Quick Summary: To retain CSMs without leadership promotions, leaders should create transparent career paths with equal-status IC tracks, enable internal mobility, keep high performers challenged, and hold regular, forward-looking career conversations.
Did you know that half of your CSMs likely aspire to grow into leadership roles? In a recent survey, 46% of SaaS CSMs expressed a desire to advance to a leadership role within the next 12 months.
However, only 26% of CSMs say their company offers a clear, achievable CS career path, and 58% say they’re likely or very likely to leave for a better opportunity. For customer leaders worried about team turnover and its downstream effects on the customer experience, this is a warning sign.
How realistic are CSMs’ career ambitions in the current market? And, if upward movement is unlikely, how can leaders bridge the gap between expectations and reality with meaningful growth opportunities?
“CS leaders need great CSMs to be great CSMs for as long as possible,” says Colby Bock of ESG. “That said, CSMs tend to get to a state of burnout due to multiple reasons, and creating a proper career advancement program within the company and within the team will help. Not everyone will be able to be a manager, but the people closest to your customers are some of the most valuable people in the company, and there can be levels within CS.”
Why CSMs’ career goals matter to your team, your customers, and your NRR.
When your CSMs feel like they’re on the track to growth, your team’s engagement rises, and customer and financial outcomes follow. Highly engaged teams deliver better customer metrics, revenue numbers, and profitability. They also keep their employees for longer, reducing replacement costs and the lost productivity that ripples into your onboarding, renewals, and expansion cycles. However:
Great managers are scarce.
“According to the Gallup Employee Engagement study, which has been running for over 20 years,” says The Success League’s Kristen Hayer, “only one in 10 people have the natural talent for leadership and another two in 10 have the desire and ability to learn to be a strong manager. While 45% of CSMs want to move into leadership, only 30% should.
Opportunities are finite.
While management roles are projected to grow faster than average in general, openings are small relative to total employment. Meanwhile, tech companies are reducing management layers and broadening spans of control, which means fewer near‑term manager seats and more emphasis on individual competitor leverage.
In short, you can’t provide a management opportunity for everyone. However, you can provide meaningful growth opportunities to keep your team engaged and thriving.
How do you retain CSMs when you can’t promote them to leadership?
“If a brand loses half of its CSM team,” says Sabina Pons of Growth Molecules, “the impact is immediate and far-reaching. Customer relationships are disrupted, onboarding and renewal cycles suffer, and institutional knowledge walks out the door – costing far more than just backfill recruitment.
“To retain ambitious CSMs, leaders must move beyond vague promises of growth and instead provide structured career paths that include lateral skill expansion, mentorship opportunities, and clearly defined milestones for advancement.”
If you’re unclear on where to start as a customer team leader, consider these initiatives.
1: Publish a transparent career architecture.
“Don’t make your CSMs wonder about growth opportunities; tell them,” says Naomi Aiken of Techtonic Lift. “It’s not always the lack of career advancement available; often, it’s the growth uncertainty that leads to dissatisfaction. Additionally, management is not the sole avenue for professional growth. Companies should be thoughtful in designing roles (and role titles) that motivate CSMs to stay CSMs or embrace lateral moves within an organization.
Instead of assuming that your CSMs understand how to advance, document your company’s career ladder for customer success. Ideally, you’ll have with two equal-status tracks for managers and ICs. For example:
- Manager track: team lead → manager → senior manager → director
- Expert IC track: senior CSM → staff CSM → principal CSM → principal strategist or similar
For each level, spell out:
- Scope: book size, account complexity, ARR responsibility
- Key behaviors: strategic account influence, playbook ownership, mentoring, cross-functional leadership
- Measurable outcomes: NRR lift, expansion pipeline contribution, customer health improvement
- Promotion criteria
Example: A “principal CSM” might own a $5M+ book of strategic accounts, mentor two junior CSMs, lead a quarterly adoption initiative, and present at customer advisory boards.
Additionally, run your “org math” at least once a year and share the results. When you avoid telling your team how few manager roles open every year, you lose the transparency that helps your CSMs set realistic expectations and direct their energy productively.
- Count the manager positions likely to open in the next 12 months (growth + backfill).
- Compare that to the number of CSMs who’ve declared leadership ambitions.
- Share the gap openly, along with alternative paths for those not in the near-term pool.
2: Help your best CSMs stretch themselves.
Burnout among high performers often starts when they feel like they’ve maxed out their role. How can you keep your best CSMs feeling challenged without necessarily moving them into management?
- Best practice leadership: Assign them to own a cross-team initiative like “renewal playbook optimization” or “multithreading best practices,” with recognition and bonus tied to measurable impact.
- Strategic project ownership: Let a CSM lead the rollout of an account health scoring overhaul, or coordinate a customer advisory board cycle.
- Portfolio engineering: Adjust a CSM’s book to include higher-stakes strategic accounts while automating or reassigning low-value work.
Example: Assign a high-performing CSM to spend one quarter embedded with the product team, helping them translate top feature requests into a prioritized roadmap, bringing back insights, and building credibility internally.
3: Commit to internal mobility and practice it.
“I speak with candidates every day and many people are open to leaving for the right opportunity in today’s market,” says Swati Garg of Melo Associates. “Without movement on their teams, there has been limited growth and development opportunities. Many are competing for those opportunities elsewhere and staying if they can’t find them. Businesses need to regularly evaluate the skills the current team has gained and where they want to go, and enable movement on the team and within the company.”
According to research by LinkedIn Learning, companies with strong internal mobility enjoy nearly double the employee tenure of those without. To make it real:
- Require every role to be posted internally for 10 days before external recruitment begins.
- Ask peers and leaders outside a candidate’s direct manager to provide references—this reduces talent hoarding.
- Celebrate CSMs who move into specialized roles like CS operations, enablement, renewals, or solutions engineering. Share their stories so other CSMs can imagine a future beyond their current lane.
4: Raise the bar for career conversations
Too often, career conversations are reactive or tied to compensation reviews. Instead:
- Hold a quarterly or annual future-focused 1:1, separate from performance reviews.
- Ask your CSMs which path they’re pursuing: IC, leadership, or lateral? What two competencies will most change their scope or comp?
- Co-create a short-term plan with specific, observable milestones. For example: “Own Q3 renewal strategy for $3M in ARR” or “Mentor two peers through complex adoption plays.”
Example: A CSM aiming for leadership might shadow two performance reviews, run a team standup for a month, and lead the onboarding of a new hire; clear, time-bound experiences that validate their fit before a promotion.
Find out more about the 2025 CSM Confidential Report
The 2025 CSM Confidential Report is an annual survey of CSMs designed to help customer leaders retain, train, and nurture their teams. This year’s report focuses on getting ahead in CS, with an in-depth look at CSM’s career goals and how they match 2025’s economic reality, alongside actionable tips from five customer success experts.
Explore more findings from the 2025 CSM Confidential Report here.
