Quick summary: Most customer success teams own revenue but CSM revenue readiness hasn’t kept pace. That gap is a business risk that leaders should address immediately.
For our annual CSM Confidential Report this year, we asked CSMs whether they own revenue in some form: a quota, a target, or an informal shared responsibility.
Eight out of ten said yes. When we asked whether they felt prepared to own it, however, the numbers on CSM revenue readiness told a different story.
Only six out of ten said yes—a 23-point gap—indicating a potentially serious operational risk within the SaaS industry.
Further, 44% of respondents say their sales and negotiation skills are holding them back—and nearly half say they’ve received no commercial training whatsoever in the last twelve months.
CS leaders know that the commercial transformation of CS has already happened—but it seems that many don’t or can’t provide the investment, training, and organizational clarity required for CSMs to be confident revenue owners.
Here’s how to close the gap.
What help do CSMs say they need with revenue readiness?
Asked what would make them feel more ready to own revenue, the top answers were spread across four areas: more time and less admin (39%), better selling and negotiating skills (39%), clearer expansion playbooks and talk tracks (38%), and more clarity on rules of engagement with sales teams (31%).
In other words, it’s a skills problem, a time problem, and a process problem, all at once. A training program alone is unlikely to resolve it; neither will a playbook refresh or a one-time alignment meeting with your sales team.
The benefits of investing in enablement, however, are significant.
For example, survey respondents who received commercial training in the last twelve months are more likely to feel happy in their roles, prepared to own revenue, and comfortable with selling and advising simultaneously.
| Metric | Received commercial training | No commercial training |
| Happy in role | 70% | 58% |
| Unhappy in role | 21% | 32% |
| Feel prepared to own revenue | 72% | 50% |
| Agree CSMs can sell and advise | 91% | 63% |
Most leaders will agree that a trained and happy team of CSMs is faster to identify expansion signals, more confident in commercial conversations, and more likely to chase and embrace revenue opportunities.
How can leaders help close the CSM revenue readiness gap?
While there may be no single fix, our report’s expert contributors identify a set of effective actions you can take to close the gap. None of them requires a structural overhaul.
1. Assess or reassess your team’s commercial skills.
“Many CSMs are in the role because they didn’t want to become sales reps,” says report contributor David Ellin of Winning by Design.
“Now, many are eager to own revenue, but need the necessary selling skills to be successful. CS leaders need to assess CSM skills before simply assigning revenue responsibility.”
Before adding targets or expanding commercial scope, understand where each CSM stands. Which CSMs can handle a negotiation? Who can identify an expansion signal in a QBR? Who is drowning in reactive work and just doesn’t have the bandwidth for commercial conversations?
A simple skills audit, even an informal one, is worth its weight in gold.
In a team of 12 CSMs, for example, you might identify three people wo can own expansion conversations immediately, five who need structured coaching, and four who are too overloaded to be commercially effective until their workload is rebalanced.
Now, you can a) assign commercial responsibility thoughtfully, and b) build a training plan that gets everyone else up to speed.
2. Build a commercial training baseline, even if budget is limited.
“CS teams used to be labeled relationship teams who didn’t need training on revenue, says report contributor Parul Bhandari of CustomerXSuccess.
“Today, CS leaders need to advocate for training just like their sales counterparts. It doesn’t make sense to give ownership of hard-earned revenue to a team that you don’t train to grow it.”
“The good news,” says Rod Cherkas of HelloCCO, “is that effective commercial training doesn’t require a big budget or a lengthy program. What you need is intentional, repeated practice. A six-figure L&D budget is less important than consistency.”
What practical approaches will work within typical CS budgets?
- Weekly role-play: Fifteen minutes per 1:1 devoted to a commercial scenario. Rotate through expansion conversations, handling objections, and quantifying value. Repetition builds fluency, which changes behavior.
- Talk track library: Build a shared set of expansion entry points, objection responses, and value statements that CSMs can adapt and practice. Co-create it with your best performers so it reflects field-tested language specific to your customers and industry.
- Shadowing: Pair less experienced CSMs with those who handle commercial conversations well. It’s free, specific, and builds commercial instinct.
- External resources: Programs like The Success League’s commercial training or Rod Cherkas’s REACH Framework give CSMs a structured process for identifying expansion signals and moving opportunities forward without feeling like they’re switching into sales mode.
“Selling skills are completely trainable and critical for both revenue-owning and non-revenue-owning CSMs,” says Kristen Hayer of The Success League.
“Even if you don’t have a quota, you need to persuade customers to shift timelines, negotiate feature requests, and conduct meaningful conversations about a customer’s business. CSMs who can’t persuade, negotiate or ask deep questions won’t be as successful, with or without revenue responsibility.”
3. Protect commercial time with less admin, more structure.
“When the CSM workload is too high,” says Kristen, “it’s usually because the customer journey isn’t planned out in a way that allows leaders to set a reasonable book of business for each CSM without pushback from their finance team. This foundation is critical for having a balanced workload.
David Ellin, meanwhile, points to the catch-all problem as a structural blocker.
“Too often, CSMs become a catch-all for work other departments don’t or won’t do,” he says. “CS leaders need to set a clear tone and expectation for the work to be done. Once set, leaders should provide the right tools to optimize CSM time—which includes one source of truth for all customer data. Leaders should use the available budget for AI tools to create efficiencies, handle repetitive tasks, and guide CSMs to customers where their focus is most needed, whether for adoption, retention, renewal, or expansion.
“An underlying issue is that CSMs don’t feel confident enough to prioritize commercial conversations when everything else is competing for their attention,” agrees Rod.
“I’ve watched CS teams struggle with this gap for years. The industry keeps diagnosing it without giving teams a practical way to solve it. CSMs need a structured process for assessing customer readiness, listening for signals, and moving opportunities forward in a way that feels natural to how they already work.”
4. Reframe the team’s identity around revenue metrics.
In the new CSM Confidential Report, Parul Bhandari makes the organizational case for an identity shift.
“CS has been the catch-all function for some time,” she writes. “This has to change. Resetting the goals of the team, to deliver customer value and revenue, is a good place to start.”
“If CS is a revenue team, not a relationship team, there is a clearer tie to measurable metrics. With metrics in place, the question should follow: is my work related to or delivering on these metrics? If not, it should not be in the plan.”
Once you reset your team’s identity around NRR, CLV, cost to serve, and expansion pipeline contribution, you create a natural filter for workload conversations. Over time, when CSMs are asked to take on tasks that fall outside those metrics, they’ll have more clarity and confidence to object.
5. Encourage your CSMs to take ownership.
Finally, Rod offers a direct challenge to CSMs who are waiting for conditions to improve.
“CSMs who wait for their company or manager to fix their workload or comp before they can perform at a higher level will wait a long time,” he says. “Instead, you should focus on three things you can control as a CSM.”
“First: invest in the skills your role now demands — commercial conversations, strategic thinking, AI fluency, and data-driven insights. CSMs who develop them will be more confident, more effective, and frankly more employable.”
“Second, take AI and automation seriously as personal productivity tools. CSMs who learn to use AI to handle repetitive, low-value work will free themselves up for the strategic, relationship-driven work they enjoy.”
“Third, own your results. CSMs who thrive treat their book of business like a business, track outcomes, come to conversations prepared, and make themselves indispensable to their customers.”
About the 2026 CSM Confidential Report
Now in its third year, ChurnZero’s CSM Confidential Report is designed to help customer leaders build revenue-ready CS teams. Download this year’s report in full for unique insights on building the skills, training, and organizational clarity that turn CSMs into confident revenue owners.
