Manager, Customer Success Strategic Accounts

About the Opportunity – Manager, Customer Success Strategic Accounts

The Customer Success Leader leads a team of Customer Success Managers supporting our High Touch and Strategic Accounts, supporting strategic customers using the Lever Applicant Tracking System, driving retention and expansion across this high-value portfolio and partnering cross-functionally to ensure these customers achieve ongoing adoption and value from our products. This role carries direct responsibility for retention through renewal conversations, ensuring the team proactively owns the renewal process and outcomes across their book of business. It blends people leadership, strategic account planning, and operational rigor to deliver measurable results for our most complex, highest-value customer relationships.

About the Team:

The Customer Success team is dedicated to helping our customers get the most value from Employ’s solutions while building strong, lasting partnerships. Our High Touch and Strategic Accounts team supports some of our most complex and high-value customers, working collaboratively to drive adoption, strengthen relationships, and support long-term retention and growth. We’re a customer-focused team that values collaboration, accountability, and delivering meaningful outcomes for our customers.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead, mentor, and set clear performance expectations for a team of CSMs, conducting regular evaluations and providing timely, constructive feedback.

• Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement, while challenging team members to grow their capabilities and capacity.

• Recruit and hire talent aligned with our core values and business needs; support onboarding so new hires ramp effectively.

• Run structured 1:1s with every CSM that inspect (not just review) the full book of business — escalations, OKR pacing, risk/cancellation forecasting, and renewal pipeline — coaching before taking ownership so CSMs build their own judgment.

• Dedicates regular time to live or recorded call review (e.g., Gong), providing documented coaching on renewal discovery, negotiation, value/ROI framing, and objection handling.

• Run weekly team meetings covering pipeline, wins, and best practices; audit CRM/CS platform data quality and coach on gaps.

Customer Relationship Management & Renewals

• Manage executive-level relationships across High Touch and Strategic Accounts and personally lead or support renewal conversations on the most complex, high-risk, or highest-value accounts.

• Guide CSMs on strategy, problem-solving, and relationship-building for their own accounts; navigate and advise on complex, multi-party or enterprise requests, escalating as needed.

• Own the end-to-end renewals process: inspect each CSM's renewal book for on-pace early engagement, confirmed intent-to-renew, documented strategy, and flagged zero-activity accounts.

• Ensure every renewal carries the standard price uplift position, with exceptions escalated for approval, and drive forecast discipline so churn/expansion fields reflect true expectations.

• Coach the team on renewal strategy, negotiation, and objection handling; partner with Sales and Finance/Deal Desk to structure terms that protect and grow revenue.

Value Realization & Customer Voice

• Inspect the team's value and adoption motion alongside renewals, ensuring every account has a live, outcome-based success plan with playbooks triggered on below-threshold accounts.

• Hold the team accountable for multi-threaded relationships (documented power maps on top-tier accounts) and treat champion departures as risk triggers; build your own second-layer relationships on key accounts.

• Own the team's voice-of-customer loop — timely NPS follow-up, documented detractor action plans, and recurring themes rolled up to senior leadership.

• Own escalations to resolution within SLA, ensuring proper documentation and regular review of risk and sentiment data.

Strategy and Cross-Functional Support

• Develop and execute strategic plans for the segment, owning account coverage strategy, territory design, and resource planning to maximize engagement, retention, and expansion.

• Analyze book-of-business trends to guide focus areas and help the team build playbooks and success plans that drive health, adoption, retention, and expansion (upsell/cross-sell).

• Collaborate with Sales, Product, Marketing, and Support leadership to align strategy and drive retention, expansion, and satisfaction across the segment.

Performance Monitoring and Reporting

• Establish and operationalize KPIs, dashboards, and reporting to measure segment performance against retention and growth objectives.

• Own segment-level results against topline outcomes (GRR, NRR, churn, uplift expansion, on-time renewal rate, forecast accuracy, multi-year renewal %, logo retention) and leading indicators (health score mix, NPS, adoption rate, business review completion).

• Prepare regular reports for senior management on team achievements, challenges, and opportunities for improvement.

• Track team capacity and make justified recommendations when headcount needs surface.

Training and Development

• Identify skill gaps and implement training/workshops to strengthen the team's account management, product knowledge, and communication skills.

• Ensure the team completes required enablement on time and stays current on product and roadmap; maintain your own subject-matter expertise to coach credibly.

What You Bring:

• Proven leadership experience in a high-growth, fast-paced SaaS environment

• Minimum of 5 years of relevant experience in Customer Success or Account Management, with two of those being at the leadership level 

• Assertive, positive, and effective written and verbal communication with strong attention to detail.

• Demonstrated ability to influence credibly at all levels of an organization, including executive and C-level.

• Fast learner, able to understand and articulate new technologies and their value propositions.

• Thrives in a dynamic, fast-paced environment while managing a high volume of customer interactions and team coaching.