, risks and opportunities, and to share any information we might have missed.

How do you keep track, with the sales team, of how an identified deal is progressing?

As I'm the only CSM on the team, I stay informed about ongoing upsell deals, either because I'm copied in on the emails or introduced them to the customer, or because we discuss them in our regular catch-ups.

Today, CS and sales follow-up happen in several tools, and this half-year's goal is to centralise everything for a consolidated view. Our team isn't set to grow much, so it's really important for us to rely on transparency and communication, rather than over-optimising a process that works very well with people sitting round a table, even a virtual one, to talk things through. As long as there's a written record of the conversation afterwards, of course!

Do you think there's a risk that salespeople will put more effort into new business than into upsell?

A few years ago I read The Sales Acceleration Formula, which suggested, among other things, that salespeople should only earn their bonuses if the account was a good-fit customer. I found the idea interesting as a way of making sure the whole team was aligned on what a "good customer" is for the company. By rewarding salespeople on how long an account lasts, you make sure they go after the right customers.

At my previous company, we all had a bonus tied to individual and company goals, which we set together and which included MRR targets. What I like about this approach is that the whole company moves in the same direction, so it's in the sales team's interest to work on both upsell and prospecting.

Then, and this works particularly well in a small or early-stage company, everyone has an interest in the company growing, whether through new customers or upsell/cross-sell, because it's in everyone's interest. Maybe that's my optimistic side talking!

More concretely, in a subscription model like Hiveo's, being able to offer new products suited to customers' needs is just as important as selling products to new customers, whether through upsell or at renewal. As our offer and product evolve, we have to adapt and think about how these new features can bring more value to our customers.

In your opinion, when should you bring in someone dedicated to the commercial relationship with customers, such as an Account Manager?

I'd say when your sales team no longer has time to manage and follow up upsells and renewals properly. If, as CSMs, we take the time to identify our customers' problems and work out how to support them, better still with additional options, but the team can't take it from there, then you need a new person.

Are there any resources that helped you get to grips with the subject and that you'd recommend to our readers?

As I mentioned, The Sales Acceleration Formula, about building and optimising HubSpot's sales team. I also follow influencers on LinkedIn, including Diana de Jesus. Then there are conversations with peers, whether at meet-ups, like the ones Sue runs in Paris where I started out, or the CS cafés in Lyon that I co-organise through the Customer Success Network, and of course Engage Paris.

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