The Strategic Customer Success Manager: A Blueprint for Elevating Your Impact and Advancing Your Career

“You need to be more strategic.” Those dreaded words from your manager leave you frustrated and unsure of what to do next.But what if you could stop reacting to problems and instead become a trusted strategic partner who commands respect from both your customers and colleagues? Chad Horenfeldt—who has spent over two decades as a customer success manager (CSM) and building out high-performing customer success teams at Eloqua (Oracle), Kustomer (Meta), and other companies—shares a battle-tested approach to elevate your impact and advance your career.In The Strategic Customer Success Manager, you will learn:How to quickly build unbreakable trust with customersProven techniques for mastering strategic conversations, using frameworks and insights from leading CS practitionersStrategies for aligning with cross-functional teams across your organizationProven methodologies for conducting impactful kickoffs, QBRs, and renewal and expansion conversationsPractical strategies for identifying and handling at-risk accounts and preventing churnThis comprehensive playbook includes ready-to-use templates, actionable exercises, and scripts designed to immediately improve your effectiveness as a CS professional.Don’t wait for someone else to define what “being strategic” means. Take control of your career today and master the skills that will transform you and your team from ordinary CSMs to strategic advisors who drive measurable, exceptional results. Level up before you’re left out.Praise for Chad Horenfeldt and The Strategic Customer Success ManagerThe CSM of the future isn’t buried in tickets—they’re in the boardroom, speaking the language of value, building trust, and guiding accounts toward outcomes. That’s the vision this book delivers.If you’re building a CS org or developing your own practice, The Strategic Customer Success Manager is required reading. It’s not just timely—it’s timeless.—John Gleeson, General Partner at Success Venture Partners, Former VP of Customer Success at MotiveThe days of reactive, support-focused C