In business, we tend to borrow language from sports. And I’ll admit, not being the most well-versed in sports, I sometime use these phrases without fully understanding them.
Turns out that covering your bases (e.g., “Have we covered all our bases here?”) is a metaphor that comes straight from baseball, where every play has a strategy to ensure all four bases are protected no matter the circumstance.
Whether it’s a line drive to third, a pop-fly to right field, a bunt, or a bases-loaded situation, the fielding team has predetermined plans to make sure every base is protected by someone.
When taking care of a portfolio of customers, the same principle applies. No matter the situation, you need to ensure all the bases are covered — but in this case, the bases represent different types of expertise your customers need access to, no matter what segment they’re in.
Let’s dive in…
For a second, forget traditional titles like Onboarding Specialist, CSM, or Account Manager. Instead, think in terms of the expertise customers need access to.
There are the four types:
Type 1: Industry Expertise
Your customers expect you to understand their world — their processes, challenges, go-to-market strategies, how they make money.
Industry expertise goes beyond surface-level knowledge, and that’s why you often see customer success managers coming from a company’s customers.
On this week’s episode of Land and Expand you'll hear from Toya Del Valle, Chief Customer Officer at Cornerstone OnDemand. Toya is an HR-director-turned-SaaS-executive who possesses deep industry expertise and empathy for her customers… because she used to be one.
Industry expertise can come from individuals, but it’s sort of expensive. Podcasts, blogs, and other resources are scalable ways to deliver industry insights to all of your customers.
For this reason, marketing often owns responsibility for industry thought leadership, and post-sale teams should lean on the resources wherever possible.
As we hurtle toward a world of AI-driven solutions, where customers will buy units of work (AI “agents”) rather than software tools for many use cases, industry knowledge will become even more important.
Type 2: Product Expertise
Product expertise is non negotiable.
Perhaps the most fundamental role of go to market teams is to communicate and deliver product value to the market. So it’s sort of a no-brainer that you have to know your product inside and out… and be able to impart that functional knowledge onto your customers via marketing, sales, services, education, and support activities.
Beyond features and functions, it’s helping customers connect product capabilities to meaningful results. “Best practices,” if you will.
Type 3: Engagement Management Expertise
Engagement management is how we guide customers to measurable value, creating an individualized roadmap for success.
Companies must orchestrate a journey for customers. In high-touch situations the journey may be facilitated via one-to-one human interaction. In low-touch scenarios it may be product-led.
One way or the other, we need to deeply understand common pitfalls and challenges that customers will encounter and take a prescriptive approach to leading them through the process of evaluating, purchasing, deploying, and adopting technology.
Type 4: Commercial Expertise
How we work with customers when they want to upgrade, expand, downgrade, or renew.
The account management function — whether self-serve (e.g. in-app/PLG/ecomm) or high-touch — is responsible for providing structure around the financial and contractual options available to the customer.
If you’re not clear about where customers should go for answers to commercial questions, their requests will show up in the Support queue or directly to CSMs.
Early in my leadership career I made the mistake of leaving this base uncovered. The results were not pretty. If you don’t offer self-service options, you must cover this base with a human, no matter the size of the customer and their spending level.
…
Not every customer segment and interaction type needs the same level of touch.
Large enterprise accounts and complex interactions might require dedicated individuals for each area above. Smaller accounts and less consequential interactions may be delegated to self-serve motions.
But to optimize retention and expansion opportunities, you must ensure that all four bases — industry, product, engagement management, and commercial — are covered across every segment and customer account you manage.
It’s 2025… Are all of your bases covered?
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