Recently, the line between customer acquisition and retention has become increasingly blurred. Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) now face the challenge of orchestrating seamless collaboration between Sales and Customer Success (CS) teams to maximize revenue through upsells and renewals. 

This article will share everything you need as a CRO to help break down these silos and create a unified revenue stream for sustainable growth.

How Sales and CS Alignment Can Drive Sustainable Revenue

Research shows that companies with aligned Sales and CS teams experience 34% higher net revenue retention (NRR) compared to those without aligned teams. This alignment doesn't happen by accident, it requires strategic planning, clear processes, and strong leadership from the CRO's office. 

The traditional model of Sales "closing the deal and moving on" while CS "picks up the pieces" is outdated and ineffective. Subscription companies have demonstrated that when Sales and CS teams work in harmony, they can achieve NRR rates above 120%, turning their existing customer base into a powerful growth engine. 

Modern revenue organizations recognize that customer success begins during the sales process, and sales opportunities continue throughout the customer lifecycle. This continuous revenue approach has helped companies like Twilio maintain a dollar-based net expansion rate of over 130%.

Key Challenges in Sales and CS Alignment

Several major obstacles prevent effective collaboration between sales and customer success. As a CRO, those that directly affect revenue include;

1. Misaligned Incentives

Sales teams typically focus on acquisition, new business metrics, and short-term goals, while CS teams prioritize long-term customer health and satisfaction. For example, a sales team might push to close a large enterprise deal before quarter-end. This will be even if the customer's implementation timeline doesn't align with the roadmap, creating further challenges for the CS team.

2. Communication Gaps

Without structured touchpoints and shared systems, important customer information gets lost in translation between teams. A common scenario is when Sales promises certain features or implementation timelines without consulting CS, leading to mismatched expectations and strained customer relationships.

3. Cultural Differences

Sales and CS teams often develop distinct cultures and approaches to customer interaction. Sales teams might favor aggressive growth tactics, while CS teams often prioritize sustainable expansion, creating friction in customer communications and strategy execution.

4. Disparity Technical Knowledge 

Sales teams may not fully understand product implementation complexities. They often only know the areas required to sell. Customer success teams, on the other hand, might not grasp the nuances of deal dynamics and competitive pressures, leading to misaligned customer conversations.

Strategies for Successful Team Alignment

The best way to start is by building a revenue-focused culture. CROs need to constantly emphasize collaboration between sales and CS teams. This is because it requires an intentional effort from leadership to model desired behaviors. 

That being said, here are some excellent strategies for driving further alignment between sales and customer success to drive revenue. 

1. Create Shared Goals and Metrics

The foundation of alignment starts with establishing common objectives that both teams can rally behind. CROs should implement; joint revenue targets, shared customer health scores, and combined performance reviews. Here’s how;

• Joint Revenue Targets: Set team compensation in a way that combines new business, upsell, and renewal metrics. For example, implement a shared commission structure where Sales receive a percentage of renewal revenue and CS earns compensation for successful upsells.
  

• Shared Customer Health Scores: Develop comprehensive scoring systems that factor in both sales and CS perspectives. Include metrics like: Product usage patterns executive engagement levels, support ticket trends, contract value growth potential, and feature adoption rates.
  
  
• Combined Performance Reviews: Evaluate team performance based on collective outcomes. For instance, quarterly reviews should assess how well Sales and CS collaborated on accounts, including metrics like: Time to first value, implementation success rates, expansion revenue growth, and customer satisfaction scores

2. Implement Collaborative Processes

Success requires more than just shared metrics, it demands structured processes that facilitate teamwork. Here's a detailed framework you can adopt;

• Weekly Joint Account Reviews; Review the top 10 accounts by revenue potential, discuss expansion opportunities and risks, share customer feedback and product usage insights, and plan joint customer touchpoints
  
  
• Monthly Strategic Planning Sessions: Here you can jointly analyze customer cohort performance, identify trending product adoption patterns, plan coordinated outreach campaigns, and review your win/loss analysis as a team.
   
• Quarterly Business Reviews: Also known as QBRs, these meetings can help you assess team collaboration and how effective it has been. During the call, adjust shared goals and metrics, celebrate successful joint wins, and refine process improvements.
  

3. Develop a Unified Customer Journey

Map out a comprehensive customer journey that clearly defines roles and handoff points. For example, who owns pre-sales engagement, onboarding, and implementation? Then jointly share the ongoing success management. Here's a detailed breakdown:

• Pre-sale Engagement: Mostly owned by the sales lead, this can cover initial discovery, qualification, and solution mapping and then you can invite the customer success team during the late-stage discussions. Together, proffer a joint solution.
  
  
• Implementation and Onboarding: Owned by the customer success lead, CS can manage the handoff meeting with the sales team. Here, they can also build a customer success plan development, look through milestone tracking, and detect early issues.
  
  
• Ongoing Success Management: This can be jointly owned for regular health checks, product adoption monitoring, QBRs, and other proactive risk management.
  
  
• Renewal and Expansion Planning: Over time, let both sales and customer success teams manage renewals. This includes identifying expansion opportunities, strategy development, and relationship mapping.
  

4. Invest in Cross-Training

Since both teams will work collaboratively, you need to also invest in cross-training so both teams can contribute with enough context. We recommend creating rotation programs between teams. You can also hold product knowledge sessions, joint customer call programs, and shared sales methodology training.

Best Practices for Implementing these Strategies

When implementing new alignment initiatives, organizations should take a measured and systematic approach. Start with a pilot program focusing on a small group of strategic accounts where both teams can test new processes and collaboration methods. This controlled environment allows for rapid learning and adjustment before rolling out changes more widely.

Regular feedback collection from both teams and customers helps identify what's working and what needs refinement. Consider conducting monthly reviews during the initial implementation phase, gathering input through a combination of surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one discussions with team members at all levels.

Process improvement should also be ongoing and data-driven. Use the insights gathered from your metrics and feedback channels to make regular adjustments to your alignment strategy. This might involve tweaking handoff processes, adjusting shared metrics, or modifying communication protocols based on real-world experience.

How to Use Stellafai to Drive Alignment Between Sales and Customer Success

While meetings help with account discussions and communication, you need to also have a collaborative outcome-based platform like Stellafai. This helps ensure you’re always tracking the right metrics to validate your alignment initiatives. 

You can jointly create and track shared goals using the OKR tool. This shows your progress towards reaching these goals and who owns what. 

The Star chart also shows your team how every goal is connected. With this, they can see how their responsibilities directly impact business outcomes. It’s also great cause you have tangible proof of your ROI. 

Finally, you can get access to a network of business professionals who can help guide you on how to drive this alignment. Not sure where to start? Book a free discovery session here and we’ll help map out a plan.

Wrapping Up

For CROs looking to drive sustainable revenue growth, aligning Sales and Customer Success is no longer optional. With the right collaboration processes, technology, and unified team culture, companies can increase upsell opportunities and secure more renewals.

Success starts with strong leadership, clear expectations, and patience as teams adapt. While the transition takes effort, the benefits which are higher revenue, happier customers, and a more motivated team, make it well worth it.

The key is to set clear goals, put structured processes in place, and continuously refine the approach based on results. Organizations that get this right will be in a strong position to thrive in a competitive market.