Craig Vincent writes about how companies can make Customer Success teams more measurable and growth-focused, including how to prioritize customer support, identify expansion opportunities, and show the business value of the work.
Craig Vincent writes about making Customer Success (CS) easier for business leaders to understand and fund.
Across these LinkedIn posts, they argue that CS often lacks the clear measures and investment logic associated with sales.
They explain the problem with concrete comparisons: a babysitter may seem unnecessary when nothing goes wrong, while a football field has yard markers that show progress.
Their proposed direction is to focus CS resources on customer risk, value, and growth rather than treating every account the same.
Vincent turns an abstract business challenge—how to prove CS’s value—into familiar, useful comparisons, then links the diagnosis to organizational choices.
In one post, they propose separating sales-aligned work on retention and expansion from support-aligned work on value realization; in another, they argue that CSMs can surface customer decision-makers, internal politics, and growth opportunities.
The posts help readers understand why CS investment is hard to measure and what a growth-focused model might involve.
To assess the detailed methods behind the linked breakdowns, ask for those materials.
Craig Vincent argues in public posts that Customer Success is treated mainly as a cost centre because the function lacks a shared way to show what it produces.
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They regularly compare CS with sales, where progress is visible and executives know what they are buying, then ask what equivalent markers could show account development work.
From that diagnosis, Vincent advances two prescriptions: restructure CS into sales-aligned and support-aligned work, with investment tied to risk and growth rather than blanket account coverage; and treat CSMs as a source of customer intelligence that feeds expansion.
Vincent writes short, analogy-led LinkedIn posts that end with questions to peers.
Ask for the longer breakdowns referenced in several posts; they are not included here.
The problem is the CS model, not the CSMs
Vincent names the pressures on CS teams — layoffs, budget cuts, falling net retention and executives asking whether CS is worth funding — and traces them to one cause: CS does not fit into the business equation.
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Sales has a simple story (more reps, more deals) and marketing has one (more spend, more leads), but nobody can say what the “CSM knob” controls: retention, adoption, expansion or business value. Their conclusion is blunt: the fault lies in a model built for a SaaS world that no longer exists, not in the people doing the work.
Vincent contrasts the three functions directly: more sales reps mean more deals, more marketing spend means more leads, and CS has no comparable lever. When every dollar is scrutinised, they argue, vague ROI means CS gets cut first.
You cannot tell which customers need help until someone looks
The "Babysitter's Paradox" is Vincent's explanation of why CS investment feels riskier than sales investment.
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Some customers will renew and expand with no intervention, others will churn regardless, and there is no way to sort one group from the other without spending CSM time on both.
Unlike sales, where return is tied directly to effort, that uncertainty makes executives hesitate to fund CS.
Vincent's answer is not to abandon the function but to rethink how CS work is prioritised, scaled, and measured.
The analogy runs through the post: if the child sleeps all night, you have paid a babysitter to do nothing; if the child wakes, the babysitter was essential.
But you only learn which case you are in by hiring one.
Vincent maps this onto CS customers and asks how other teams handle the paradox.
Drawing on their pre-sales background, Vincent argues that sales works because its path to victory is clearly marked, so teams can grade effort and locate failure.
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CS plays a different game, with no yard markers: expansion or avoided churn emerges from many interconnected interactions that do not fit on a scoreboard.
That is why CEOs often do not know what CS does.
Vincent proposes borrowing from the sales playbook and creating explicit yard markers for account development.
In football terms, a deal moves from mild interest to technical win to touchdown, and when a deal is lost, everyone can see where the fumble happened. The post ends by asking readers which yard markers they would use to drive growth.
Where Vincent’s diagnosis posts describe the measurement gap, this one asks for a concrete set of growth metrics a CS organisation could track.
Split CS into sales-aligned and support-aligned work, and stop covering every account the same way
Vincent prescribes a three-part restructure.
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First, divide CS into a Sales-Aligned function covering expansion and retention, and a Support-Aligned function covering value realisation.
Second, automate low-value check-ins so CSMs can focus on real revenue opportunities.
Third, tie investment to actual risk and growth rather than arbitrary account coverage.
Vincent argues that this structure can help CS produce predictable, scalable revenue, as sales does.
Vincent lists three moves in a checklist, rejecting the old model as too vague, inefficient and reliant on babysitting every customer to find out who needs help. The post also points readers to a longer breakdown of the approach.
This post sits in tension with the funding argument elsewhere in the set: the same body of work that says CS is underfunded also says much routine CS contact should be automated.
Read together, the position is that CS money should shift from blanket coverage to targeted, revenue-linked work rather than simply increase.
Ask for the fuller method behind the checklist; it is referenced but not included in the available posts.
CSMs are an underused source of customer intelligence
Vincent sees information gathering as Customer Success’s most undervalued skill.
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An existing vendor already holds knowledge competitors cannot match, making CSM conversations a natural place to spot expansion opportunities — if companies use what those conversations surface. This is the commercial, growth-facing side of Vincent’s argument, distinct from the cost and credibility side.
Vincent starts with the claim that acquiring a new customer costs five to twenty-five times more than retaining an existing one.
They then list what a CSM can learn that an outside competitor cannot: the customer’s internal politics, who really makes the decisions, and individual motivations, fears and ambitions.
Vincent asks whether companies are fully using their CSM teams as a source of customer intelligence.
A newcomer who wants to know what Craig Vincent is arguing about should open it first; everything else in the set responds to the problem described here.
Vincent lays out the pressure Customer Success teams are under — layoffs, budget cuts, falling net retention, executives questioning whether CS is worth funding — and traces it to one cause: CS does not fit into the business equation.
Sales has a simple story (more reps, more deals), marketing has one (more spend, more leads), but for CS nobody can say what the "CSM knob" actually controls: retention, adoption, expansion, or business value.
The sharpest line is that the problem is not the CSMs but the model itself, built for a SaaS world that no longer exists.
For brands planning a campaign
A strong opening frame for a talk or advisory session on CS restructuring: it names the executive objection — vague ROI gets CS cut first — before offering a fix. It positions the engagement as a model problem rather than a performance problem, which is the harder but more useful conversation.
This answers the question a newcomer will immediately ask after the first post: why is CS investment so hard to justify?
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The babysitter analogy makes the measurement problem concrete in a few lines.
The analogy: hire a babysitter, and if the child sleeps all night you have paid someone to do nothing; if the child wakes, the babysitter was essential — and the only way to know which is to hire one anyway.
Vincent applies it directly: some customers will renew and expand without intervention, others will churn no matter what, and you cannot tell which is which until a CSM spends time with them.
The consequence is that CS investment feels uncertain in a way sales investment does not, so executives hesitate.
They close by asking readers how their teams prioritize, scale, and measure CS work.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful when a client's leadership needs the ROI objection explained rather than argued away. It reframes "prove your impact" as an inherent measurement difficulty, setting up a discussion about prioritization and scaling instead of defending individual CSM performance.
Vincent's clearest attempt to define what CS measurement should look like, using a comparison any general reader already understands.
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Open it to see how they discuss metrics rather than just complain about them.
Drawing on time in pre-sales, Vincent contrasts football with CS.
In sales, the path to victory is marked: interest, technical win, touchdown.
When a deal is lost, everyone can see where the fumble happened, so executives know what they are buying.
CS plays a different game, with no yard markers; expansion or avoided churn comes from countless interconnected interactions that do not fit on a scoreboard — which is why CEOs often do not know what CS does.
The argument is that CS should borrow from the sales playbook and create explicit yard markers for developing accounts.
They ask readers which markers they would use.
For brands planning a campaign
Build a talk segment around this post: it supplies a reusable metaphor and a concrete deliverable — agreeing on growth yard markers for a CS team. It suits a workshop where the client's own team fills in the markers rather than listening to a generic metrics lecture.
After the diagnosis, this is where Vincent states what they would actually change, in a short list a reader can evaluate quickly.
Vincent rejects the old model as too vague, too inefficient, and too reliant on babysitting every customer to find out who needs help.
They propose three moves: split CS into a Sales-Aligned function covering expansion and retention and a Support-Aligned function covering value realization; automate low-value check-ins so CSMs spend time only on real revenue opportunities; and tie investment to actual risk and growth instead of arbitrary account coverage.
They argue that this structure lets CS drive predictable, scalable revenue like sales, and point readers to a longer breakdown.
For brands planning a campaign
This post maps most directly onto a restructuring need.
Its three moves give a talk or advisory session a ready-made agenda: functional split, automation of low-value contact, and risk-based investment.
Ask for the linked longer-form breakdown before treating these headings as a fully documented method.
Shows the growth side of Vincent's argument rather than the cost-cutting side: where expansion opportunities actually come from.
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Useful for a reader wondering whether their view of CS is defensive or commercial.
Vincent starts from the claim that acquiring new customers costs five to twenty-five times more than retaining existing ones, then argues that an existing vendor already holds intelligence competitors cannot match: the customer's internal politics, who really makes decisions, and individual motivations, fears, and ambitions. They present a CSM team as a source of customer intelligence and ask whether companies are fully using it to identify growth opportunities.
For brands planning a campaign
Supports the case for CS as a revenue function rather than a support cost centre, the argument a restructuring proposal has to win. In a pitch, pair it with the functional-split post: intelligence gathered in support-aligned conversations feeds sales-aligned expansion.
Making Customer Success measurable for executives2
Restructuring CS into sales-aligned and support-aligned functions1
The prioritization paradox: you can't tell who needs help until you look1
Customer intelligence as an undervalued retention asset1
Making Customer Success measurable for executives
Across these posts, the argument is that Customer Success suffers because its value is hard to see, not because the work is unimportant.
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Craig Vincent contrasts CS with sales, where progress is obvious: effort maps to yardage, a technical win, a touchdown, and "when a deal is lost, everyone knows exactly where the fumble happened."
In CS, expansions and avoided churn come from many interconnected interactions, so "those don't fit neatly on the scoreboard," which is why "CEOs don't know what CS does."
The proposed fix borrows from sales: define yard markers for the work CSMs do to develop accounts and tie investment to risk and growth rather than blanket account coverage.
Uses analogy and contrast to make an abstract measurement problem concrete, setting CS against sales before asking the audience which yard markers they would use.
For brands planning a campaign
A talk or advisory session can open with this measurement gap and focus on defining growth metrics a CS organization can actually track, using the sales comparison audiences already recognize.
Restructuring CS into sales-aligned and support-aligned functions
Craig Vincent writes that "Customer Success isn't dying—it's evolving" and calls the old model "too vague, too inefficient, too reliant on 'babysitting' every customer just to figure out who actually needs help."
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Their prescription has three parts: split CS into Sales-Aligned (expansion and retention) and Support-Aligned (value realization); automate low-value check-ins so CSMs spend time only on real revenue opportunities; and tie investment to actual risk and growth rather than arbitrary account coverage. The stated goal is CS that drives "predictable, scalable revenue—just like Sales."
A short, prescriptive post built as a three-point checklist, with the old-versus-new contrast up front.
For brands planning a campaign
For a company restructuring its CS team around revenue growth, this is the most directly relevant material. The session can focus on the split-role model, what to automate, and how to allocate coverage by risk and expansion potential.
The prioritization paradox: you can't tell who needs help until you look
The "Babysitter's Paradox" post frames the funding problem CS leaders face.
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If a child sleeps through the night, the babysitter appears to have done nothing; if the child wakes, the babysitter was essential—but you only learn which by hiring one.
In CS, some customers renew and expand without intervention, while others churn regardless, "but you won't know which is which until a CSM spends time with them."
Unlike sales, where return is tied directly to effort, CS investment feels uncertain, so companies hesitate to fund it.
Craig Vincent's answer is to rethink how CS work is prioritized, scaled, and measured, not abandon it.
A hypothetical analogy runs through the post and closes with an open question inviting readers to describe how their CS teams handle the paradox.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for the objection-handling portion of a session: it gives leadership plain language to justify funding CS despite unproven per-account return, and supports the case for risk-based rather than coverage-based investment.
Customer intelligence as an undervalued retention asset
One post argues that information gathering is Customer Success's most undervalued skill, noting that acquiring new customers costs five to twenty-five times more than retaining existing ones.
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As an existing vendor, a company already holds insights competitors lack: "the internal politics," "who actually makes the decisions," and "individual motivations, fears, and ambitions." The post presents this knowledge as directly useful for spotting growth opportunities and asks whether teams are fully using CSMs as a source of customer intelligence.
Presents an overlooked internal capability as a commercial advantage, lists three concrete things CSMs can learn that competitors cannot, and asks whether readers use that capability.
For brands planning a campaign
Adds an expansion-opportunity angle to a restructuring session: pair the restructuring argument with practical questions CSMs should ask about decision-makers and internal politics, and how to route that intelligence into growth plays.
The posts follow a consistent format: short LinkedIn posts that open with a sharp claim or a familiar situation, build the case through a metaphor or a tight contrast, and close with a question to the reader.
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Football and babysitting analogies do the explanatory work; checklist posts carry the prescriptions.
Across the five posts the pattern is diagnosis first—CS lacks clear measures, funding is uncertain, the old model is vague—followed by a specific structural fix and an invitation for peers to compare notes.
The posts also point to longer-form pieces, such as "I break it down here" and "For my longer-form thoughts, check this out," but those linked pieces are not included here.
Analogy-led diagnosis, followed by a short prescriptive list and audience engagement through a closing question.
The longer-form articles referenced inside these posts were not available, so this format description covers the LinkedIn posts only and may not represent the longer pieces.
For brands planning a campaign
Set expectations for a practical, metaphor-driven session rather than a data-heavy one. Ask for the linked longer-form pieces before building a full campaign plan.
The posts do not document brand relationships, sponsorships, or professional affiliations related to Customer Success; ask them to disclose any relevant partnerships.
Craig Vincent's posts build a sustained argument about why Customer Success is underfunded and how it might be restructured.
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Start with the diagnosis posts on CS not fitting the business equation and the babysitter's paradox, then read the football-yard-marker post for the metrics discussion and the checklist post for the proposed split between sales-aligned and support-aligned CS.
The customer-intelligence post adds the expansion angle.
For tactical onboarding and renewal playbooks, consider Chris Patin; for the CSM as a change agent and internal influence, Priyadarshini Ravichandran; and for reflective posts on proactive ownership, Mason Moyer.
Patin also writes practical LinkedIn posts about Customer Success retention and proving value, including onboarding quick wins and strategic renewal conversations.
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Both creators focus on the work CSMs do to keep and grow accounts.
Patin's posts are tactical playbooks for CSMs, built around specific practices such as quick wins and renewal framing. Vincent's posts operate at the executive and operating-model level, making the case for how CS should be measured, funded, and structured.
Ravichandran also presents Customer Success as a driver of customer transformation and value realization, not just support.
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Both discuss how CSMs help customers adopt change and connect product use to business outcomes.
Ravichandran emphasizes the CSM as a change agent and internal influencer across stakeholder groups. Vincent centers on the economics, metrics, and team structure of Customer Success.
Moyer also reflects on what separates good CS from great CS, focusing on proactive work, ownership, and customer outcomes.
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Both creators discuss the mindset and behaviors that make Customer Success effective.
Moyer's posts are reflective and first-person, exploring habits such as being proactive and owning the customer journey. Vincent's are diagnostic and prescriptive, reframing CS as a measurable growth function.
Craig Vincent’s posts focus on Customer Success strategy, especially making its contribution to retention and growth clearer.
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Their content may suit a campaign aimed at Customer Success leaders. Before booking, request current audience data, including documented survey results or another source showing followers’ job functions and seniority.
Craig Vincent examines Customer Success’ operational challenges, including the lack of clear ROI and measurement standards compared with Sales.
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They describe its evolution from an old, vague model—sometimes likened to “babysitting” customers—into a true growth engine.
They argue that companies should replace arbitrary account coverage with CS investment tied directly to actual risk and growth, and suggest separating CS into Sales-Aligned (focused on expansion/retention) and Support-Aligned (focused on value realization) teams.
They also frame information gathering as a Customer Success superpower: understanding a customer’s internal politics, decision-makers, and motivations can drive growth and help identify expansion opportunities.
A B2B SaaS company restructuring its Customer Success organization toward revenue growth and seeking a talk or advisory session on reframing CS metrics and ROI is the campaign need these posts match most directly.
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Craig Vincent's five posts make the same core case: CS faces budget pressure not because CSMs perform badly, but because the model gives executives no visible measure of contribution, while sales has an obvious one (more reps, more deals) and marketing has one (more spend, more leads).
For a restructuring campaign, that is the objection a proposal has to answer, and they state it in language a general audience understands.
The posts go beyond diagnosis to prescription.
One sets out three specific moves: split CS into a sales-aligned function covering expansion and retention and a support-aligned function covering value realization; automate low-value check-ins so CSMs spend time only on genuine revenue opportunities; and tie investment to actual risk and growth rather than arbitrary account coverage.
A second supplies the metrics frame, arguing CS should borrow the sales playbook and define explicit "yard markers" for account development.
A third makes the funding case, using the babysitter analogy to explain why CS return looks uncertain even when the work is essential.
A fourth adds the revenue angle, treating CSMs as a source of customer intelligence — internal politics, real decision-makers, individual motivations — that competitors cannot match.
That is enough to build a practical, metaphor-led session or advisory engagement rather than a generic thought-leadership appearance.
Before contracting, ask for the longer breakdowns linked in several posts, publication dates, audience composition, and speaking track record.
When to choose a specialist
A campaign that needs a documented sponsorship format and verified audience delivery at scale is a poor match.
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Take a vendor buying sponsored posts or a paid placement package for a product launch, judged on impressions and audience match: the posts show no sponsorship formats, rate card, inquiry route, or documented examples of paid brand work, so there is nothing to price or commission.
The only account figure available is 1,769 followers observed on LinkedIn, far below what a reach-based campaign would normally require.
The posts publish no engagement, reach, or audience-composition data, so a buyer cannot check whether followers are Customer Success leaders, executives, practitioners, or mostly outside a target market.
A second poor-fit scenario is any campaign that needs entertainment-led or highly produced content — video, event hosting, or lifestyle-style creative — or expects a performance guarantee against impressions, clicks, or pipeline.
The posts are short written arguments built on analogies and checklists, with engagement limited to a closing question inviting peers to compare notes.
That format works when the goal is to make a leadership team reconsider how CS is measured; it does not supply the assets or reach metrics a distribution-first campaign depends on.
Ask to review the longer-form articles linked in several posts before assessing their range beyond short LinkedIn posts.
A worked campaign example
Worked angle for a half-day advisory session or 40-minute conference talk for a B2B SaaS company that has decided to shift Customer Success toward revenue growth and needs its leadership team aligned on how to measure and fund that shift.
Opening (10 minutes) — the executive objection, as Craig Vincent puts it: CS is the function that gets cut first because no one can say what the "CSM knob" actually controls — retention, adoption, expansion, or business value. Frame the session as a model problem, not a CSM performance problem, and say so plainly up front so leadership stops hearing the discussion as a defence of individual performance.
Diagnosis block (15 minutes) — the scoreboard gap.
Use the football comparison: in sales the path is marked (interest, technical win, touchdown), and when a deal is lost everyone can see where the fumble happened.
In CS, expansion and avoided churn come from many interconnected interactions that do not fit on a scoreboard, which is why executives do not know what the function does.
Put the question they ask readers to the room: which yard markers would you use for driving growth?
Working block (45 minutes) — define yard markers.
Have the client's own CS and sales leaders fill in leading indicators for account development rather than presenting a generic metrics lecture.
The deliverable is a short, agreed list of measures tied to expansion and retention that an executive audience can read.
Restructuring block (30 minutes) — the three moves.
Present the split into sales-aligned (expansion and retention) and support-aligned (value realization) functions; automate low-value check-ins so CSMs focus on real revenue opportunities; and tie investment to actual risk and growth rather than arbitrary account coverage.
Spend the time identifying which of the client's check-ins are low-value, because that decision frees the capacity the rest of the plan depends on.
Objection block (20 minutes) — funding.
Use the babysitter analogy to explain why CS return looks uncertain: some accounts renew without intervention, others churn regardless, and you cannot tell which is which until a CSM spends time on the account.
Position the metric work from the earlier block as the answer to that uncertainty, not as a demand for blind trust.
Growth block (20 minutes) — where expansion actually comes from. Introduce the customer-intelligence argument: an existing vendor already holds what competitors cannot see — the customer's internal politics, who really makes decisions, and individual motivations, fears, and ambitions — and put practical questions in front of the team so those insights feed sales-aligned expansion plays instead of sitting unused.
Close (10 minutes) — agree on next actions: the yard-marker list, the automation candidates, and one expansion account to test the intelligence questions on within 30 days.
Handoff and gaps: treat the three-part restructuring plan as a starting structure. Before booking, ask for the longer breakdown linked in the posts and their fuller method for metric design; confirm audience composition and availability directly.
Choose Chris Patin for a CS restructuring campaign when the buyer wants the CS team to change what it does week to week, not just how it is measured.
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Their posts are practitioner playbooks: a five-part onboarding series arguing that early momentum is everything and that quick wins in the first 30 days turn sceptics into believers, and a renewal piece treating renewal as a value proof point to be worked months in advance.
The posts are first-person and concrete — they explain how quick wins are identified (use cases that solve immediate pain, features that are easy to adopt but visibly useful, wins publicised through dashboards and executive summaries) and give a client example in which narrowing focus to one reporting feature that saved a team ten hours a week lifted adoption.
For a session where the room is CSMs who need to act differently next quarter, that level of specificity is a better starting point than a model-level argument.
The tradeoff is altitude.
Patin's posts stay inside the CSM's daily job — onboarding, quick wins, renewal conversations — and do not answer the executive question a CS restructuring campaign poses: how should CS be structured, funded, and measured against revenue?
A leadership team asking why CS deserves budget will get habits and tactics rather than an organisational argument.
Ask for a separate executive-level case covering structure, funding, and ROI.
Choose Priyadarshini Ravichandran for a CS restructuring campaign when the restructuring problem is really a change problem.
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Their posts argue that every strong CSM is a change agent, that customers buy transformation rather than features, and that adoption is not the goal — value realisation is.
They cover influence without direct authority, helping customers unlearn old ways of working, aligning stakeholders as churn and budgets shift, and the CSM as the stable voice through that instability.
For a company whose customers are failing to adopt, or whose CS function needs to guide customer-side change rather than simply report health, this framing is closer to the live problem than a metrics restructuring discussion.
The tradeoff is that Ravichandran's posts speak mainly to the human side of change, not the business case.
They offer little on how CS investment is funded, how its contribution is measured, or how the function should be split or resourced — questions a leadership audience considering CS restructuring will press on.
Ask for an executive-level metric and ROI argument to complement this perspective.
Choose Mason Moyer for a CS restructuring campaign when the immediate gap is posture rather than structure.
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Moyer's posts define the difference between good and great CS as being proactive — spotting adoption trends before they become renewal risks, understanding a customer's why beyond product usage, building touchpoints that are not driven by urgency, aligning internally, and reaching out before the customer realises help is needed.
A second post develops ownership: taking the whole customer journey rather than your piece, driving clarity on goals and success metrics early, following through on commitments, and leading when things are ambiguous.
For a CS team that has become reactive and wants the relationship reframed from vendor to partner, this is a more directly usable starting point than a structural redesign.
The tradeoff is that Moyer's material focuses on mindset and habits, not operating models. A restructuring brief using this perspective would still need separate work on how CS should be organised, how check-ins should be automated, and which leading indicators executives should read.
Five LinkedIn posts by Craig Vincent cover the business case for Customer Success, the difficulty of proving its return, a metrics comparison borrowed from football, a proposed split of CS into sales-aligned and support-aligned functions, and the argument that CSMs hold customer intelligence competitors cannot match.
The posts present their content in full rather than as titles or snippets.
The posts do not say when they were published, so no chronology or evolution of thinking is claimed; one post refers to the Super Bowl, which places it in early 2025.
Several posts point to longer articles by Vincent that are not included here, so the detailed methods behind the metric and restructuring proposals remain unclear and are treated here as a gap rather than a claim.
No engagement, reach, or audience-composition data is published in the posts here, and the posts do not document sponsorships, commercial relationships, or paid brand work.
The posts do not establish whether a book, show, business, or earlier career role explains searches for this name, so identity and signature-work context remains an open question.