Renewals & Customer Success - Does a combo team with this charter work?

I am thinking about creating a team in Client Services with the following charter / goals:

Customer success and referencablity
Reducing the cost of renewals (On-Demand subscriptions and software maintenance)
Promoting up sell and cross sell of products and services

The current thinking is to have a team with two roles. First is a Customer Success Manager whose mission is to insure client success by acting as an internal advocate, monitoring use (SaaS) and making sure their clients have all of the information and resources they need to be successful. The second is the Account Manager, who is actually responsible for securing the renewal business and can potsntially do small up and cross selling of things like training and service packages. I am currently considering a 3+ to 1 ration of CSMs to AMs.

I would be very interested in hearing from those out there who have considered or, better yet, executed this kind of model.

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Haim Toeg on March 11, 2010 at 11:28am: David - I like the overall role of the combined team, but I am curious why you would want to split the roles. Once someone had developed deep knowledge of the customer, wouldn't they be ideal to pick up the renewal / cross selling discussion?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Canelis on March 11, 2010 at 3:15pm: Haim,

Thanks for the reply and excellent question. In fact, it is one of the key questions I am wrestling with. The logic you state is spot on. My only concern is the difference in tone of the conversation with a customer success role when the dialog changes from helping to selling. Maybe it's not an issue. Looking for opinions / experience here:)

Haim Toeg said:
David - I like the overall role of the combined team, but I am curious why you would want to split the roles. Once someone had developed deep knowledge of the customer, wouldn't they be ideal to pick up the renewal / cross selling discussion?; ▶ Reply to This