Before Your Next QBR, Read This.
There is a kind of CSM who runs a great meeting.
They open with rapport. They walk the deck cleanly. They take the hard question and hand back a calm reframe.
The customer nods. The call ends on time. Everyone leaves feeling good about the relationship.
Ask that CSM what number they moved this quarter, and the room goes quiet.
The calls happened. The decks shipped. The relationships stayed warm. Nothing on a revenue line changed because of any of it.
These people are easy to miss, because on paper they look like the strongest CSMs you have.
They have the title, the named accounts, the polish. They sit in the meetings where decisions get made.
Pull the thread on what they actually did, and there is a strange gap where the work should be.
You can find out which kind you are in about ten minutes.
The two-week test
Open your calendar for the last two weeks.
Take out everything that was a call, a check-in, a QBR, a prep block, an internal sync, or a deck build. Look at what is left.
That residue is your real work.
It is the part that moved a renewal forward, changed a number, or pushed an executive toward a decision they were not going to make on their own.
For a lot of CSMs, the residue is close to empty.
Two weeks of motion. Two weeks of warmth. Nothing underneath it that anyone above you could tie to revenue.
The tells
Once you know what you are looking for, the pattern is hard to unsee.
The call ends warm and nothing was agreed.
You left feeling good about it.
Go back through your notes and there is no commitment captured, no next decision named, no date the customer owns.
The QBR closes with your follow-ups, not their decisions. You walk out with a task list. They walk out with nothing on the table.
You will spend the next quarter chasing actions you assigned yourself.
The work is called strategic and no one can describe it in a sentence.
If your manager cannot say what you moved last quarter without opening a spreadsheet, that is the answer.
The renewal closed and you cannot name the moment it was actually secured.
It renewed. You were on the account. You are just unsure whether you were the reason.
None of these are about effort.
The polished CSM works hard. The hours are real. The accounts are real.
The gap is between activity and the thing activity is supposed to produce.
The part nobody says out loud
Many of these roles were hollow long before anyone said the word AI in a board meeting. The seat existed. The work did not.
AI is just the thing that will get blamed when the seat disappears.
That is what’s happening in this market right now.
The roles getting cut are not random.
They are the ones where the honest answer to “what did this person move” was always thin, and the budget finally got tight enough for someone to ask.
What this leaves you with
The job is hard. That part is real.
What should worry you is how much of your week kept you busy without moving a number anyone above you can see.
The polished CSM and the one who is impossible to cut can run the identical meeting.
They can use the same deck, ask the same questions, get the same nods. Only one of them can tell you what changed because they were in the room.
You already know which calendar is yours.
Hakan | Founder, The CS Café
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