How to Get Sales and Customer Success to Work Together

Sales and Customer Success (CS) teams are the dual engines of revenue growth, yet too often they operate in silos, each with separate goals. Daisy Chung, Head of Revenue Strategy at Orum, underscores that revenue growth comes from a synchronized approach between these two departments. 

While specialization in roles, such as Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and Account Executives (AEs), can boost efficiency, it often creates gaps and communication breakdowns between departments.

Breaking Down Silos

As companies scale, aligning goals becomes even more essential. For example, Sales may be focused on landing high-volume, smaller clients, while CS channels its efforts toward large, high-value accounts. These differing priorities can lead to misalignment without intentional coordination, impacting overall revenue potential. 

Daisy explains that the company isn’t just closing deals when Sales and CS align their focus and coordinate their strategies. It’s building long-term, high-value relationships with clients.

This unified approach aims to foster partnerships that last for years. By eliminating the finger-pointing often seen when results falter, businesses can ensure that their revenue growth efforts are stable, adaptable, and recession-resistant.

Unified Focus on High-Value Accounts

For Sales, Customer Success, and Product to drive sustainable growth, the strategy must center on high-value accounts with long-term potential. Identifying ideal customers, like the “top 50” in this case, allows teams to create highly targeted strategies, ensuring that efforts are impactful and aligned across departments.

This targeted approach achieves several goals: 

1. Sales can focus on acquiring customers who are likely to be the best fit.
2. Customer Success channels resources toward retaining and expanding these accounts.
3. Product can prioritize features that support these clients’ specific needs. 

The result is a cohesive strategy in which teams win deals while building lasting, high-quality customer relationships.

Rather than applying a “quick fix” mentality, this strategy focuses on delivering consistent value over time. Companies can create enduring customer satisfaction, mitigate churn, and drive scalable growth by frequently re-evaluating customer priorities and aligning efforts.

Maximizing Revenue with Insights and Operations

When Sales, Customer Success, and Product teams align, they better understand which accounts drive sustainable growth. 

Product plays a critical role by identifying which clients fully utilize high-impact features, which don’t, and where gaps may lie. This data uncovers patterns: are issues arising from targeting the wrong clients or insufficient onboarding? 

With these insights, teams can adjust their strategies to focus on customers who fit the product’s strengths, boosting retention and reducing churn.

Beyond Targeting

Product’s role in optimizing operations is essential. By designing features that minimize service demands, Product enables the human touch to be reserved for strategic, relationship-building efforts. 

This focus on operational efficiency translates into reduced burn rates and more intelligent resource allocation, directly impacting revenue. Rather than just developing more features, the goal is to build the right features that keep customers engaged and teams working efficiently.

Cross-Functional Skills

Achieving proper alignment between Sales and Customer Success starts with hiring. By assessing sales candidates for customer-oriented skills and CS candidates for negotiation and account growth capabilities, companies can build teams equipped to support the entire client journey.

Sales reps with a customer-centric mindset improve the quality of new client acquisition. In contrast, CS reps who can handle executive-level conversations are better positioned to retain and expand accounts. 

This approach fosters empathy across teams and creates a seamless client experience from initial sale through ongoing support.

Cross-functional skills create a unified approach that enhances client satisfaction and revenue outcomes, setting a new standard for collaboration in customer-facing teams.

Conclusion

Sustainable revenue growth relies on strong alignment across Sales, Customer Success, and Product. Companies can build lasting client relationships and reduce churn by focusing on high-value accounts, creating efficient operational strategies, and fostering cross-functional skills. 

True team collaboration ensures efficient growth and resilient, high-quality partnerships that drive long-term value. In today’s competitive landscape, alignment is the foundation for scalable, adaptable revenue success.

Ready to boost live conversations with your top prospects? Discover how Orum’s AI-driven platform connects you with decision-makers faster. 

Want to build a predictable sales pipeline? See how Predictable Revenue’s proven strategies can help you scale smarter.

NO TIME TO READ?

Listen On: