Turning Product Success Into Lifetime Value and Revenue Growth (without selling)
How CS teams deliver real outcomes, build trust, and unlock growth without the pressure to sell.
Customer Success teams have a tough balancing act. You’re here to help customers thrive, but you’re also expected to drive revenue. For many, this expectation to “sell” feels uncomfortable—it’s not why you got into the role.
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to sell to grow accounts.
Customers don’t stick around or expand just because they like you. Sure, relationships matter, but when leadership changes—and it will—those smiling faces can quickly fade into the background. New leaders are looking for ROI. They want solutions that deliver measurable value, cut costs, and help them hit their goals.
Your role as a CSM is to ensure they see that value, connect it to their long-term success, and guide them naturally toward opportunities for growth. These strategies aren’t just theory—they helped me consistently exceed retention and expansion targets as a CSM at Twilio, and I’m sharing real examples (anonymized, of course) to show you how.
Along the way, I’ll show you how to deliver value, tie it to long-term success, and guide customers naturally toward opportunities for growth. And in a future article I’ll share how to turn this into a scalable framework that will help CS Leaders drive revenue at scale.
Start With a Product You Believe In
I can’t stress this enough: if you don’t believe in your product, everything else becomes harder.
Your confidence in your product sets the tone for every interaction. When you trust it to deliver value, you can focus on solving customer problems instead of worrying about how to justify its worth. But if the product doesn’t work, or you don’t believe in it, none of these strategies will matter.
Now more than ever, CSMs should overly scrutinize the product they represent to ensure it truly delivers value for their customers. Your ability to succeed—and your customers’ success hinges on a product that solves real problems and drives outcomes. If you don’t have that foundation, no amount of relationship-building or creative engagement will compensate longterm.
How Belief Drives Confidence
At Twilio, I worked with a logistics company that used a messaging API to notify drivers about delivery updates. Miscommunication had been causing failed handoffs, and within months, the API reduced failed deliveries by 15%.
Because the product delivered, I could confidently recommend additional solutions:
“You’ve done a great job optimizing SMS for delivery notifications. What do you think about having voice notifications for high-priority changes? I can help you run a few tests to see if it’s a fit, and if it doesn’t work, we can drop it. But I’ve seen other logistics companies cut response times in half with this approach.”
This wasn’t a sales pitch. It was a natural progression of our conversation, rooted in the customer’s success. When you believe in your product, these moments happen organically—and customers feel supported, not pressured.
How to Scale This in Your Portfolio
Segment Customers by Industry: Identify accounts with similar challenges and test solutions that worked elsewhere.
Create Mini Playbooks: Document strategies for specific use cases and industries to streamline your approach.
Test and Refine: Start small, experiment, and adapt based on what resonates with customers.
Be Proactive: Don’t Wait for Customers to Ask
The best CSMs don’t just respond to customer needs—they anticipate them. Being proactive helps you drive value before issues arise or opportunities slip by unnoticed.
Use Data to Stay Ahead
Data is a powerful tool for identifying opportunities and risks:
Monitor Usage Patterns: Look for underutilized features or workflows. Your CSP (Customer Success Platform) or internal data reports should provide this.
Track Health Metrics: Spot signs of stagnation or churn risk early.
Identify Trends: Use portfolio-wide insights to predict which customers might benefit from specific solutions.
For example, a fintech company I worked with was using messaging APIs for fraud alerts. Their alerts were generic, and engagement was low. By analyzing their data, I saw an opportunity and reached out:
“Your fraud alerts are working, but adding personalized transaction details could make them more actionable. Let’s set up a session to explore this—it could significantly improve response rates.”
That small adjustment increased engagement by 30%, and the customer later adopted additional APIs to further improve their fraud response workflows.
How to Build a Proactive Playbook
Track Metrics: Use dashboards to monitor feature adoption, engagement, and risk signals.
Define Triggers for Outreach: Identify clear thresholds for when to intervene ( low usage, as an example).
Document Successful Interventions: Use case studies to replicate what works for similar accounts.
Plant the Seeds for Future Opportunities
Driving revenue doesn’t mean forcing premature conversations. Instead, it’s about planting seeds for expansion by aligning recommendations with the customer’s journey.
Teasing What’s Next Without Pressure
If you understand your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and the typical use cases that bring them value, you can forecast what they’ll need next. Here’s an example of how I framed a future opportunity:
“You’re getting great results with what we’re doing so far—that’s fantastic. Down the road, you may want to look into Feature Y, but for now, let’s focus on maximizing what you have. Once we hit the goals we’ve outlined together, we can revisit that idea and see if it makes sense.”
This type of conversation achieves several things:
Keeps ROI at the Center: Focuses on delivering current value before introducing anything new.
Guides Without Pressure: Plants the idea of expansion without rushing the decision.
Builds Trust: Shows the customer you’re invested in their goals, not just upselling.
Prepares for Growth: Lays the groundwork for future conversations when the time is right.
Focusing on outcomes not only builds trust and loyalty but also allows you to anticipate patterns of success. By aligning your strategies with customer goals and using data to predict needs, you create a reliable foundation for retention and expansion—making growth less of a guessing game and more of a predictable outcome.
How to Scale This Across Your Portfolio
Map Customer Journeys: Identify common milestones that signal readiness for expansion. Dig into those ICPs.
Tailor Recommendations: Align suggestions with each customer’s specific goals and challenges.
Experiment and Refine: Test this approach with a few accounts, adjust based on feedback, and replicate.
Be Honest About Product Gaps
No product is perfect, and customers know that. Acknowledging limitations builds credibility and strengthens trust.
How Transparency Builds Loyalty
A healthcare customer I worked with wanted a reporting feature we didn’t have yet. Instead of dodging the issue, I leaned into transparency:
“You’re right—this reporting feature would make a big difference. It’s on the roadmap for next quarter. Although I can’t make any promises, I will keep you updated. In the meantime, here’s a workaround that some of our other customers have used successfully.”
By being upfront and offering an alternative, I kept the customer engaged and maintained their trust.
How to Make Transparency Work for You
Log Feature Requests: Keep track of recurring gaps and share them with your product team.
Proactively Share Updates: Inform customers about what’s coming, but don’t overpromise.
Offer Creative Workarounds: Address immediate needs with temporary solutions.
Takeaways to Remember
Here’s how you can start driving value and revenue as a CSM:
Believe in Your Product: Confidence in what you’re representing is the foundation for everything.
Be Proactive: Use data to anticipate customer needs and act before problems arise.
Plant Seeds for Growth: Align recommendations with the customer’s journey to set up natural opportunities for expansion.
Be Transparent: Address product limitations honestly while offering workarounds to maintain trust.
What’s Next? Turning Insights Into a Framework
These strategies helped me consistently exceed retention and expansion targets as an individual contributor. But they don’t just work at an individual level—they can scale.
In the next few articles, I’ll share how CS leaders can turn these approaches into a repeatable framework that enables teams to drive predictable revenue. We’ll also explore:
How to scale these strategies across a team effectively.
How to apply these approaches to digital Customer Success for long-tail customers.
Practical ways to enable teams with tools and playbooks to make it all work consistently.
Stay tuned—this is where it gets exciting. 🚀
Great read! Would love to get you on our podcast sometime. Digital CS is key area of focus for many companies today