The modern Customer Success role requires the business acumen of a consultant, deep technical credibility, and the ability to act as an "information broker" between siloed business units, building unique trust and uncovering new opportunities.

Moving from transactional to value-led sales is an HR challenge before it's a sales one. It demands hiring new profiles who can translate tech into business language. For existing teams, it's not just about training; it requires a deep assessment of whether current employees have the right skills and are in the right roles for the future.

Vercel COO Jean Grosser's litmus test for a great salesperson is that engineers shouldn't be able to tell they aren't a PM for at least 10 minutes. This requires deep product knowledge, enabling sales to act as an R&D function by translating customer feedback into valuable product signals.

A sales background teaches more than customer centricity. It instills resilience and the fearlessness to approach anyone in an organization to get things done, a vital skill for navigating the cross-functional demands of product management.

For SDRs interested in roles like Customer Success, leaders must meet with those department heads to identify required skills. Then, create projects (e.g., running enablement, building ROI docs) that allow SDRs to develop those specific, non-AE competencies.

The traditional product management skillset is no longer sufficient for executive leadership. Aspiring CPOs must develop deep expertise in either the commercial aspects of the business (GTM, revenue) or the technical underpinnings of the product to provide differentiated value at the C-suite level.

A year before launching a paid product, Fathom's CEO hired three top salespeople from his previous company. He tasked them with customer success roles to build deep product expertise and customer empathy. When it was time to sell, this pre-vetted, highly knowledgeable team was able to execute immediately without a learning curve.

To build effective GTM automation, hire people who understand both the technology and the sales process. Vercel found success by transitioning its technical sales engineers—who were already former developers—into GTM Engineer roles. This ensures automated workflows are grounded in proven, real-world sales best practices.

Working in sales, with its direct customer interaction and quota pressure, is invaluable training for future product managers. It instills a deep, "rubber meets the road" understanding of customer needs and how a product must solve them to succeed.