Quick Summary: Coaching new CSMs works best when you prioritize strategic adaptability, dynamic resilience, and relational design. A structured 30-60-90 day coaching blueprint builds self-awareness and creates consistent, high-impact performance tied to retention and revenue outcomes.
The CSMs of 2026 are expected to do it all: drive revenue, lead expansion, craft strategy from onboarding to advocacy, and all while collaborating cross-functionally. But what if these hard skills aren’t what keeps your team healthy and thriving? What if foundational, soft skills were actually the key to success?
According to Arit Nsemo, founder of woo-woo for winners, one of the most successful CSMs she ever hired was a former nanny. Why? She excelled due to her “expert level regulation” gained from teaching toddlers.
At ZERO-IN 2025, Arit showed customer success leaders how to map competencies and develop structured coaching plans for high-performing CSMs to cultivate soft skills, which then serve as pillars for hard skills and strategic work.
Let’s dig into the primary pillars for soft skill building, then integrate it all into a structured coaching blueprint that serves CSMs, customer teams, and business outcomes.
How to coach new CSMs: core skills for new hires.
Three pillars serve as the ideal foundation for CSM skill-building, says Arit: strategic adaptability, dynamic resilience, and relational design.
1: Strategic adaptability: the power of the pivot.
In a world of constant organizational change, new tech, and evolving product roadmaps, the ability to pivot is paramount.
Being able to strategically adapt means quickly assessing business or environmental changes and adjusting tactics accordingly (hopefully while still prioritizing long-term goals). For CSMs, it’s a balancing act – how can they stick to timelines, agendas, and expectations, but also prepare for unexpected shifts from the customer? Every relationship needs both maintenance and forward momentum.
Underpinning soft skills + approaches:
- Self-trust (AKA asking forgiveness, not permission).
- Curiosity (frequently asking customers, “What’s changed?”).
- Experimentation mindset.
Related: The slump prevention playbook: how to bounce back from setbacks in customer success.
2: Dynamic resilience: maintaining your baseline.
Resilience is often misunderstood as simply enduring repeated setbacks. But the goal isn’t to get stronger from being punched in the face – it’s to avoid being knocked off center in the first place.
Arit reframes this skill as dynamic resilience, meaning “being able to see these obstacles, see the challenge, and not have it knock you off that baseline.” Similar to strategic adaptability, the outcome should be to maintain forward momentum. And in this case, that momentum continues despite the pressure and because of a practiced state of calm and clarity.
Underpinning soft skills + approaches:
- Dispassionate observation (understand why you feel frazzled or unmoored).
- Energy management (track where energy goes each week to set boundaries and adjust workflows).
Related: What causes stress in customer success teams, and why?
3: Relational design: interaction with intention.
A customer’s long-term goals are probably consistently top of mind, but have you asked what they may need from you right now?
Relational design encourages a CSM to move from bird’s eye view all the way down to the ground level. What is each stakeholder’s motivation for this project, this meeting, and even this specific email?
Underpinning soft skills + approaches:
- Motivation mapping (go beyond personas for each individual, whether it’s the CFO or the day-to-day point person).
- Influence without authority (use tone calibration to match the customer, have a clear point of view to establish credibility).
- Active listening.
Related: Are your CSMs speaking your customers’ love language?
A 30-60-90 day coaching blueprint to integrate CSM soft skills
It’s time to put those soft skills into practice – and what customer team doesn’t love a structured framework, right? By breaking up this integration into three months, you and your team can focus on a natural progression:
- 30 days: teach core skills, establish foundational level of self-awareness
- 60 days: actively apply learned skills via manager support and role-playing (in safe environments)
- 90 days: CSM expected to own strategic application of skills, demonstrate independence and higher-level influence
“The whole purpose of this,” Arit notes, “is to start to help build self-awareness. Because once they build some awareness and can start to build self trust, they can implement all of these skills.”
Example 30-60-90 day coaching blueprint:
Core skill: Adaptability
- 30 days: Shadow calls and use journaling to reflect on post-call work.
- 60 days: Begin leading parts of calls and role-playing agenda pivots (e.g., throwing in a “wild card”).
- 90 days: Own strategy, small projects, and expansion opportunities.
Core skill: Resilience
- 30 days: Practice the Pause, Observe, Respond method and journal about internal reactions.
- 60 days: Handle escalations with manager support and use weekly energy check-ins to build self-awareness.
- 90 days: Lead executive-level QBRs and reconcile internal/cross-functional conflicts independently.
Core skill: Relational Design
- 30 days: Conduct stakeholder motivation mapping for accounts. Practice reflective listening.
- 60 days: Apply motivation analysis to strategy decks. Start multi-threading accounts based on motivations.
- 90 days: Manage risk by effectively practicing relational design and influence.
Addressing leadership resistance: soft skills and business outcomes.
When it comes to business outcomes, leadership’s role is to prioritize revenue and reduce churn, every time. Proposing a new focus on soft skills may seem counterintuitive at first, but it will improve retention and customer experience for the long haul.
To make the case with confidence, focus on these three areas:
Retention and cost. CSMs who are resilient and adaptable “burn out less”. Investing in these skills de-risks the talent pool and saves the company in high cost talent turnover.
Customer experience. High turnover directly damages customer relationships. Try citing specific feedback that indicates customers are tired of having new CSMs all the time.
Performance multiplier. Top performers will already have these skills. So coach the rest of the team to create necessary inputs for desired outputs (e.g. increased revenue and renewal rates) across the board.
By prioritizing these foundational soft skills, your organization can successfully coach existing team members and non-traditional hires into the high-impact, emotionally intelligent CSMs needed to succeed.
