How to turn your Success Plans into $2M ROI stories

Hi there,

I recently recorded my third podcast episode with Anika Zubair, and it made me realize something.

Anika has pretty much documented my entire journey in Customer Success! 😂

We first connected in 2020, when I was just getting started in CS and investing heavily in building my personal brand.

Six years later, we’re still having conversations about Customer Success, but the topics have evolved as my career has progressed.

Looking back at these three podcast conversations, I can see how much my approach to Customer Success has changed.

And I thought it would be fun to share a few lessons from each stage of that journey.

2020: Building my personal brand

When I first connected with Anika on LinkedIn, I was investing a lot of time in learning about Customer Success, connecting with other professionals, and building my network.

Our first podcast episode focused on How to build a personal brand in Customer Success.

At the time, I was learning from people who were more experienced than me, asking questions, sharing what I was learning, and putting myself out there.

That experience taught me something I've carried throughout my career:

You don't have to be an expert to start sharing what you know.

Some of the best opportunities I've had in my career came from relationships I built through LinkedIn and the CS community.

And six years later, I'm still learning from those relationships.

2024: Becoming a Strategic CSM

By our second podcast, my career had changed quite a bit.

I had transitioned from managing smaller accounts to working with large enterprise customers, managing multimillion-dollar portfolios and building relationships with executive stakeholders.

Our conversation focused on what it takes to become a Strategic Customer Success Manager.

One of the biggest lessons I shared was the importance of understanding your customer's business.

When you're managing enterprise accounts, you need to understand what the organization is trying to accomplish, what challenges they're facing, and how your product contributes to their priorities.

That means spending more time on research, discovery, data analysis, and building relationships across different departments.

It also means getting comfortable having conversations about business outcomes, financial impact, and ROI.

These are skills I've continued developing over the past few years.

🎙️ Watch our 2024 conversation on YouTube
🎙️ Listen to this podcast on Spotify

2026: Turning Success Plans into $2M ROI stories

Fast-forward to today.

I'm now three years into my Strategic CSM role, managing complex enterprise accounts with multiple products, business units, and sometimes more than 20 stakeholders.

And in our latest podcast episode, Anika and I talked about one of my favorite topics:

How to build Success Plans that help you demonstrate measurable business value.

One of the examples we discussed was how to turn something as simple as product utilization into a compelling ROI story.

Let's say you're working with a customer that uses workplace management software.

Their current space utilization is 60%, and through better workplace planning, they're able to increase it to 80%.

That's a 20-percentage-point improvement.

But what does that mean for the business?

If that improvement allows the organization to consolidate office space and potentially save $2M annually, you've just connected product utilization to a much bigger business outcome.

And if they're spending $500K on your software, that becomes a compelling ROI story with an executive.

Of course, the $2M needs to be supported by actual financial data. The point is to understand what the improvement could mean for the business and work with your customer to quantify it.

This is why I spend so much time building Success Plans.

Here are three things I've learned:

1. Start with business outcomes. Identify the three most important things your customer wants to accomplish. Every outcome should have a measurable success metric and a target date.

2. Establish a baseline. You need to understand where your customer is today before you can demonstrate improvement. Use product data, discovery conversations, and industry benchmarks when customer data isn't available.

3. Connect progress to financial impact. Look beyond adoption and utilization metrics. Ask how improvements affect costs, productivity, efficiency, or revenue.

These are also some of the skills I cover in my Success Plan Playbook, where I share the framework, templates, and AI prompts I use to build Success Plans for my enterprise customers.

Six years later...

Looking back, each conversation with Anika represents a different stage of my career.

In 2020, I was focused on learning and building relationships.

In 2024, I was developing the skills needed to manage strategic enterprise accounts.

Today, I'm focused on helping customers achieve measurable business outcomes and demonstrating the financial impact of our partnership.

And I still have so much more to learn!

If you're working toward becoming a more strategic CSM, I hope these lessons give you a few ideas you can start applying in your own accounts.

🎙️ Watch my latest episode with Anika on The Customer Success Pro on Youtube
🎙️ Listen to the episode on Spotify

And a big thank you to Anika for being part of my journey over the past six years!

Best,
Erika