The Customer Success Pro Podcast

How to Set CS Career Goals That Actually Lead to Promotions

• Anika Zubair

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In this episode of The Customer Success Pro Podcast, Anika Zubair reveals why so many talented CSMs get overlooked for promotions and how to fix it with a clear promotion-focused goal-setting strategy. She explains the difference between performance goals and promotion goals, why revenue alignment matters even in support-heavy roles, and the three career-limiting mistakes most CS pros make during review season. You will learn her three-step Promotion Plan Framework, how to speak in business impact language, and how to track, package, and pitch your work so you can move from overlooked to the obvious next choice for senior roles. If you want to accelerate your career growth, rewrite promotable goals, and position yourself for your next title, this episode gives you the roadmap.

Chapters:
00:00 Why you keep getting overlooked for promotions
00:42 Performance goals vs promotion goals
03:37 Why talented CSMs get passed up
05:59 Why business impact language matters
08:18 Mistake 1: Goals that are too generic
10:38 Mistake 2: Waiting for your manager to set your goals
12:49 Mistake 3: Not tracking wins all year
15:06 The Promotion Plan Framework
17:32 How to create a promotion-focused North Star goal
23:48 Weekly challenge and next steps


Connect with Anika Zubair:
Website: https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikazubair/
CSM RevUP Academy: https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/revup

Grab our FREE resources here:
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Anika Zubair (00:00.366)
Do you ever feel like you're doing all the right things in your customer success role, but you're still getting overlooked for that next promotion? Listen, you've got happy customers, you've got metrics that are green, your manager says you're doing great, but when the organization announces a new senior CSM or team lead, it ends up not being you. And

Honestly, I'm here to let you know that most customer success pros are setting goals that are good for performance, but not for promotion. And in this episode, I am going to show you exactly how to fix that. Hey, CS friends, I'm Anika Zuber, the founder of the Customer Success Pro and your go-to coach for building a revenue-driven CS career. And today we're diving into something every customer success manager needs to hear before heading into performance.

season, which is happening right now at the time of release of this podcast. And that thing that you need to hear is how to actually set goals that actually get you promoted. We are going to unpack tons in this episode. I'm going to go over the difference between performance and promotion goals. And yes, there is a very big difference. I'm also going to cover how to connect your goals back to revenue.

Even if your day-to-day is more support heavy than sales, it is so important to make sure that you are tying your outcomes to revenue. And I'm going to share my three-step promotion plan framework that's helped my coaching clients, land senior, manager, and even VP titles. So if you're ready to stop waiting for someone to notice your hard work and start building a clear path to your next title,

This episode is for you. And if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to the Customer Success Pro podcast so you never miss a strategy packed episode like this in the future. And please do take a moment to rate, review, and drop your thoughts in the comments. I read every single one and I appreciate everyone that has subscribed to this podcast. So let's get into it.

Anika Zubair (02:16.269)
Hello everyone, I'm your host Anika Zuber and welcome to the Customer Success Pro Podcast, your go-to space for real talk, expert advice and actual insights in the world of customer success. I'm a CS executive leader, award-winning strategist, CS coach and customer success fanatic. I help CSMs and CS leaders build the skills and the confidence to become revenue driving pros and scale world-class CS teams.

So whether you're brand new to CS or a seasoned leader, this podcast is here to support your growth. Because customer success isn't a destination, it's a journey. And I'm here to be your guide and navigate every step of your journey. So join me every Wednesday where you'll get fresh CS tips, tricks, and strategies you can actually use. Some weeks I'll share my own insights and best practices from working in CS over the last 13 years.

And once a month, I'll bring on expert guests to dive into the most relevant and pressing topics in customer success today. So if you're ready to level up, hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune in, and let's make your CS journey a little bit easier together.

Anika Zubair (03:37.705)
So let's start here. Why are there so many talented CSMs getting passed up for promotions? Now, it's not because you're working hard, because honestly, customer success is one of the toughest jobs out there. But it's because the goals you are setting and the way you're talking about them are focused on performance and not potential. So let me explain. Performance goals might sound something like,

completed onboarding playbooks for 100 % of my accounts, or responded to customers' emails within 24 hours. Or maybe you're saying something like, hosted monthly check-in calls with top-tier clients. Now, I know you're doing all of this work, and I know it seems like that's probably showing that you're doing your job, but these statements that you are sharing, they're operational. They're tactical. They're about doing your job.

But promotion goals, they're totally different. And remember, if you do want to end up getting promoted, whether it's in customer success or any other role for that matter, in the corporate world, a promotion is not about doing your job. It's about doing the next job or the potential you have for that next role. So let's talk a little bit more about promotion goals. They're going to sound a lot different than talking about your tasks.

they're probably gonna sound something like, well, I reduced time to value by 20 % for new enterprise accounts. Or maybe you say something like, I've influenced 100K in expansion pipeline by identifying upsell triggers to hand over to the sales team. Or maybe it sounds more like I've delivered three ROI based quarterly business reviews.

that led to executive sponsorship and multi-stakeholder mapping within my accounts. Do you see the difference there? Did you actually hear that? If you didn't, feel free to rewind and listen to the difference because one part of those goals were very operational. They were very tactical. They're doing your job. But the difference with a promotion goal is making sure that the statement is all about the revenue and the impact that you've had.

Anika Zubair (05:59.293)
Promotion goals demonstrate business impact. They align with revenue and most importantly, they show your readiness for the next level. If you don't start speaking in that language and start iterating to your manager exactly what you've done in a revenue focused or business impact way, your manager's just not gonna get it. And as much as we think that our managers are all gonna line us up for the next promotion,

Of course your manager wants the best for you, but they also have a job. They're also busy and they're thinking about 10, 15, 20 other things at any given day. And so if you really want to show your readiness, give your manager the statements that show that you truly are ready to be a business leader. And it doesn't matter if you're a senior CSM or a VP of customer success, you need to show that level of business acumen. Now,

Let's jump into some of the mistakes that I have seen CS pros make when it comes to setting goals, because goals are great. And I think we're all really good at at least starting to set goals, but a lot of times we're not setting them correctly. And when we don't set goals correctly, we end up hurting ourselves more than we hurt anything else. And if you're not setting correct goals, unfortunately, your career is probably what's going to pay the price. And

I know at the time of release of this podcast, it is review season. It is the end of year. A lot of companies are doing performance reviews this time of year. And setting goals for the next year is extremely important. And it's also really important to understand what your goals are around review season. So my first thing that I have seen that kind of really irks me every single time I see a CSCS pro do this,

is that they end up setting generic goals that don't tie to business metrics. I've already given you examples of how goals can tie directly to business metrics early on in this podcast, but more times than not, customer success professionals end up not tying all of the work they're doing to business metrics. If your goals

Anika Zubair (08:18.052)
sound like improve customer satisfaction or building strong relationships or ending up with a green accounts, your manager might nod, they might smile, they might think, okay, those are great goals, but they won't be able to actually quantify your impact. Just like when you build a success plan for your customers, you wanna make sure you have a way to measure success with your customers with either an out.

or a quantifiable ROI or return on investment, you're gonna wanna make sure that your personal goal is quantifiable. How are you actually going to measure that you've done this? Saying that you're gonna increase customer satisfaction or build stronger customer relationships all sounds really, really great. But if I was your manager, I would have no idea on how to tell if you've done it really well or really poorly.

And that's where you have to get super specific and super direct, not only with yourself, but with the way you articulate it to your manager. So if you are setting a goal, let's not make them vague because that's only ending up hurting your career trajectory. Okay, now the second thing that I see happen way too often, and I've personally been guilty of this too in my first CSM role, is actually waiting for your manager to define your goals.

Now again, your managers do have your best interests at heart, but sometimes they are also going to define pretty generic roles for CSMs across the board, across their entire organization. Again, a manager has anywhere from five to 10 direct reports, maybe even more in some companies. And when they have that many direct reports, they're probably giving a very generic annual plan for every CSM. And

The issue is, is that they're giving something generic to you, or maybe they're not giving you anything at all. But when you wait for your manager to define those goals for you, this is again, only holding you and your career back. Now, your manager might help shape the company OKRs or KPIs, but if you're not proactively driving your own promotion narrative, your

Anika Zubair (10:38.335)
putting your career in someone else's hands. Like, what if your manager actually ends up leaving the company next year mid promotion cycle, and they're the ones that define the goals for you? You're ending up ruining your promotion chances just because you're waiting for your manager to decide what good and what great looks like.

So of course, it's likely that your company or your manager or maybe your HR team has given you some sort of outline of what promotion looks like within the business, but it's up to you to drive your own promotion narrative so that you start putting your career in your own hands rather than in someone else's hands. Now, the third mistake that I see, and this one's...

the worst one, by the way, I'm saving this one for last because this is something that we all do. And this is the reason why most of us end up not getting promotions. And this mistake is that no one documents progress throughout the year. Okay. Hands up if you've been guilty for it, because I know I've been guilty of this. I work really, really hard all year and all my customer success professionals on my teams or anyone I've coached works really hard.

all year and then they forget to document it or they forget to actually rate every little thing that they've done or actually capture all the revenue impact that they've had. And the thing is we wait until our mid-year reviews or end of year reviews and that is waiting way too long. Honestly, I don't know about you, but my brain can only hold so much information. So what I did last week,

has already become fuzzy in my brain. And I'm just not sure exactly all the impact I have unless I've written it down. And you can't just remember everything at review time. Honestly, I remember doing my mid-year reviews and end-of-year reviews, and it was so tricky because I did so many things, but it was really hard for me within that one week that I had to write it all down for mid-year and end-of-year reviews.

Anika Zubair (12:49.693)
I just couldn't remember it all. And I would be very surprised if you remember it all as well when it comes to review time. So if you're not actually tracking wins or tracking your revenue influence or even talking about all the stakeholder expansions you've done or product adoptions you've helped with or expansion opportunities you've created, if you don't actually document all of these things, you are going to have nothing concrete to show to your...

to your actual manager when it comes to review season. And again, this is actually hurting you. So help yourself by actually documenting things on a weekly or a monthly basis rather than just waiting until mid-year or end-of-year review cycles. Hey, just a quick pause from our podcast this week. If you are listening to this podcast the week it comes out, well, it is Black Friday Week.

So if you've ever been thinking about grabbing one of my digital guides or playbooks, this is the week to do it. For the first time ever, all of my digital products, so every ebook, every guide, and every playbook I've ever created is 50 % off. All you have to do is use the code BLACKFRIDAY50.

Now, I've never done this before, but I wanted to give you every tool that I've built to help you finish Q4 strong and start the new year with clarity, confidence, and momentum. So whether you've been eyeing the value storytelling handbook or the objection handling guide or the CS promotion tracker, or maybe it's the train AI to be your six figure revenue generating customer success co-pilot, they are all half price right now.

through Monday, December 1st. So if you've been on the fence, this is your sign. It's the lowest price these resources will ever be. If you want to download any of them, go ahead and head over to thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash resources and grab your favorites before the sale ends on Monday night. And make sure you use the code BLACKFRIDAY50. That's black...

Anika Zubair (15:06.916)
Friday 5-0 and you will get 50 % off all of my guides. But hurry, the sale ends Monday night. All right, now back to the podcast. Okay, at this point of the podcast, I wanna share my three-step promotion plan framework. So we're gonna shift away from just setting generic goals and I wanna actually now shift into what you have to do to land that promotion in 2026.

So here is my three-step framework for creating goals that actually lead to promotions. First of all, I need you to really reflect and think about your goals that you plan on having this next year and start to align them with business outcomes. Start looking at what your leadership cares about. Now, in most SaaS companies, this means net revenue retention, gross revenue retention, product

adoption, customer growth, and maybe even executive alignment. Now, I don't know your business as well as you know your company as well, but start to connect your goals to what the overall business actually cares about. Your goals should link directly to at least one of the things I've just listed out. Even if you're in a lower touch digital customer success support role,

You can still tie your efforts to outcomes, but you need to take a little bit of time and set time aside to really think about this. Now, I don't actually condone working over hours or the weekend, but when I first laid out my first set of promotion goals, I actually took a Sunday afternoon to do it. Now, the reason I did it a time outside of work and a time where I was just hanging out and having a cup of coffee on a Sunday afternoon

was it allowed me to really dive in a little bit deeper and think about my role, my impact, and how I can tie all of the work that I end up doing day in and day out as a customer success professional to revenue outcomes. Doing this on a Wednesday afternoon when you have a thousand Slack messages hitting your inbox or even a thousand customer calls on your calendar for the day.

Anika Zubair (17:32.128)
Taking the time out to really think about this is only gonna help you. So just do it and make sure that you are thinking about how your role ties into high level business outcomes. For example, instead of saying, I need to complete 10 onboarding calls every month, say something like, I need to shorten onboarding time to value from 30 to 20 days. And instead of saying, okay, I wanna,

conduct monthly check-ins with all my accounts, I would say something like secure multi-threaded contracts across 80 % of my book of business. Do you see the difference there? Both of those goals are trackable and it's important that you create a goal to track because what happens when you say conduct monthly check-ins? That's not actually a goal. A goal has something that you can track.

If you just say conduct monthly check-ins, you're actually just dreaming about something. A goal is something that's tactical, practical, something that you can actually track and work towards. So make sure you have a metric to track. Okay, for the second step in the playbook, I need you to think of the North Star goal for the entire year. This is your North Star goal.

So what's the one result that would make you feel like your year was a true success? So think along the lines, if I could achieve just this one thing this year, I'd feel confident in asking for a promotion. And remember, make it measurable, make it visible, and make it relevant to the next title you want. If you want to be a senior CSM, your goal might be

own 500Ks in influenceable revenue and lead a process improvement across the CS team. Or maybe you want to be a VP of customer success and you want to step into an executive role. Maybe your goal is actually track over 200K of predictable revenue per quarter per CSM. Again, these are trackable goals. They're tied to business metrics and they are tied to revenue.

Anika Zubair (19:55.718)
You wanna make sure you have one big goal that once you reach this big goal, you truly feel like you deserve that new senior CSM or VP of CS title. All right, step three in the playbook is track, package, and pitch. This is where most of the CS pros I work with end up falling off or falling short. So.

Let's say you set these amazing promotion goals and you're all ready to go and you've done great work. No one's questioning that, but you can't just do great work. That's the issue. If you really, really want to have a promotion, you have to first track your impact weekly or monthly somewhere. Please just write it down. Then you need to package this into business language.

that highlights the results you've driven. again, whether it's revenue increase, risk reduction, time savings, all of the business impact metrics that I mentioned earlier on in this podcast, you need to tie and package everything you've done into that business language that makes sense. And then the final piece is pitch. And I know this is gonna sound salesy and I know a lot of CS professionals listening are saying, I'm not in sales, I shouldn't have to pitch. You do.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news if you don't like pitching, but in order to get a promotion and in order to get it as quickly as possible, you've got to pitch yourself and you've got to pitch all the work you've done, all the impact you have resulted in when the opportunity comes. This is exactly why I've built the Customer Success Accomplishment Tracker to help you do all of this without reinventing the wheel. But more on that later.

First of all, I really want you to think about how your company reviews the ARR report each quarter. They don't just ask how do things feel or how is the customer feeling about this. Everyone in your executive team or company or board, they are looking at numbers. They're looking at growth rent numbers, retention numbers, expansion numbers, and even risk numbers. Now,

Anika Zubair (22:13.933)
I need you to flip that lens onto your career. Imagine your promotion pitch was a revenue report. What did you influence? What did you grow? What risks did you mitigate? Where did you generate long-term value from? That's the mindset shift you're gonna have to take. Remember, you're not just an employee doing tasks. You're a strategic.

asset to the business and you are influencing outcomes. So when you start to adopt this lens and this way of thinking, your goals naturally become more strategic and more promotable. All right, it's that time in the podcast where we are going to do your weekly challenge. And this week, I am going to challenge you to do something that is gonna land your promotion, okay? This week,

I want you to rewrite one of your existing goals. Use the framework that we talked about today and ask yourself, does this goal actually tie to business outcomes? Is it measurable and time bound? So can I actually track this over the next few months or the next few quarters? And does it actually showcase my potential for the next level? Then I want you to log it in your own tracker.

Whether that's a Notion doc, a spreadsheet, or even my CS accomplishment tracker, just log it. And if you're feeling super, super brave, I'd love for you to share this new goal with your manager. Show them that you're starting to think like a strategic partner, not just an executor. That one shift might just be the start of your next promotion. And before we wrap up,

Let me leave you with this. Your career isn't built by hoping someone notices your hard work. It's built by connecting your impact to business results and communicating that clearly, consistently, and confidently. And if you need a system to help you do that, don't worry, that is exactly why I'm here. Go ahead and download the Customer Success Accomplishment Tracker right now.

Anika Zubair (24:33.886)
It's the same tool that I've used with my clients and I've personally used in order to go from CSM to director to VP of Customer Success. And I've helped tons of people from being overlooked to being the next obvious choice for promotion by using this tracker. So head over to the customer success pro.com forward slash resources and download the CS accomplishment tracker.

It's the end of the year investment your future self will thank you for. So until next time, keep leading with value, keep tracking your impact and go set those goals that actually get you promoted. Now I'm Anika Zuber and I'll see you in the next episode of the Customer Success Pro Podcast. Thanks for tuning in to the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I hope you picked up something valuable to take back to your team.

If you enjoyed this episode, would mean the world to me if you took just 10 seconds to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more CS pros like yourself discover the show. And creating new episodes takes a lot of work. So leaving a nice review keeps me motivated to keep creating. And don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcast episodes. I drop a new episode every Wednesday packed with practical tips.

And if you've got a topic you'd love for me to cover or want to be a guest on my show, send me a message. All the details are in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. And hey, if this episode helped you, share it with a fellow CSM or CS leader. Remember sharing is caring. Cheers to your CS journey and I'll catch you next week for our next episode.


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Anika Zubair

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