Anika Zubair (00:00.408)
Do you ever feel like you're constantly just putting out fires? Like no matter how early you start, there's always more to do. As a customer success pro, your calendar isn't just full, it's probably pretty chaotic. But here's the truth, time isn't your problem. Your real problem is prioritization. And in today's episode, we are going to fix that. Because if you want to be a revenue generating high impact

Strategic Customer Success Pro, not just another busy one, you need to learn how to manage your time like a CEO. So let's dive into today's episode. 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 actionable 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 (02:02.383)
So here's the thing. Most CS pros tell me they don't have enough time. Not enough time for proactive outreach, not enough time for a QBR prep, not enough time for strategic thinking. And I get it. I have been there. I have been a CS pro where I'm juggling renewals, firefighting every single day with new support tickets or bug reports, onboarding brand new clients every week, and then chasing down product updates from the product managers.

super exhausting. And every year that passes in customer success, feels like we as customer success pros have to do more and more and more with less and less time. That has to be the overarching theme in customer success. Do more with less. But here's the thing. If everything is super important, then nothing is. The real problem isn't your calendar or your customers that are emailing you a million times.

It's that you haven't learned how to prioritize your day like a high performing revenue focused CS Pro. So let's unpack the three biggest mistakes I've seen in my career, but also that I still see happen every single day with customer success pros that I work with. So the first thing I have to point out, and I know I have been guilty of this before, is reactive planning. Too many of the CS Pros that I work with today

end up starting your day in your inbox or in Slack or reacting to everything that comes your way. Listen, I have been there. I remember I used to start my day by hitting inbox zero. It was my biggest achievement. I loved it. I felt like I was accomplished. I would even come in early into the office at 8 a.m. to just clear my inbox and Slack so I could start my day with a clear path ahead. But

You know what happens is suddenly it's 4 p.m. and you're still clearing your inbox and you haven't done a single strategic task. I have also been there. Now, the thing is, being strategic and hitting inbox zero are two very different things. And I learned on my career, you can hit inbox zero, but doing all of those tasks might not actually lead to more revenue and more strategic value for your customers.

Anika Zubair (04:27.031)
Now, inbox zero does not mean replying to everything. It means being very thoughtful of exactly what is going to take your time. And I'm going to get into later in the podcast exactly how you can be more strategic with your time and not be reactive because I see it too often. Too many customer success pros are being reactive. They are complaining that I'm in a reactive support role. But if you're starting your day looking at

yesterday's emails or the support tickets that have come in overnight, or maybe talking to your team that's located across the world. Yes, some of those are important and do need to be addressed right on. But does it all need to be addressed? Because again, if you are always working in a reactive way, meaning responding to email, responding to slacks, responding to requests, you are always going to feel like you're in the backseat and not actually in the driver's seat.

The second mistake that I personally have made in my career, and I know people out there that are in CSM roles today are probably doing the same thing today, is treating every customer equally. And this mistake is gonna cost you so much time. If you give the same time and energy to low value accounts as you do strategic customers with expansion potential,

you are going to end up being the most time-poor CS Pro out there. Now, I get it. You probably have your high-value customers and or your customers that are probably the ones that are complaining the most. Listen, your loudest customer is probably not the customer that's going to expand the most with you. And also, on that same note, your customer that is spending the most money with you is probably not the one with the highest expansion potential.

but that is where you are falling on your own sword and causing yourself a whole world of pain by not actually prioritizing your customers based on their potential. I see it time and time again. And like I said, early on in my career, I too was in a similar position. I used to give all my time, energy and resource to two different types of customers. The first type were the highest paying customer.

Anika Zubair (06:45.143)
And the second type of customer were the ones that were complaining the loudest. Let me tell you from 13 years of experience, these two types of customers are the wrong types of customer segments to focus on to really drive revenue growth. You need to do white space analysis and really understand which customers have the most strategic value and have the highest expansion potential. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time and again,

The whole theme of this podcast is we are already time poor, so let's stop making ourselves even poorer when it comes to time and let's start strategically deciding which accounts actually make sense to focus on. Okay, the third thing that I have done time and time in my career, and it took me so long to actually correct, is no CEO time. And what do I mean by no CEO time? I tell all my clients and

everyone that's ever reported to me that as a CSM, you are the CEO of your own book of business. So what does that mean? You need to start acting like the boss. You need to own your time like your boss would. So if you are running a business, you don't spend your whole week in the business, but never spending any time on the business. There is no way that you can do everything as the CEO.

That's why we have teams. That's why we have a customer success team and a product team and a sales team. And it's also probably why your CEO has time blocked out on his or her calendar. And they are using that time to think, to strategically review, to build new products, to go and speak at conferences, to go actually pitch to new customers or speak at customer advisory boards. No CEO is doing it all. They are prioritizing their time.

And the best way that they prioritize their time is by strategically thinking. And I see this too often is that as CS professionals, we just do everything. We fill our calendars. We think a full calendar full of meetings and emails and just doing QBRs with our customers results in revenue growth. Let me be the first to tell you more is not strategic. I want to repeat that doing more is not.

Anika Zubair (09:09.081)
being strategic. So if you are just always saying yes to the next meeting, always saying yes to the next business review with your client or product roadmap review with your product managers, or maybe you're saying yes to every sales AE that wants to bring you in on every call with every new prospect, are you really blocking out your time like a CEO? Really think about it. If you spend your whole week in the business, meaning in front of your customers, doing everything with them,

but never actually spending any time on the business. So really thinking about the strategy behind your customer's accounts, then you're gonna fail as a CEO. I'm sorry to say, and again, this is a problem I see happening time and time again. And as you listen through this podcast, I bet you you're thinking the same, thinking, my gosh, this last week, I spent so much time in the middle of customer complaints, in the middle of customer QBRs.

But did you actually spend time on thinking of the strategy behind that quarterly business review? Probably not as much as you would have hoped for, and that needs to change. Are all of these mistakes sounding familiar? They aren't time issues, by the way. Everything that I've shared are actually prioritization issues. And the best thing about a prioritization issue is you can fix it. And that is exactly what we are going to fix as we get through the rest of this podcast.

So the first tip that I want to give you is now that you're the CEO of your own book of business, I need you to block your calendar like a CEO. Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, please feel free to go and actually ask your CEO or any of your senior business leaders to look at their calendar. The strongest, most organized and best performing leaders block out their time. And what do I mean by blocking out?

your time? Well, I block my religiously. Like, I live and die by my calendar, and I think that has a lot to do with being a CS professional. Our calendars are our holy grail. Everything that my calendar says, I do, essentially. So when I block out two hours every single morning for the gym, you know I will be at the gym. And then my first two hours in the morning is actually strategic thinking.

Anika Zubair (11:33.377)
and planning for my day ahead. I know that sounds crazy, two hours. my gosh, Anika, how do you have that much time? Well, when I actually block out those first two hours to do business review prep, to think about the strategy of my churned customers, to do outreach for any customer advocacy or customer case studies, I'm able to start the day on the right foot. And I'm actually able to start my day where

I feel that I've accomplished something that is going to move the needle for my customers. And in fact, I wrote an entire newsletter on exactly how I time block my day. So if you are interested in that, I will link it in the show notes of this episode. But this is how I do it and how it works for me. On Mondays, I block time for personal development and strategic planning. I always like to start my week with this and it always feels really good because it feels

and it gives my head a little bit of a dopamine hit that I've done something strategic to start my week. So it immediately takes me out of that reactive mode that we're all so used to working in. And then midweek, I protect my CEO time. Now, what do I do by this? I actually block my entire Wednesdays from any meetings. I know, crazy. And I know as a CS pro, you're probably thinking, Anika, that's definitely not possible. I get it. It's probably not possible right now.

But it will be. What you need to start doing though is just, if you use Google, block out the whole day as in out of office. So you're not actually out of office, but on Google, I block it out as no meeting Wednesday CEO time. And I show it in my calendar to my team so that they can see that I am busy working on strategic projects.

But if anyone external or internally wants to book time in my calendar on that Wednesday, which is a reoccurring event every single Wednesday, they get my out of office saying, and the out of office for that specific meeting says, hi, I am busy today. I am not taking meetings today. Here is another time that works. Again, these are automations that I've set up and they're not done overnight, but

Anika Zubair (13:48.643)
This does work for me. And when I do block out those Wednesdays where my dedicated CEO time, I dedicate it to revenue work. That is the only thing I'm doing on Wednesday. Now, it might be natural for you to go and catch up on Slack or catch up on the email backlog that you have for your customers. That's a different calendar block, by the way, and we'll get to that later. But this is your revenue work time. I want you

to do QBR prep that puts you in the strategic mindset to be commercial with your customers on Wednesdays. I want you to review past renewal calls and pick up on any mistakes that you might have missed or any signals from your customers that might be ready for an expansion. I want you to start expansion planning. So maybe that means account mapping or stakeholder management or multi-threading on your accounts. And then I want you to come up with account strategy on the Wednesdays as well.

Any and all of these tasks are strategically planning so that when Friday comes along, by the way, this is my end of week block, I block out 90 minutes for learning, reflection, and planning the next week. These three blocks throughout my week help me stay ahead of the game and help me feel like I really have control over my strategic thinking time and that I am being proactive rather than reactive.

And when I actually plan out the last 90 minutes on my Friday, I am able to go into Monday knowing what I'm going to be doing and also feeling prepared to do that self-development time, that strategic thinking time that I blocked out. Now, if you haven't picked up already, calendar is an absolute must in customer success. So I always say if it's not on the calendar, it doesn't happen period. Honestly.

I live and die by my calendar and my calendar holds me accountable. It's like my accountability partner, if I'm honest. And whenever I do block out my calendar, I don't just say busy, by the way. That's my biggest hot tip for you. Don't just put busy. I need you to book a meeting with yourself. Book it in the way where you would with a customer. Put an agenda in the description of the meeting. Attach slides that you plan on working on in that next 90 minutes that you're doing the strategic thinking on.

Anika Zubair (16:05.241)
Do not just block out busy time or admin or catch up on emails time. That's not strategic thinking. And if you just block out busy time, which if I go and look at every single one of your guys' calendar that is listening to this podcast right now, I bet you there's busy or there's something like that in your calendar. And during that time, you just catch up on emails. That is never going to help you. And remember, I'm here to help you on your CS journey. So

Just block it out in your calendar and I promise it'll make all the difference. Okay, the next thing I want you to do is using the 80-20 rule for your accounts. Like I said earlier on, not all accounts that you are working with are equal. Your largest or highest paying accounts aren't always gonna be the ones that expand. So they're not the ones that you should always be spending equal amounts of time on. And the same thing goes for the accounts that are always complaining, always reporting issues, always...

basically your loudest customer in the room, what I need you to do instead of spending time with all of those customers that are just eating your time and not actually driving revenue, I need you to spend 80 % of your time on strategic efforts on the 20 % of the accounts that will actually move the needle. Now, whether that's revenue, retention, or a case study,

I don't really care. Your KPIs and your goals are very specific to your role in your company. But I don't need you to be spending 80 % of your time with customers all across the board. Because you're just going to burn yourself out and you're going to be exhausted and you're going to just end up hating working in customer success. What you need to identify, let's say for ease of math, you have a hundred accounts, okay? I'm telling you right now, 80 of them,

do not need your attention this week, month, or maybe even quarter. But there's probably 20 of them that have a lot of growth potential. But you need to identify which 20 are important. And it can't be those customers that are just the default, the ones that are green, or the ones that are highest paying, or the ones that are saying the most to you. Just because a customer is talking to you the most does not necessarily mean that they are truly ready

Anika Zubair (18:26.607)
for revenue growth or retention or even upsell or a case study. So you need to spend some time to really understand the 20 customers that you plan on spending 80 % of your week with. Hey, I just want to quickly interrupt this episode and let you know that if you're listening to this and thinking, yes, I want to prioritize my time better, but I just don't know where to start, then you need to get into RevUp Academy.

Doors are officially open and we're kicking off the next cohort in just one week. So if you're serious about personal development and want a step-by-step roadmap to become a better revenue generating strategic customer success manager, then this is your moment. But be quick, spots are limited and they always fill up fast. So head over to thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash rev up

to enroll in our next academy. Remember, spots are going quick, so go to thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash rev up to enroll today. Now back to our episode. Okay, I said this before, but I'm going to reiterate it that you need to protect your quote unquote focus blocks. I don't want you to just put focus in your calendar. I know it's typical and it's normal to say, hey, I'm gonna

put two hours of focus time in before I have this very strategic call with my customer. That's cool, but don't label it focus block. Don't just block the time. You need to protect it. So instead of saying focus time for QBR prep, I want you to put in, build a strategic plan with customer ABC to net growth or to unlock upsell or to make renewal.

a no-brainer, whatever it is, put that into your calendar and don't just block the time, protect it. This is the problem I see happening way too often is all of us think that, a customer has requested a meeting at 11 o'clock and I have some focus time in for 11 o'clock. You don't have time for a call at 11 o'clock. I know you want to say yes. I know it's normal by the way, and it's natural. Your customers do take priority, but

Anika Zubair (20:53.657)
That doesn't mean that you need to move an existing customer meeting. Treat it exactly like that. Your 11 o'clock focus time is another meeting with another customer. So give other alternative options. Now, don't go and block your whole calendar for a little focus time. You need to still speak to those customers. But in that time block that you have dedicated, treat it like that. Protect it like the time block that it is. And that also means, by the way, no Slack, no internal meetings.

Turn off your notifications, even put your phone in do not disturb mode because this is your time to move the needle, not answer all the pings and dings and rings that are around us. So protect your time. I know it's so easy to give it away. And as customer success professionals, we tend to give it away all the time. But I'm just saying loud and clear for you, your time is important for yourself.

and you need to protect it. And nobody else should be able to book over that meeting because if you do not spend the time to be strategic and really block out that focus time dedicated to upsells or renewals or revenue growth, no one's gonna give you that time back. You're just gonna keep losing it and losing it and losing it. And then you're gonna feel resentful and feel like you're being reactive all the time.

Okay, my last tip of prioritization and owning your time like a CEO is a bit of a fun one and it really works for me. So I wanted to share it with you because I think it can work for a lot of people is I actually color code and theme my days and my calendar. Now I love a good color scheme. I love following brand colors. And this is something I do right when I join a new organization is I go and color code my calendar.

So I pick different themes and different days and also different meeting types. And my calendar has a whole different theme depending on the day or the type of meeting I'm having. And the reason I pick colors is because it brings me joy and it's so much more fun to see a colorful calendar than maybe just a black and white one or just a red or a blue one or whatever the default color is these days. But also on top of all of the fun colors, I picked a theme of the day. So for example, I have

Anika Zubair (23:10.871)
Revenue days and these are my Wednesdays. I focus purely on revenue driving activities whether it's building QBR decks think reviewing old calls, whatever it is It's my revenue day and then I have customer days and then I usually do those on Tuesdays and Thursdays and half of Monday as well And then I have internal meeting days again. I try to make these all on one day I know that sometimes you cannot control it, but even if it's

half a day. example, I know at my previous company, Mondays were such heavy meeting days. So I knew that Mondays were meeting days. No matter what I did, I couldn't really meet with my customers until the afternoon because it was such a heavy meeting morning for me. And the same thing went for Thursday afternoons. So I always knew to color code my calendar for Monday morning and Thursday afternoon to really prioritize at that time was dedicated to meetings. And then

Other days were dedicated to customer time only. Now, not only does color coding really just help organize my day, it really helps my brain switch context more easily and helps me stay focused. In the busy world that we live in, having a direct focus of my calendar, it just helps me and my brain understand what it is I should be doing for the next three hours or for the next day or whatever the color coded block is in my calendar.

Okay, I quickly just want to share a story with you back when I first started managing a global CS team for the first time. Now I'm based in London in the UK and I had a team in Australia, in Singapore, in South America, in Europe, in the US, you name it. It was a global team. And at that point of my career, my calendar ran me, meaning my calendar dictated what I was doing, not the other way around.

So there were meetings at every hour of the day, escalations, internal team sinks, product sinks, marketing sinks. I was drowning because my calendar was controlling me. Then I made one simple change. I started treating my calendar like a strategy tool, not a to-do list. Okay? Because sometimes we just put everything on our calendar like a to-do list and I know it's easy to do. I still do it from time to time. But again, I have to come back to

Anika Zubair (25:36.781)
the original point of a calendar is it's supposed to be able to give you time back in the day and you need to treat it like a strategy rather than something you need to get through. So I started to create CEO time and I used to block my Wednesdays and I would be unavailable. And I used to tell my team, by the way, don't just go start blocking your calendar and then expect your team to understand why you're not responding to slacks or messages. I want you to let everyone know that, hey,

I'm doing CEO time right now, which means I'm strategically working on the three top most important accounts for the week for me. And that's what I'm doing. It was three hours of no meetings, no messages, just deep focus time. And that was the time I used to really build up the revenue frameworks that I coach and train on on this podcast and in RevUp Academy. All of those frameworks that I've taught and shared with the customer success community.

I used CEO time while I was at companies to build frameworks for my teams, to build frameworks for myself. And that is exactly what I'm telling you to do, is block out that time and make sure your team knows. I know it's easier said than done when you're like, just block my calendar for three hours and don't answer slacks. And your boss or your team is probably going to think, my gosh, you even do any work anymore. I'm not saying to ignore everything. I'm just saying,

Be clear and intentional with your time. Also, another thing I started doing when I was running a global team is I controlled the hours of which I worked. Now, I know not every company has flexible working times, but again, being a global leader meant sometimes I was on calls at seven in the morning with my APAC team because that was catching them at the end of the day. And vice versa, I had to be on calls at 8 p.m. to catch my California or U.S.

in the middle of their day. And that was burning me out, because let's be real, we cannot work 50, 60 hour weeks. But coming back to theming my days, when I was a global leader, I used to actually block my time on my calendar and let my team know that I did Australia or Asia Pacific meetings on Tuesdays. And I used to work early on Tuesdays and finish earlier on Tuesdays. And my whole global team knew that, that if they needed something,

Anika Zubair (28:00.579)
They would expect it the next day unless of course again, there's outage and but that's a different thing like pager duty and dealing with outages is a whole different kettle of fish. But I'm just talking day to day business. I used to tell them that on Tuesdays I could not do late night calls because I was on calls from seven in the morning. And then on Thursdays I told my Australia team, I cannot catch them in the morning that I would be online in the evening to support the U S team. Now.

This is going to be different for everyone's calendar based on where you're based, the team you're running, the company you're part of, all of the logistics of that. But calendar blocking and then being clear and communicative to my team really helped me come to terms that I need to control my calendar and my time and not my calendar controlling me. Doing CEO time where I really blocked out time really changed my entire career trajectory because when you start owning your time, you start

owning your growth. Okay, we are at the weekly challenge point of the podcast. And this is the part of the podcast that I absolutely love challenging you with because I am a tactical and practical coach and I really want to help you grow in your customer success career. So this week, your challenge is to go into your calendar and create one new block. Maybe it's a two hour revenue time session.

or a Friday afternoon of learning and reflection window where maybe you start listening to this podcast on those Friday afternoons. Or maybe it's a weekly planning session block every Monday morning so you feel like you're being proactive rather than reactive. Whatever it is, I don't mind. Decide yourself what is most important to you and block it out. Name it. Please name it. Don't just call it focus time or busy. Name it like you would a meeting.

And please, please, please protect it because your time is exactly that. It's your time. So I want you to protect it. This is you stepping into the strategic version of yourself, the strategic customer success pro that I know you can be. And if you do actually block out this time, you know what I really love? I would absolutely love for you to send me a screenshot, either DM me on LinkedIn or if you want to text me, there's a way to text me in the show notes of this video.

Anika Zubair (30:25.229)
But just send it to me, because I want to cheer you on for prioritizing your time and making sure that you realize that we aren't time poor, SDS professionals. We're just poor at planning. And that can be changed. And I want to see you change it. All right, we covered so much in today's podcast. And I hope you got a lot out of it. But just to recap everything that we did talk about, we did speak about how the real reason customer success pros

feel overwhelmed today has a lot to do with being time poor and not prioritizing your time. I also broke down the biggest time management mistakes I've made in my career, but also that I still see happening with CS pros every single day. I then shared how to use time blocking and the 80-20 rule to really prioritize your time better and to really own your time. And then finally, I shared why CEO time is

the secret to becoming a revenue generating strategic customer success pro. and of course I showed how one simple calendar change transformed my entire career. So if you're ready to stop firefighting and start owning your time, then don't wait any longer. Join the next cohort of RevUp Academy. Doors are officially open, but they're only open for a few more days.

Enroll in RevUp, need to go to thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash RevUp. That's thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash RevUp. I hope you secure your seat soon and I hope to see you inside the Academy so we can help prioritize your time and unlock more revenue growth in your career. And that's all for this week. I hope you got tactical tips, tricks to take back.

and own your time and own your calendar. I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast and I'll be back here next week at the same time to bring you revenue generating tips as a CS Pro. So I'll catch you next week. Bye for now. 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, it would mean the world to me if you took just 10 seconds to leave a review.

Anika Zubair (32:48.363)
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.