View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages.
A success plan is the outline and roadmap for achieving customer objectives using GitLab. It is used on an ongoing basis to align on outcomes, action items, and status between the customer and the GitLab team. It is the foundation of a CSM’s engagement with their customers.
The success plan is mutually agreed upon by both sides, ensuring the details are reflective of the customer’s objectives and GitLab’s plan to achieve those objectives and alignment across all involved on those details.
It is a living document, and is reviewed & updated regularly in cadence calls, business reviews, account team meetings, and all other situations involving customer journey planning & implementation.
The success plan is part of most interactions with the customer, and as an anchor point for GitLab team planning.
Customer objectives are at the heart of a success plan. These are the core results that a customer needs to achieve, and define how we will work with the customer to achieve success. An objective has the following elements:
These core elements form the foundation for the rest of the success plan and the initiatives that fall under each objective. Using these details, we can determine the steps needed to achieve the objective and track our progress over time.
Once an objective has been fully defined, one or more initiatives are created as action plans to achieve the objective. These focus on the “how” to meet the customer outcomes, and enable a division of responsibility for different aspects of the plan.
The success plan starts during the pre-sales phase, driven by the Solutions Architect. Throughout the product evaluation process the SA and the Account Executive define customer objectives, and use these to demonstrate GitLab value aligned to these objectives. The SA documents these objectives in the success plan slide deck with all of the requisite details. This information is part of what is used for a Proof of Value, and ensures that we have a clear understanding of the customer’s needed business outcomes.
To understand the full process between Pre-sales and Post-sales, please read about the mutual customer success plan process.
Once the AE and SA close a customer, the transition to post-sales takes place. The customer goes through onboarding, during which the CSM uses the success plan to outline a plan for adoption and aligns with the customer on the details of this plan. This includes a review of the already-listed objectives to ensure accuracy and initiatives for each of those objectives related to enablement, implementation, and other actions needed for the customer to achieve their objectives using GitLab.
Coming out of this phase, there should be full alignment between the GitLab team and the customer stakeholders on the objectives and the plan to achieve them, including steps for each of the initiatives, ownership of those steps, and commitment from those owners based on defined timelines. Put simply, everyone should be clear on what comes next and who is responsible/accountable for it.
With the first iteration of the success plan agreed on with the customer, the CSM focuses on putting the plan into action. This has a few key facets:
The most frequent customer engagement point for this is the cadence call. As the success plan is the hub of our work with the customer, details about initiatives and objectives are incorporated into the cadence call as part of our adoption efforts and overall customer management.
Business reviews, similar to cadence calls, occur on a regular basis and provide the opportunity to review the success plan at a high level and demonstrate progress against the success criteria, as well as discover new objectives for the future.
The success plan and business review should be thought of as mirror images of each other: the information maintained in the success plan feeds the discussion for the business review, and new information attained through the business review meeting is captured in the success plan to add to the roadmap for the customer’s success.
There are two main components that make up a full success plan: the customer-facing slide deck, and the Gainsight success plan. These two elements are used in tandem to ensure ongoing alignment across all stakeholders and the ability to measure & analyze the results of our efforts.
As the success plan is a mutually agreed upon living document, the primary format is a slide deck that follows a defined template. This provides several benefits:
The structure of the success plan slide deck focuses on objectives & initiatives as defined above, as well as specific focus on the customer enablement plan and an outline of next steps at any given time. It makes it easy to visualize progress and key details in a way that’s clear and easy to follow, and identify needed updates or demonstrate measurable results.
For ease of discovery and visibility, the success plan slide deck must be located in the appropriate Google Drive Customer Folder as well as linked in the customer’s Gainsight success plan using the designated field on the plan info screen (to the right of Approval Status). The permissions for the slide deck should be set to Editor for everyone at GitLab, to maximize the ability to collaborate.
Gainsight’s success plan capability provides us with the ability to understand, across a CSM’s book of business and our organization more broadly, what is working and what we can improve to drive use case adoption.
While most information related to achieving objectives lives in the slide deck, we still enter key details about objectives into Gainsight. This includes:
The rest of the details, including the initiatives and other action item details for the objective, are maintained in the slide deck.
When an objective is identified and outlined with the customer and documented in the slide deck, it is also added to Gainsight. Once an objective is achieved, or if it is removed for any reason, it is closed in Gainsight accordingly.
This workflow allows us to minimize overlap between the two success plan components, while enabling a CSM to have visibility into the progress and status of their initiatives across their book of business and their results over time.
For ease of discovery and visibility, there is a field on the Gainsight success plan info screen to provide a link to the success plan slide deck. When the slide deck is created, the link is added to this field in Gainsight.
View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages.
The questions and techniques described on this page will provide you with some ways to drive a strategic conversation with a customer, and explore the information you need to develop an effective success plan. A Success Plan should always be a continuation of the Command Plan where available. The below questions are for further expanding on what we know from the Command Plan, or refreshing on objectives if it has been some time.
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