Anika Zubair (00:00.429)
Welcome back to the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I'm your host, Anika Zuber, and today's episode is going to be a little bit more personal. I'm going to take you behind the scenes of my own career journey from CSM to VP of Customer Success in just seven years and share the lessons that helped me accelerate my growth. Now, if you're listening, you might be thinking, seven years? That's unheard of. How the heck did someone do that?

Well, a little bit of background and context is my career did not start in customer success like many of you that are listening to this podcast. I actually spent four plus years in sales before I even started working in customer success. So I was a sales development rep and account manager and all the roles in between for four years before I jumped into a customer success manager role.

But once I jumped into customer success, for some weird reason, or maybe it was my gut, or maybe it was something inside me, it just told me that this was the career for me. And once I knew that, I went head first and I made sure that I put my career trajectory and my growth at the center of everything that I was doing. And so within seven years, I was able to go from individual contributor to head of to direct

to global director, to eventually global VP of customer success. And so today's podcast is going to cover a lot, but it is for anyone who's listening, who's wondering how to actually progress, because I know times are tough and career progression can sometimes seem like a very big black hole. And if you're wondering how to actually make that next step in your career, well, we're gonna cover a lot in today's podcast episode.

And I promise by the end of it, I'm going to leave you with tactical and practical tips on what you can learn from my own journey and make sure that you go out there and become that next VP of Customer Success or CS Executive in seven years or less. 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.

Anika Zubair (02:23.08)
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 (03:32.108)
Okay, we're gonna cover a lot in today's podcast. So I wanna go over some of the common mistakes that keep CSM stuck in their careers because I work with tons of customer success professionals and I see them stuck in the same role year after year. And like I said, I was also stuck in a career before I really realized how to focus on career growth as well.

And I'm gonna also be sharing a lot of bold moves that I personally took that I think you can also take as well that will greatly accelerate your career progression. And I'll also teach you how to build visibility within your company because building a visibility system that shows leadership that you are ready is how you're actually going to get that leadership position, which is by the way, something not everyone shares all the time. But again,

Here on the Customer Success Pro podcast, I literally do not gatekeep anything. I share everything and anything with you guys because I know that this entire journey of customer success is a tough one. And I want to make sure that I am here to guide you through and help you. And hopefully you can learn from my mistakes as well. And of course, I'm going to share some personal stories in this podcast from my own journey. Some of these personal stories might not apply to you, but I hope it helps you listener understand that

human, I've been through all of the things that you're probably feeling as well. And you can learn a little bit from my own journey and my own mistakes as well, as well as my triumphs. And I hope that listening to this podcast and really listening to my personal story on how to go from a CSM to a VP is going to light a fire within you and also maybe motivate and help you feel that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for you as well. So this podcast is for any customer success manager, a senior CSM,

or even a manager who has their eyes on a leadership role, but isn't sure how to get there yet. And before we dive in, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. Did you guys actually know that the podcast gets over 3,000 downloads every single month? So there's 3,000 of you listening to this podcast all the time, and I appreciate every single one of you. But there's only about 500 of you actually subscribed.

Anika Zubair (05:53.1)
So to make my day and to make me a little bit happier, I would really appreciate if you hit that subscribe button or that follow button on YouTube, on Spotify, or on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast episodes, because it would mean the world to me. And if you're finding these episodes valuable, can you please leave me a comment down below? You can leave a comment on YouTube. And now even on Spotify, you can actually

share your feelings and your comments down below. And I love receiving all of your comments. So please go ahead and do that. And of course, if this podcast ends up helping you, can you share it with a friend? Because sharing is caring. And the more we share this podcast, it helps it grow as well. And it means the world to me. So let's start. Let's start with a very, very hard truth that I am here to be your CS bestie and to tell it to you straight. Too many customer success professionals

feel stuck in their career. And I know this feeling too well. And I have coached and worked with teams and led teams post-pandemic that feel really stuck. Now, SaaS has changed a lot over the last five years. Since the pandemic, the role of customer success continues to evolve. And now, even with AI, the role continues to evolve. And I know that a lot of CS professionals are feeling very stuck.

They're not sure, do I drive revenue? Do I drive happiness? Do I drive outcomes? How do I become strategic? What do I have to do? How do I actually get a promotion when most of my colleagues are being laid off? These are the types of thoughts that are probably going through your head and you're not alone because I talk to hundreds of CS pros every single month and they're feeling the same. So if you're feeling that,

You're not alone. Know that you're in good company and know that this podcast is going to see you to the other side. And feeling stuck in your career is a normal feeling. I hope you realize this. And also we start normalizing this because there have been plenty of moments, even though I progressed in my career within seven years, there are moments throughout a year, throughout a quarter, heck, throughout even every month where I feel really, really stuck in my career. And that is normal.

Anika Zubair (08:09.826)
And I want to normalize that feeling stuck is the norm rather than you feeling behind. Now, I talk to CSMs every week who are absolutely brilliant at what they are doing. They are amazing. They're resilient. They're strategic. They are crushing their NRR goals. They're driving adoption with their customers. They're delivering customer outcomes. And maybe they're even also influencing renewals and upsells. But when they look up the ladder, they just don't see a clear

And honestly, when I first started in customer success, there was no clear path. Believe it or not, when I was a CSM, my very first role as a customer success manager, there was no such title as Chief Customer Officer. Heck, I don't even think we had a VP of customer success. I knew we had a head of, and I spoke to other heads of customer success at other companies, but there was no clear path for me. I had to pave my own way. And I know a lot of you listening,

to this podcast are probably seeing the same thing. You look up the ladder, you look up your leaders, and you don't see a path forward. And honestly, post pandemic, promotions have felt really slow. The SaaS world has changed, investing has changed, and the way startup scale ups and even major enterprise businesses, the way they're doing promotions and the way they're growing as a business feels way slower.

And a lot of that comes down to economic growth and what the world is going through when it comes to politics and just economics and all the things in between. But that's not what we're here to talk about on this podcast. We're here to talk about promotions, but a lot of that affects promotions. And that's probably why you're feeling the promotion track feels a little bit slow for you. And it probably feels that leadership roles are a little bit out of reach for you. But again, this podcast is going to flip

the switch on that and by the end of this, really hope you start to see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And even though it might feel a little bit slow right now, your career trajectory is right where it needs to be and your growth is just around the corner. Now, why? Why do promotions feel so slow right now? Why is it that people feel that they're not getting the promotion that they deserve? Well, because most people think that

Anika Zubair (10:31.586)
tenure equals progression. And tenure sometimes does. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people who have stayed within a business for 10 plus years and they've grown tremendously in the 10 years within a business. But a lot of people I know say things like, if I just stay in my role for two years or three years, I'll be promoted. But I'm sorry to say that's not how it works. It's not how my career worked.

And honestly, if you just click around on a few people's LinkedIn and go look at most people, I'd say about 90 % of people, they didn't stay at a business and get promoted within 10 years. The biggest reason people get stuck is because they are waiting for recognition instead of creating it. Now, career growth in CS doesn't happen because you waited long enough. That might seem the natural thing to do.

It happens because you showed leadership that you can already operate at the next level. So let's break down the mistakes that I've personally been through and that I continue seeing happening in the CS space. First of all, as I already said earlier, the mistake I see time and time again is believing that time served equals a promotion. And just because you've been in a role for years doesn't automatically mean

your leadership material. Time at a company doesn't mean leadership. Now, you might have seen it time and time again where some people end up being like the furniture and they stay at a business year after year and eventually they get promoted. But that's not what this podcast episode is about. If you want to stay at a company for 10 years and get promoted, great, that might happen for you. But we're talking about making aggressive moves to climb the career ladder and get a seat at the table.

And when you start thinking in that way, it's not about time served by the way, because that same person who's been at a business for 10 years, what might happen is a new person might come into that business and do the same amount of impact, not work by the way, they might have the same amount of impact that person has had in 10 years in six months or less. It's all about impact, not about tenure. And again, we're not comparing anything here, but

Anika Zubair (12:55.16)
The one thing that I see win out time and time again is when someone is able to actually show impact. So let's stop believing that staying at a company for two, three, four years is gonna actually help you career progress. Because in the world that we live in right now, unfortunately in 2025 in the last few years, layoffs are normal. And honestly, companies are doing reorgs every year like it's the norm now.

So if you believe that staying at a company for three years is going to result in career growth, that's awesome. But I'm sorry to tell you and be the harsh reality at this point and let you know that staying for years might, A, might not happen because layoffs happen and restructures happen, but also staying might just actually be holding you back from other opportunities.

And that leads me to mistake number two that I see. And this is when you're staying when you're too comfortable. Now, it's natural, by the way, humans, we love a schedule. We love having things laid out for us. And we love doing the same things over and over again. You might say, no, I'm really spontaneous. No, we're really not. If you think about it, we are all structured around roughly a five day working week with a two day weekend. And we love a good nine to five or roughly a nine to five where we work 40 odd weeks.

hours a week. We love that structure because we know we go to work and we know we have home time. And most people are comfortable with that. But if you're only ever going to manage your account and do your job description, you are going to stay where you are. Okay. Growth requires you stepping into new challenges. Growth requires you to be someone bigger than you currently are. And growth requires you to do way more.

than what your job description ever laid out. So if you want to actually progress, you're gonna have to do some level of more impact. Again, I'm not saying more work, I'm saying more impact. All right, mistake number three that I see is waiting for permission. And I think that this happens in customer success more than in sales, because like I said, I worked in sales before and I saw very few people wait for permission in sales. But in CS, we tend to wait for permission.

Anika Zubair (15:14.53)
too often. And I think it has to do with the good nature of CSMs or maybe it's the fact that we are always people pleasers, which is normal. By the way, again, being a people pleaser in customer success, probably the most common trait across most customer success professionals. But too many CSMs wait for a manager to hand them more responsibility or they wait for their manager to give them a career path on how to go from CSM to senior CSM or to team lead.

They wait for a manager to guide them. But let me just tell you, leaders are looking for people 24-7, 365 days a year, who are already demonstrating leadership before the title. These are the people who are building their own career path. These are the people that are building the next playbook that the team needs. These are the people that are identifying gaps within the business and filling them.

before they're asked to do so. All right, my fourth and final mistake is avoiding risk. And again, I think this comes back to CSMs being a little bit of people pleasing and also because we have to deal with churn all day long, which is a very risky job in itself. We tend to not do as much risk within our own career and our own trajectory because we're a little bit nervous because we're dealing with risk in different ways in our career and in our job.

And risk is something that I cannot advise you to do because risk is something that's based on your own risk appetite and what you actually feel comfortable with. And maybe I'm more of a risk person or a risk taker rather than risk adverse, but listen, if you're avoiding risk or maybe it's avoiding a relocation or maybe you're avoiding joining a startup because you're a little bit worried about, you know, what's going to happen. But let me just tell you.

Maybe it's saying yes to a project that's outside of your comfort zone, and that might actually open more doors than you actually realize. And if you're always avoiding risk, you're also avoiding the growth that comes along with it. So I'm not saying to go out and jump off of a bridge and take that kind of risk, but there are some risks in your career that you're gonna have to take and you're gonna have to get comfortable with if you really do wanna grow.

Anika Zubair (17:39.298)
because growth only comes when we're truly uncomfortable and not when we're actually comfortable and doing what we know we do best. Okay, I've talked a lot and let's jump into how you actually move from a CSM to a VP. Now, here is what's worked for me and what I coach others to do. And this is what I think works really, really well, regardless of the industry you're in, regardless of how many years that you've served as a CS professional.

Because I can tell you that most businesses when they're assigning their next leaders or looking for their next leadership opportunities, they are going to be looking for these next few steps. So I hope you take it with a grain of salt and you realize that this has worked for me and other people I've coached and it can work for you too. So first of all, I need you to take ownership early. leadership isn't a title, although I have had titles that have made me a leader, it's actually a behavior.

And it's a behavior I started doing when I was just a CSM. So I actually mentored new hires and I ran internal incentives. So like we had it at the time, this was back in 2014, okay, when NPS was a normal thing to measure, I actually built out a full new NPS program for us. And this was something that the business was really keen on having.

but they just didn't know how to do it. But also most executives and leaders within the business I was at just didn't have the time. But I saw that my manager needed help with this. And I saw that the business had a huge gap when it came to NPS. So I took it on myself to actually start building. Not only was I mentoring new hires and helping them get on board, again, I didn't have a leadership title and my leader did not ask me to do this. I just knew that if I wanted to start managing people at some point in my career,

I might as well start when there was the least amount of risk, meaning I could just be a non-manager-manager by mentoring. And then again, I took the least risk and started building something that we needed and started showing it within a business that I was already there. And that's where you can start to drive impact out of just your accounts. Now, I know sometimes we feel overwhelmed with the number of accounts or customers that we are helping, but again,

Anika Zubair (20:01.558)
you gotta get a little bit uncomfortable and jump out of your comfort zone. And sometimes that does mean that you have to do something that you just don't know how to do, but you've got to figure out. And once you start to drive that impact, whether it's in some sort of internal project or incentive, or it's mentoring other team members, whatever it is, you need to start showing your leadership behavior long before your leadership team asks you to do it. Okay.

The next tip that I have to share with you, and I hope you take this on board because this is how I truly grew and this is something that I know not everyone's a part of, but it's really how you're gonna go from CSM to VP of CS is choose a growth environment, okay? I accelerated my career by moving countries and joining startups and scale-ups where I could build things from scratch. Now.

Not every company gives you growth opportunities. You may need to move to find them or you may need to move country. Heck, I did it. But all I'm saying is that not every organization has huge growth opportunity and you need to really sit with yourself and have a discussion with yourself and understand, does this company have the growth potential to really live up to my career ambitions? If you're trying to be a chief

customer officer or a VP of customer success, but there's only managers of customer success at your business and they all report to someone in sales, that might not be the growth opportunity business that makes sense for you. And vice versa, if you see tons of people in CS at your company, but none of them have been able to move up into leadership, that might also be a little bit of a mini red flag to you to tell you that you need to look for opportunities elsewhere.

Sometimes the best opportunities are actually not within the business that you're currently part of. But that doesn't mean shy away from working within the organization. But I do have to say that a lot of my career growth and the leaps that I was able to take was because I moved from one organization to another. Because another organization was actually much more appreciative of the work I was going to do or the work I had done.

Anika Zubair (22:21.23)
and they saw me as leadership behavior over the leaders within my own businesses that I was part of. Okay, the third tip I have, and I've said it already in this podcast, is you need to start thinking beyond your own book of business. I know as CSMs, we're almost conditioned to believe, work on your customers, work on your book of business, hit NRR, hit 120 % on RR. Now, that is all important and you still need to hit your KPIs and you still need to think.

strategically and you still need to work strategically and revenue focused, et cetera, et all the great things that a CSM does. But in order to start thinking like a VP, you need to think one step deeper. And what do I mean by this? You need to start looking at metrics because let me tell you, every VP of CS or Chief Customer Officer is obsessed with their metrics.

They are obsessed with their retention number. They're obsessed with their churn numbers, their renewal rate, their NRR, revenue, growth. They talk about the strategy, not just about customer tasks. They are talking about the outcomes of all of those customer tasks. They are talking about the outcomes of your customers using your product or service. So the way for you to start thinking like a VP is, first of all, I need you to look at your book of business.

and then look at the metrics you're driving and take it a step further. How is this upsell gonna lead to business growth? How is it gonna lead to renewal growth? How is this helping the NRR number overall? Start to really obsess over metrics because every single job I had where I was a senior leader, I had to know my numbers inside and out. The board, the...

my fellow executives, my team, everyone was obsessed. And the way to really make sure you have that seat is to make sure you understand the business metrics that really make a business grow. And net revenue retention or gross revenue retention is a very good starting point. But there are tons of other metrics that are super, super important. But I would say just start with NRR and GRR because those are so important.

Anika Zubair (24:39.704)
So let's pause for a moment because I want to share something that will directly help you if you're aiming for that next promotion. And I'm guessing you are because you're listening to this podcast episode. So here's the pain and the hard point. You're probably working really, really hard delivering results, maybe even influencing revenue. But when promotion season comes around, you are overlooked and it's super frustrating and it makes you feel invisible.

Now imagine this, you're walking into your next review with your manager with a clear record of all your accomplishments, showing your manager not just what you did, but the revenue you influenced, the outcomes you drove, and the wins that you've created. No guessing, just cold hard proof. That's exactly why I built the CS promotion tracker. And it's not just a spreadsheet, it's a complete visibility system.

It helps you log your wins every quarter, measure your true revenue impact, and even generate a promotion pitch that you can use in a review with your manager. This is the exact tracker that I use from going from CSM to head of customer success in under a year. And it's the tool that I give to every coaching client who wants to land their next role faster. You can go ahead and download it today at thecustomersuccesspro.com

That's the customer success pro.com forward slash resources. ahead and download it today because your next promotion might just count on it. All right, now back to the podcast. Okay, my next tip kind of ties back to risk a little bit, but I need you to start saying yes before you're ready. Now, the truth is no one ever, ever, ever

feels 100 % ready for leadership. I bet you even your very first call that you had with a customer, you were probably nervous and you didn't feel ready. Am I right or am I right? But once you finished that call, you felt a little bit more comfortable. You felt a little bit more ready. And the next time you got on a call with a customer, you were like, I've got this. I know what to do. I've done it before and I can actually do this.

Anika Zubair (27:08.044)
And that's exactly the same case for leadership, by the way. The very first time you try something, whether it's building a new hire onboarding or I don't know, a new playbook for renewals or even your first team meeting. I never felt a hundred percent ready. I never ever did. Honestly, even when I first launched this podcast, I didn't feel a hundred percent ready, but you can never feel a hundred percent ready if you really want to be a growth

leader. Like I said before, growth comes when you accept opportunities that scare you a little. And if you want to grow aggressively, you've got to take on opportunities that scare you a lot. Because I still remember every opportunity that I took on board, I was so nervous. I felt like I had some big shoes to fill and I had something to prove against everyone and anyone that would listen. And you know what?

All of those opportunities scared me a lot. Like I was so nervous, but at the end of the day, they helped me grow tremendously. And I wouldn't be the leader that I am today if I didn't take those leaps of faith and I didn't get a little bit scared. All right, my final tip for you is something that maybe you probably already know, but you're probably not doing enough of. And that is investing in yourself. Whether that's coaching, mentorship,

networking, don't wait for your company to hand it to you. I actually built out a customer success network in London when I first got my first leadership role because I didn't know any leaders in London. I had just moved to London, got my very first head of customer success role, and I didn't know anyone here. All I knew was the other leaders within the very small startup that I was part of. But I knew if I really wanted to be that VP of customer success,

I have to grow. And the easiest way for me to grow was to actually go and speak and network with people and learn from other people's experience. Now listen, you're already investing in yourself because guess what? You've decided to listen to this podcast today and that's a huge investment. But that's not enough. I'm gonna tell you right now, I have invested in coaching over the years, in mentorship, in networking, in going to conferences.

Anika Zubair (29:32.482)
And I have had tons of different kinds of coaches, by the way. I've had speaking coaches, I've had podcast coaches, I've had business coaches, I've had a leadership coach as well. And the thing is to be a top performer and to be a great leader, you're gonna need help. The people who rise the fastest are the ones who are actively seeking further self-development. And the thing is the hardest thing with self-development is making the time to do it yourself.

So make sure you carve out that time. And I already appreciate that you're listening to this podcast, and I'm sure it's helping towards your self-development, but you've got to take it a step further. Listening to podcasts is just step one. You're going to have to invest a little bit further and a little bit more and consistently. Over the last 10 years of being in leadership, I have invested thousands and thousands into my self-development. Yes, some of it has come from my companies,

but a lot of it has come from me. And the reason I invest in myself is because I am my best investment. And in order to become a truly spectacular leader, you do need to invest in yourself. All right, let me bring all of this to life a little bit more by sharing with you my own story. So I started as a CSM with honestly no clear idea of where it would take me. Like I told you earlier in this podcast,

When I was first a CSM, there was no career trajectory in customer success, and it was barely a thing in SaaS, if I'm completely honest. But very early on, I realized two very, very important things. The first is I didn't want to stay stagnant. I just didn't want to stay stuck. It just wasn't in me, and it's not my personality type. And the second was that I was willing to take risk in order to see career progression and success.

And one of my biggest leaps in my career was when I moved countries for an opportunity. I was actually working in Germany and in Germany I was mostly an individual contributor. And it was uncomfortable when I first moved from Germany to England because I was leaving friends, I was leaving everything that I had built and everything that was familiar to me. But this single move opened up doors that I could never have accessed.

Anika Zubair (31:59.36)
otherwise. A big thing for me was that there was SaaS businesses in Germany, but I saw a bigger opportunity in London and I saw that there was more leadership roles open in London as well. And again, I took a big leap of faith, lots of visa fees later, lots of moving and lots of costs, both personally, emotionally and monetary costs later, I was able to actually grow in my career. Now,

Looking back on it, you never really know what's going to happen if you decide to stay where you are. But I really do contribute a lot of my growth to taking some of those risks early and often in my career. And another moment that I actually had was when I was asked to lead a team earlier than I expected. So back when I was in Germany, I actually had to do a lot of team leadership, but I was just a customer success manager. That was my title. I felt

imposter syndrome like never before. I had managed teams before, but never in a CS capacity. I had worked in retail and also in sales and I had been a team manager and coach before. But like I said, I just said yes to every opportunity that came towards me. So I said yes anyways to actually doing team leadership.

And in those six months, I learned more about leadership and influence and strategy than I had in the years of being safe. Just six months of being uncomfortable and leading a team without actually having the title helped me land a head-up customer success role as my next role because everything I was doing as a CSM was leadership behavior. And another startup was willing to take a bet on me.

and actually let me into the leadership position because I was already doing all the work. I was actually leading the team without actually having a title. And that's the truth about growth. It rarely feels comfortable, but it's always worth it. Think of your career like climbing a mountain. You can take the safe winding trail or you can challenge yourself with the steep rocky climb. The second one is definitely scarier, but it gets you to the top.

Anika Zubair (34:17.544)
way faster and the view is incredible once you get there. But you've got to take the risk a little bit at first. All right, coming back to our main theme, progression. It's all about visibility at the end of the day, by the way. Within the corporate ladder or within startups or scale-ups, being visible and your work being visible is what's going to get you noticed. And that's exactly why the promotion tracker gives you the exact visibility that you need to

own your growth and your impact. But beyond tools, progression is also about mindset. You have to start seeing yourself as a leader before anyone else does. That means acting like a VP even while you're a CSM. And I did this often, by the way. So back when I was early in my career and I was in an office five days a week, I had this mantra that I really believed. And I still believe it to this day, just a little bit differently. And the mantra was,

dress for the job you want, not the job you have. And I mean that literally and figuratively. So literally, I would actually dress more dressed up, I guess, than your average person who works at a startup. And did it sometimes look out of place? Yes. But did it give me the confidence and the mindset that I was actually the leader in this conversation? It totally did.

And also, when I mean dress for the job you want, not the job you have, I mean this in a figurative way as well. So what I mean is like mentally prepare yourself to do the job that you want rather than just doing the job that you have. It means caring about revenue. It means thinking about company strategy. It means influencing beyond your role. And one thing that always stood out to me is that leadership really taps the

quiet doer. They tap the person who's already operating at that level and usually the person that's shouting about all their successes as well. So if you want to be a VP one day, you need to start showing how you can think, speak, and act like one today and make sure that your team sees it as well.

Anika Zubair (36:29.25)
All right, we're at the point of the podcast where I share the weekly challenge, which I absolutely love, by the way, and I hope you love it all too. So here is this week's weekly challenge. I need you to identify one bold move that you can take in your career. Now, it might be volunteering to lead a new initiative. Maybe it's about a renewal project or an onboarding project, whatever it is, lead it.

Or maybe it's having a conversation with your manager about growth and really being honest with them and saying, is what I'm looking for. Or maybe it's actually applying for a role that totally scares you and that you think you're underqualified for. Or maybe even it's simply writing down your accomplishments from the past quarter. Remember, the Customer Success Promotion Tracker is perfect for this. But I just want you to start writing down your accomplishments

because it's the best way to beat imposter syndrome and it's the best way for you to start showcasing your work for that next promotion as well. So whatever it is, take action because your next step won't come from waiting, it will come from moving forward. Now, if today's episode gave you a little bit of clarity on what it takes to progress, don't just leave it as inspiration, put it into practice.

And remember, the fastest way to secure your next promotion is to show your value clearly. That's exactly what the CS promotion tracker will help you do. So you can go ahead and download it now at the customer success pro.com forward slash resources. And don't forget to use the code podcast 50 as a thank you for being a podcast listener and you'll get 50 % off because your next promotion isn't about luck.

It's about proof. And this tracker will give you that proof. Thank you again for joining me today on the Customer Success Pro podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit subscribe and leave a review and share it with someone who's ready to accelerate their CS career. Your journey from CSM to VP might be closer than you think, and I'm rooting for you every step of the way.

Anika Zubair (38:45.538)
Thanks again for listening and I'll catch you next week on 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, it 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.