Become a Customer Success Manager - Official Anthropos Skill Path

The Customer Success Manager is becoming a popular role across multiple industries, starting of course with the software and digital service ones. Customer Success are usually in charge of managing large and small customers and help them get value from the products and services they have purchased. This role is fundamental for companies to keep their customers happy and upsell them to new services. 

This skill path at Anthropos is designed to give you a very comprehensive introduction to the role, teaching you skills related to customer management, communication, negotiation and even sales. You will find out that CSMs are a great mix of abilities and roles in one. This path is highly suggested for account managers, sales representatives and people with a mix of skills that want to get into a role where they will spend tons of time with customers and other stakeholders and will have to master several skills, including project management and team management. 

By Stefano Bellasio · CEO/co-founder Anthropos Inc.

Skill objectives

Chapter 01

Intro to the role and skills of the customer success manager

We are going to start learning more about the responsibilities and usual activities of the Customer Success Manager.

Skills: Customer Success Programs

Video10min

What is a Customer Success Manager

This is an introduction to the role of Customer Success Manager with a detailed explanation of what you need to do as CSM and what are the core areas of focus. 

Video4min

Tips to keep in mind as you become a Customer Success Manager

Learn practicable tips on what really matters as you become a Customer Success Manager: it's key that you learn what really makes the difference in your role 

Chapter 02

How to manage and lead your customers

In this chapter you will learn the fundamentals involved in managing with customers, creating a relationship with them and helping them. It takes time and the content here will make you think and help you improve things you already do today.

Skills: Client Communication and Satisfaction Management, Client Relationship Building, Client Engagement

Video24min

Secrets to optimal client service: how to talk, negotiate and work with customers

Jim Donovan is a famous top executive at Goldman Sachs - in this course recorded at the University of Virginia School of Law he explains - in details and with several examples - what you should do while approaching, talking and managing customers relationships. 

Video7min

5 core skills that you can start training and keep training in your CSM career

A quick recap of the most important skills you can learn to start interacting with your customers. 

Video3min

How to clarify customer needs

Learn how you can easily get the right information from your customers asking for the right questions. It's easier than you think and it allows you to understand a lot more about your customers expectations and deliver a successful project. 

Video6min

How to manager customer expectations

Managing expectations allow you to prevent problems and difficult scenarios. Learn how to manage expectations upfront and what to do when customers have impossible requests. 

Link10min

How to deal with a customer who has unrealistic expectations

Setting expectations is critical as we just learned, but even the best customer success manager will find a customer that has unrealistic goals, ideas and expectations. Sometimes this evolves over time: at first you thought you were aligned and then you discover the disconnection in a meeting. What to do then? 

Video21min

Connect and build trust with your customers

No matter the difficulties and challenges in serving your customers, your role as CSM is to build trust and rapport with your customer base. In this course we review what are the simple and more complex things you can do step by step to build trust with your customers. 

Video44min

Be a kick-ass CSM: a live recap of the most important habits for you as Customer Success Manager

Learn from Customer Success professionals a recap of the most important things we have seen in this chapter about managing and building  relationships with your customers. This is a live interviews done at Pulse, a famous conference dedicated to the world of Customer Success 

Chapter 03

Managing your team and solving problems

Managing a project will challenge your leadership across many fronts. In this chapter we look at two critical skills that will help you in most situations: learn how to manage a team and improve your ability to solve problems quickly and efficiently.

Skills: Team Management, Problem Solving

Video4min

How to build a project team

In your role you might need to be the person selecting and assembling the right team for a project. The way you do that and communicate the scope and goals to your team will influence their ability to execute and how they will look at you as the leader of the project. 

Video3min

How to plan projects with your team

This is a more specific take on how you involve your team in the project and make them feel part of it. It goes into examples and specific of what you can do and say to constantly keep everyone engaged. 

Video6min

Improving your ability to solve problems

Problem solving sometimes sounds like a buzzword: what does it mean to be a great problem solver? Way too many things! This course wants to be as practical as possible and give you some skills that will be useful as you face challenges in this role. In any project, especially when you have customers and teams involved, there are daily or weekly problems. 

Our objective here is to help you build and maintain the right approach toward problems and learn how to manage them (or delegate them) in an effective way. 

Video12min

Tips to improve your problem solving skills at work

This course gives you a series of simple things you can do immediately to improve your ability to solve problems. Together with everything else we have learned in this chapter you will be able to connect the dots and start applying these skills to your project and team immediately. 

Chapter 04

Communication and presentation with customers, team and stakeholders

Learn how presentation and communication skills will make your work 100% more effective: your presentations and your way of saying things will improve with new ideas and concepts.

Skills: Presentation skills, Collaborative and Communicative Skills, Communication and Collaboration Tools, Zoho CRM, Client Communication and Satisfaction Management

Video4min

Presenting skills: work on the perfect introduction

Every presentation starts with your introduction. A quick video to help you make it as effective as possible to get your audience attention from the first minute! 

Video3min

Presenting skills: how to organize a presentation

In this video, learn three simple structures for organizing your next presentation. These structures will help you be clear and concise, and will help your audience understand your key messages. 

Video6min

Presenting skills: how to connect with your audience

You will find yourself presenting to customers and audiences that don't really know what you have been working on or the main elements of the project. In this quick course you learn how to develop content and presentations that can connect with your audiences immediately. 

Video6min

Presenting skills: how to present with a group of colleagues

As a Customer Success Manager you will find yourself in several meetings where you have to coordinate not only your customer's group of people but also your internal team. 

Chapter 05

Public speaking: learn how to present to different audiences

In this chapter you will learn how to be an effective public speaker in several occasions. From a quick presentation to a conference in front of a large audience.

Skills: Presentation and Public Speaking

Video1min

Public speaking practical course introduction

In this course you will learn how to start become a better public speaker step by step. In multiple lessons you will learn the basics, from your presentation to how you can win your fears before a big presentation. 

Video3min

Public speaking: reveal your inner orator

This first lesson is about controlling your nerves when you need to speak in public. 

Video4min

Public speaking: define the objective of your speech

A series of aspects that will help you define the objective of your speech 

Video5min

Public speaking: the art of storytelling

Storytelling is what will help you transform your ability to speak in public. In this lesson there is a structured approach to transform your presentation into a story. 

Video1min

Public speaking: structure your content, part 1

Part of your success in public speaking will derive from the structure of your content: how it starts, what it tells, the anecdotes and so much more 

Video5min

Public speaking: structure your content, part 2

The second part related to the importance of structuring your content. 

Video5min

Public speaking: master your body language

Let's now focus on your body language and learn how to control it as you speak 

Video3min

Public speaking: eliminate verbal tics

How you can remove that bad pauses and "ehm" that are so frequent in many public speeches 

Video5min

Public speaking: speak at a conference

A practical set of suggestions to speak at a conference 

Video5min

Public speaking: present a lesson to a class

How to present in front a class 

Video4min

Public speaking: deliver a presentation to camera

For all those instances where you will need to present a project or summarize something recording a video. This will help you be a more effective speaker for it. 

Video3min

Public speaking: make an in-house presentation

Delivering a presentation to your own team requires a different setup and sometimes a different style. Learn how to deliver one with this lesson. 

Video1min

Public speaking: course summary

A recap of what you have learned about public speaking in this course. 

Video58min

Think fast, talk smart: communication techniques

Now that you know the fundamentals of public speaking, this famous course by Matt Abrahams - a lecturer of strategic communication at Stanford GSB and the host of the award-winning podcast "Think Fast, Talk Smart" - will bring you into a very engaging talk where he explains how to use communication in multiple situations. 

Chapter 06

Introduction to sales and negotiation for CSMs

Sales is mostly about creating value and solving problems: this is what you will learn in this chapter. How to upsell and let your customers buy more of your products and services. A critical aspect of being a Customer Success Manager.

Skills: Negotiation Techniques, Interpersonal Negotiation, Digital B2B Sales Fundamentals, Direct Sales

Video57min

The art of negotiation: 6 principles to help you get started

Negotiation is a critical part of our daily life, as a Customer Success Manager you will find yourself negotiating with customers, stakeholders and colleagues as well. If you are new to negotiation and want to learn more about persuasion, this course will help you interact with people in a way that allows you understand what motivates people. 

Gillian Ku, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, is really engaging in this course and shows you how to start with small gestures and things to persuade people and engage them. 

Video13min

Why you need to learn and do sales in Customer Success

Let's introduce the delicate topic of sales with a simple question: do you need to sell in this role? The quick answer is yes! A lot of people think that sales is a dirty work, but in this skill path we will show you why that's not true! Even better: most of the times, customer success professionals are better at sales than sales people themselves.

As a CSM learning to sell and specifically get into consultative sales can be easy and very useful. Your customers already know you and they know how you can create value for them. In this initial course we learn how to think about sales for CSMs and what are the real advantages you have. 

Video1h 12min

Understand value creation and positioning to understand Sales

We will not start immediately with sales training and skills: for Customer Success professionals you need to learn how to create value and position your product and services before you can sell. You are already in a privileged situation most of the times, you already have access to your customers and you have been working with them. 

This course will teach you what positioning means in terms of marketing and sales and why it matters so much to create value for your customers and make sure that selling a product or a service to solve a problem becomes just the consequence of that. At ByTek you will also meet a lot of different businesses and opportunities working with our customers, this course will teach you how to think about positioning and sales for them first and foremost. 

Video19min

The psychology of selling and where to start selling

It's now time to dive deep a bit more into what sales is about with an initial course on basic sales techniques. There are plenty of courses out there that want to teach you how to sell: this one is slightly different because it will teach you what matters in sales and why leading with questions is so important to create a relationship with your customer. 

For customer success managers leading with questions and learning how to create a strong relationship from day 1 is even more important. A lot of what you will sell will be an additional service or product (like Audience AI) and you can use questions and curiosity to learn as much as you can about your customers. 

Video19min

Consultative selling: solving problems for your customers

In this last part you will learn about the specific aspects of consultative sales and specifically how to apply it for software and SaaS (Software as a Service) products. This is important because it gives you yet another set of skills to work with your customers and solve their problems while upselling them to new products and solutions offered by our company.

With this final course you should have a strong understanding by now of how you can start selling and building value for our customers in your role. 

Chapter 07

Crisis management for Customer Success Managers

Things can go wrong all the time. With customers, teams and colleagues. In this role you will learn how to become more resilient but this chapter will teach you simple principles and strategies to manage a crisis or potential disruption of your plans.

Skills: Stakeholder Management in Crisis, Crisis Mitigation Strategies

Video5min

How to lead in a crisis and core principles

What's a crisis? A customer unsatisfied with results that decides to churn with a critical and important contract. It could be a misunderstanding that generates a big problem across your organization or a project that fails to be completed on time creating issues to your customer's business. Crisis can happen at every time and as a CSM you will need to recognize them and lead through them. 

In this initial video we review a few core principles you should use that will always work, no matter the size and consequence of your crisis. They might sound too simple, but if you start using them you will notice how powerful they can be. 

Video6min

A few examples of crisis management in a project

In this short course we step into the world of projects to review a few examples of potential crisis and learn how to deal with them. From someone in your team not being available to a change of scope in the project that you did not see coming. You should watch this course thinking about everything else you have just learned in terms of principles and you will have the skills to manage a crisis dealing with your external stakeholders (your customer, for example) but also with your internal ones, starting with your team. 