Customer Success Is Not Dead - It’s Evolving feat. Sabina Pons

Customer Success isn’t dying—it’s evolving. In this episode of Taking Back Monday, host Alyssa Nolte sits down with Sabina Pons, CEO of Growth Molecules, to explore the shifting role of Customer Success in today’s business landscape. They discuss why Customer Success professionals need to embrace their role as revenue drivers, the power of storytelling in leadership, and how building strong relationships can lead to long-term customer retention—even when customers leave.

Plus, Alyssa and Sabina dive into the importance of making work easy—for your customers, your team, and yourself.

Whether you’re a Customer Success leader navigating change, a SaaS executive focused on retention, or an entrepreneur looking for inspiration to take back your Mondays, this conversation is packed with actionable insights from one of the industry’s most experienced voices.

Key Takeaways:

➝ Customer Success isn’t dead—it’s evolving. The best CS teams are shifting from advocacy alone to driving measurable revenue impact.

➝ We’re all in sales. Whether or not a CSM owns renewals, every interaction influences retention and expansion.

➝ The best CS leaders make work easy. Reducing friction—for customers, teams, and partners—is key to long-term success.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:11 Discussing Work Relationships
00:29 Sabina's Career Journey
02:25 Navigating Career Challenges
07:28 Transition to Consulting
12:03 Customer Success Insights
21:18 Leadership and Personal Growth
23:39 Conclusion and Farewell

It's time to say "goodbye" to the Sunday Scaries.

Connect with Alyssa
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Transcript

Alyssa Nolte: 0:00

Hey everyone. Welcome back to taking back Monday. I am so excited to introduce you to my brand new friend. We are here to talk about taking back Monday, saying goodbye to the Sunday scaries.

Sabina Pons: 0:09

Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Alyssa Nolte: 0:11

So I always ask people, I wanna have like a conversation around your relationship with work and the way that it feels. Because for me, when I get up in the morning on Monday morning, I am so excited for the week because I, I have built a career that I truly love and truly believe in. But that's not everyone's story. Right? So tell me about your origin story. How did you get to the point where you are in your career today?

Sabina Pons: 0:34

Love that you talk about that. Not everybody gets to be passionate and and happy about what they do for a living. I feel like I'm one of the lucky ones where 80% of the time I genuinely love what I do and that 20%. Would be, I think, comprised of difficulties that come from e economic uncertainty, right? Working in the B2B technology space, it's inherent that there's some volatility in the last few years, so that can contribute to that. Also, customers, when you're working in a B2B business relationship, your customers are also under pressures and stresses, and they may not always be as friendly as I would've loved that. That happens from, from time to time. And then also wearing many hats as a leader, as a mom in tech. There may be days where I'm coming to the table, I'm coming to my Monday with weekend baggage, or thoughts about, you know, am I doing the right thing as a mom? Do I plan out enough meals for the week that we're healthy, et cetera, et cetera. So those are the realities I think, of what a lot of people deal with. But for me, I feel really lucky and blessed that I, I really do love what I do, and I think that comes through. In my passion, the way that I speak, I, I naturally speak quickly. I'm not nervous. I'm just passionate about what I'm doing. In terms of how I got here, I, I started my career with the intention of being in public relations. I studied that in undergrad. I ended up getting an internship in the sports and entertainment industry and worked my way up. Realized though, that is a wonderful lifestyle when you are young and single. And when I then met my fiance and wanted it to get a little more serious and have my nights and my weekends back, I pivoted out of that space and applied similar skills into the advertising industry. I worked for a global Omnicom account managing the West coast region for a, uh, national account, and loved that as well. But my primary customer was a, a national, publicly traded residential home builder. 2008, uh, had a big, huge financial crisis and home builders and mortgage brokers and lenders, and everybody took some pretty big hits. And unfortunately my company was one of them. So I, I waited through rounds of layoffs, helping lay people off, and then I got laid off as well that felt like I was being dumped, felt like I was being kicked in the stomach. And it felt like all the things my. Parents and teachers and mentors told me growing up, you know, you work hard, you're a good person. You can be anything you wanna be. That was true for our baby boomer parents. Not necessarily true for any of us that were born 1980 onward. So, um, it, it, it stung and it was very humbling and it was probably also the best thing that happened to me because I had to figure out how to reinvent myself and applied for a bunch of jobs that had, the only common thread was a concept of loosely account management, having the ability to. Communicate externally with a customer and understand their needs, their intentions for their business, and opportunities for growth. Translate that internally, maybe in different ways for different audiences internally. To be able to collectively deliver for that customer's intended outcomes. And so for example, in that world in advertising, it was, you know, working with copywriters and video, uh, producers and radio. And we did print media. Back then you bought big newspaper, you know, double, we called double trucks big, um, newspaper spreads on both sides, all those things. And then in the middle of all that, Facebook comes out. And so we're trying to teach these residential home builder regional presidents. This concept of social media and how we can go in on an ad buy together for your whole region across the west coast and have geo-targeted ads where like the guys in Phoenix could have specific for their, um, uh, model home sites. And then the guys in, you know, Bakersfield, California could have ones that we all bought it on the same order form, but they're gonna see different ads in their areas. And it was just like. You know, their minds were great. So I feel like if I could break all down those concepts, I applied for a job, ultimately working in an IT department in a similar capacity where my clients were now my business stakeholders across the, the large, um, enterprise. And someone, honestly, I don't know how or why, but they gave me a chance. And so I was able to demonstrate that those skills of communicating complex information and being able to relay it in different ways. in in different contexts. Uh, understanding the different personas that we're gonna consume and act on that information was something that they just took a leap of faith on me. I did on them. And I worked my way up in the organization and literally was working in an IT organization. we we built out a full program from what we called, you know, click to ship customer success in a, um, a command center for support. And it was a, a direct to consumer subscription business model. Guffy Rankers, the company. And they had, I worked in over 25 different brands. A lot of them were, uh, beauty pharmaceutical. Fitness, things like that. And we had this great model when the subscription economy was really first coming to, to play. This is in 2009 to 2016. I was there where we realized we had something special and we had built this system. Little bit of acquisition, a little bit of homegrown, put it all together and, and polish it off. So we. Could productize it to third parties. And so now they asked me to go help spin up this other division called OceanX, which was now where we could partner with the makeup subscription companies of the world and the children's clothing and the dog food and, and a lot of brands that we all know are household names to get their first ever subscription models going. So that was really exciting. I got to stand up the whole post-sale, the pre-sale and post-sales teams, and worked on that subscription revenue component there and really loved it. And then I got offered a job, uh, at a pure play SaaS company that was a lot closer to home where I wasn't commuting two hours a day to my job. So that's how I pivoted into in the B2B SaaS. Uh, first day I found out I was gonna own renewals. Didn't know that was in my charter, but from the time I signed my contract in my offer letter to the time that I showed up for day one, they had some, some. KR and, uh, operational roadmap changes. So now I own revenue, and so I quickly grew a team from nine CSMs that I inherited, and over five years had 104 people across. Um, cs, uh, had some, a little bit of Ps responsibility, uh, support, community and loyalty initiatives for, uh, now Cantata was Mavenlink, B2B, SaaS Professional Services Automation. And we owned expansions. We owned renewals and all the fun things that lead up to those activities. Then after that, I left in 2021 to join my mentor, Amelia Danica, to build up growth molecules. She had founded it about six months earlier and was ready to take it to market on a bigger way, so we. We did that together. I told my husband, gimme one year I will try this consulting thing. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna give it my best. And if I don't make enough money, if I fall miserably flat on my face, I will go back and get a quote unquote real job where there, once again might be a 401k match and maybe a bonus and some good medical benefits. But let's see, let's go. So I very, very nervously jumped in and I remember my first. Uh, consultative engagement and workshop I led was with Amplitude and they had 180 global CSMs, and it was still not in the time where we were traveling yet freely, so it was all on Zoom over the course of several sessions. It was digital whiteboarding with my iPad, trying to have like Houston command control center with all the different tech. And also still know my shit, like not miss a beat, make eye contact, call on the members of the audience by their first name, and make sure I was monitoring the clock, hitting the right points I needed to hit, and, and doing also in a contextualized way for their specific business. It couldn't be just off the shelf. So thankfully it went well and we continue to deliver well for customers. We hit a million in our first year and have continued to grow since. And so it's really exciting and it's been a really fun ride and I'm really excited about the role now that I get to play as CEO and chief customer Officer of the business, taking it to new levels and doubling down on the services and partnerships that we bring to the technology community that's my whole life story.

Alyssa Nolte: 9:16

Hey, I did ask for your origin story so there's about a, I took a bunch of notes 'cause there's a bunch of things I wanna talk about, but I wanna make a note that I think the world is so much smaller than people realize. You mentioned Guthy Rinker. My dad was the account manager for the Logistics and Shipping Solutions team.

Sabina Pons: 9:31

Was your dad?

Alyssa Nolte: 9:32

Mike Janssen.

Sabina Pons: 9:33

Totally know him.

Alyssa Nolte: 9:34

Yep. That's my dad. Um, so.

Sabina Pons: 9:37

totally met him. I dunno if he remembers me, but we were on all these IT projects together for years.

Alyssa Nolte: 9:41

What a small world.'cause as soon as you said that, I was like, wait a

Sabina Pons: 9:44

I have goosebumps right now. I'm so tripped out. I dunno if he remembers me. We were on like cross-functional calls, like project roadmap calls together relative to all these cutovers. Like, it's absolutely unbelievable that there's that connection. I'm so like, so tripped out right now.

Alyssa Nolte: 9:55

We didn't meet through, I mean, we didn't even meet through the customer success community. We met through Dion Major, who was on my podcast a couple of months ago. She made the connection and it's like, would've never known that we had literally one degree of separation so anyway, just so for anyone listening, um, you never know who you're gonna make relationships with, who you're gonna have connections with and who's gonna circle back. I love that you came from marketing and then went into consulting.'cause I think the one thing that leadership is missing for first time leaders is the ability to tell a story. And people in marketing backgrounds. Are like the best in the world at that, and it makes so much sense why they do well in leadership roles.

Sabina Pons: 10:31

Thank you. I appreciate that. I gotta work on the veracity piece. I, I'm already working on the speed and enunciation, but I, I am passionate and I think it's important to share those different twists and turns in the story because 10 years ago, plus customer success was a thing. I was doing it, but. It wasn't a focus that people came outta college and said, I wanna be in customer success now. That's very much a thing. It's an actual recognized practice. It still comes in in the LinkedIn top jobs to have. It's gone down a little bit in the last few years, but it is very much a dedicated practice discipline, and it's exciting, but most of us didn't. Come that way because account management was what it was called, and it was very much focused not on a subscription model where you're, you're protecting and growing your revenue. It was more you're just making sure that the customers that you have are happy and. Not even necessarily using what you bought. It was, it's a different model. It was, we want them to be able to potentially buy more from us. It wasn't let's keep what we have. We've already recognized that revenue. So that's a big change of, of course with the move to cloud computing and, you know, SaaS and the now of course, with a whole AI overlay. It's a whole other podcast for whole other day, but it's changing quickly. So I think it's, it's pretty cool and I'm, I'm honored to have landed where I did.'cause it was definitely a weird way to get here, but it was the perfect right path for me.

Alyssa Nolte: 12:01

What do you think about? So we, there seems to be this like cultural divide, I'll call it, of customer success managers who want to be just, just that function of like the customer's advocate, the customer's best friend versus actual revenue generators.'cause you mentioned it used to be like, Hey, we don't really care if you renew, just trying to get you to buy more. That's really changed 'cause people are less loyal than they ever, than ever before. So like when you think about those customer success people and, and changing their mindset around work, do you think they need to or is it, is it we need to change the words we use? I.

Sabina Pons: 12:37

There's so many ways I can answer this and so many thoughts. The catchphrase that's been thrown around a lot over the last 18 months is that customer success is dead, and that I believe originated from I. Some key insights that were shared from Frank Sluman, the uh, former CEO of Snowflake. And I don't think that's literally what he was saying. I think people took it very literally. The concept was, first of all, we don't care what the department's called. It's still really expensive to acquire new customer, and we need to do the best that we can to keep the ones that we work so hard to get in the first place. And guess what? If we can help them. Be successful even more that they potentially want to even spend more with us and leverage more of our services and our features and our product lines, then that is the pathway to a truly durable business model, the customer success concept. And also then if it is in fact a department that a company is still calling customer success, the charter and mission of that group can vary so significantly from company to company based off of different conditions. One could be the vertical, two could be the size of the company, and you know, three could also be the. The types of products or services that they provide. And there isn't a cut and dry answer when I go to industry conferences or summits for, you know, chief customer officers. People are often asked, you know, raise your hands if your team owns renewals, and half of the room will raise their hand and half of them won't. And people are very passionate about that and they'll have different schools of thought. I've had teams in completely both buckets for different reasons at times. Can they be a trusted advisor if they're also responsible for commercials? It absolutely can be done. If you're hiring the right people and your product and onboarding and doing the right thing, the renewal kind of becomes a non-event. Of course, I say that, you know, tongue in cheek, but it really is not this, you know, hard hitting negotiation sales conversation. We are all in sales and we are also all in customer success. And it's that philosophy I always talk about. It's the Disney philosophy. Someone always owns the moment. There's all these touch points that are comprising the sentiment that this person is having about your products or services, and it's up to them to determine whether they're gonna be loyal to that or not. And are they getting value? Well, value is a feeling. So if they're feeling that, fantastic. They might love you, but are they getting the ROI and that's a calculation. Do they have that ammo in their tool belt with that calculation that shows the cost savings or the reduction in time to do something that they can show their CFO or their boss for budgeting season that it should stay? Like they might love you completely. I've loved products, but I've had to cancel them because I couldn't afford it anymore. I had an amazing executive assistant a couple years back. Connie was weird. I still knew with this consulting thing, I let her go. She's great. I still text her. I would love to hire her again. So I think the way to answer your question is, is there's, there isn't a clear answer because it, it depends is the answer. And I think that's realistic. It's realistic to say there's different scenarios and contexts of contexts that will drive that answer. Do CSMs need to change the way that we think? Absolutely. There needs to stop being a fear of. Sales. It's not a dirty word. Even if you don't own the revenue numbers, you don't have a a compensation model tied to an expansion or renewal. You still indirectly do. You're responsible for effectively. Keeping the customers, and even if there's a bug in the system, you're not necessarily gonna be the one to go fix the bug. You're not a coder if you are fantastic. But that's not typically the charter or mission of A CSM. But what they can do is advocate internally to make sure that it doesn't get lost. They can advocate externally and maintain. Updates to the customer. Even if there's no news, they can say, we did forget about you. I know this is a problem. I know this is a pain point. I do apologize. I am checking in with them daily. You'll hear from me next again tomorrow. By this time. Even if it's to say the same thing, that's fine. But they need to know that they're being heard. Heard from. CSMs can do that whether they own revenue or not, and I think that's the most important part, is that they're the internal advocate for their customer and an external champion for their business.

Alyssa Nolte: 17:11

There's a lot in there that I wanna call out too. Um, I had someone on the podcast, one of the very first episodes that I did, like a year ago, and he said, you know, if you have developed a real relationship with this person, 'cause a lot of people wanna be that trusted advisor role, right? So if you've, if you are their trusted advisor, if they believe in you, they trust you, and you believe that they have a problem worth solving and that your product can bring value to their experience. Why would you deprive them of the opportunity to solve their problem? Right? Yeah. They have to pay for it. But like why would you not make that offer to say like, Hey, I've got a solution for your problem. I can make a difference in your day. And then a lot of people just won't take that next step 'cause they're so afraid of losing that trusted advisor that they forget. Part of being a trusted advisor is helping them solve their problems. And if you happen to have the solution, great.

Sabina Pons: 17:59

Absolutely. There's a book out there and a framework by Bill Kard called Helping Cells. It's true. I think if we as humans remember to be human first, especially in B2B, like I love that about B2B 'cause your customers are also running a business, they're also struggling to get a board report done to hit certain targets, to do it efficiently, you know, to maintain employee retention morale. So if you are coming from that mindset like I am here as a. Liaison, representing our service that we're providing you. My job is to make you the hero within your company. That's really critical. And if you focus on that, I feel like it's gonna naturally create that relationship. And if you do it well and you have empathy, they may actually have to leave you and cancel with you. And it's not because of you. It's not a personal thing. Maybe they ran outta money, maybe it's economic hardship. But if you give them that same level of service and trust and respect as they're leaving. You never know, they might bring you back at the next company. I've had it happen many, many, many times. I've also successfully run win back campaigns with that same customer at that same company and got them to come back as soon as they could. I think it's, it's pretty critical that if at the end of all of it, we just remember, like put ourselves in the shoes of them. Like they're also probably dealing with the, you know, Monday scaries. They're, they're looking at, you know, what the next deadline is. They probably got Slack or teams blowing up and mam million priorities at the same time, where it's like whack-a-mole for them. The other layer to think about is the stat that most companies have over 200 applications or, or vendors that they're subscribed to from a a technology perspective. So if you mean, think about that, like, you know, you'll have your email client, you might have your, your web, um, video conferencing client, and then of course anything that's proprietary to your operating and so on, that they might have also over 200 CSMs or points of contact, depending on the role within the company. So how do we help? How do we meet our customers where they are in a way that they can consume and digest information? Maybe they don't want to have an executive business review with you, and that's okay, but how, how can you do that instead? Maybe they prefer being on a text message basis rather than actually emailing. I mean, it's, it's important that we have the wherewithal to ask those questions on a uniquely human level for that person. And I think that also will help really drive, um, that, that relationship building and, and the ability to, to grow and scale together.

Alyssa Nolte: 20:30

I have a, a colleague that I work with, and she says her only goal, she works in like delivery, right? She's delivering services. Her only goal is to be easy to work with. Like she doesn't wanna be difficult to work with. She doesn't wanna be frustrating, she doesn't wanna be annoying. She doesn't wanna be someone who is adding difficulty to your day. She wants you to, to feel like, hey, it was really easy to work with her. I'd like to do that again. Right. And I think a lot of times we put these arbitrary rules in place that we've set for ourselves or, or for our teams that keep us from being easy to work with because we've all worked with that team that you're like, can you just please approve an email? Like, please, it's, we've been through 15 iterations of this. Just say yes to the email. It's three sentences. Like, and it doesn't have to be that way, but sometimes people get in their head about it and, and aren't easy to work with, and that just makes for a frustrating experience.

Sabina Pons: 21:16

Yeah. It's unnecessary friction.

Alyssa Nolte: 21:18

When you think about all of the incredible people that you've had a chance to meet and, and have influenced your, your life and the way you approach work, who is taking the charge? Who is leading the charge on taking back Monday?

Sabina Pons: 21:30

Interestingly enough, the one of the co-founders of the company I came from. Right before Growth Molecules, uh, was called Mavenlink and is now known as Cantata. Um, the gentleman's name is Sean Krafts, and he also is now the managing partner of the company that Growth Molecules was just acquired by. So in other words, he also gets to be my boss again. And part of the exciting part about this business transition is continuing to learn from him. He has a large family and he has a very hands-on dad with all of his children, ranging from, I think 22 to eight years old. And he also is an athlete. He also takes care of himself in the sense that he, he'd probably say otherwise, but he works out regularly. He eats salads as much as he can. Uh, we, we joke about this, let's try not to drink for a little while. We realize we're probably better humans. If you get an old fashioned or a good glass of wine once in a while, like, like all isn't the right answer either. But in terms of his ability to be successful, to be honestly one of the humans that I would truly trust my life with, my children's life with and obviously business with is such a, a. Interesting thing because so many people would say the same thing about him. That's just who he is as a person. Yet he also is a force to be reckoned with. He has a backbone. He can negotiate like best of them. I always say he's, he's crafty. Play on his last name with his negotiations and has a really great creative mind to solve problems in a way that's a win-win, win for everybody involved. And I think his ability to do that, to be that type of a leader, to be that type of a business builder and to be that kind of a human, you know, as a parent and, and as a colleague, as a friend, is really remarkable. And we've stayed in touch when I left the company all the way through to now getting to the point where we get to work together again. It's kind of a dream come true and it inspires me to want to be like him when I quote unquote grow up.

Alyssa Nolte: 23:34

Awesome. That's incredible. I'd love to, I'm gonna have to follow him on LinkedIn and just learn more about what he's doing. So if someone is really connecting with you, if they want to, to get to know you better, or follow your content or, or learn more about growth molecules, where can they find you online?

Sabina Pons: 23:48

The best way to reach me is on LinkedIn. It's Sabina Palms. Think I'm the only one out there. Would love to be in touch and support however I can.

Alyssa Nolte: 23:57

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking back Monday with me. This was great. Thanks for joining us on Taking Back Monday, where we say goodbye to the Sunday scaries and hello to meaningful and fulfilling work. If you enjoyed today's episode, let's connect on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you found value here, share the podcast with your network. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review. It helps us inspire more leaders to join the movement. Until next time, let's take back Monday.