It is mid way through 2023, and there are some headwinds for selling data products.

Everyone is concerned about reductions in force, and they seem to have impacted just about everyone in some way. Even if you retained employment, you had friends who were impacted. Morale can be low.

Financial services are a whirlwind right now, with banks failing and customers pulling deposits from regional banks and rushing to credit unions and larger institutions.

Sales quotas are still high, and everyone is scrambling. Not for crumbs, but the pie is smaller. Gartner cut its predictions for IT spending growth in half for 2023.

Customer Success

Customer success is actually increasing spending in 2023. Ray Rike and Gainsight are all over this in their “The Evolution of Customer Success” report.

Over 70% of organizations are increasing their investment in customer success. Most large companies have an SVP of Customer Success or a Chief Customer Officer.

It wasn’t always like this. 

But the stat that really hit me was even for SMBs, (less than $100m in revenue), one-third of them have an SVP of Customer Success or Chief Customer Officer. 

Why does this matter? Because these executives are looking for any way they can to hit their numbers. As a data product seller, you can relate to them. They have similar headwinds that you are dealing with.

Here are the primary targets, almost always tied to variable compensation of all the CS team members:

Expansion Revenue

Renewal Performance

Customer Outcomes

With every CS rep having to handle up to 50 (or more!) accounts, this is a data-driven business. 

Having an understanding of core CS metrics and common systems in play (ZenDesk, CRMs, Intercom, etc) is all it takes to have the credibility needed to get into deeper conversations.

Here’s the other opportunity. Which departments to internal analytics focus on the most? It ain’t CS! Sales and marketing, operational efficiencies in product, and finance get all the attention. But these executives in CS have real needs, too. It’s an underserved market.

See more details and stats from Ray in his summary on LinkedIn