Sales and Customer Success (CS) teams often work in silos, but they shouldn't.
When these teams aren’t aligned, deals fall through the cracks, customer expectations aren’t fully met, and renewals are at risk. For CROs, this means slower growth and unpredictable revenue.
But with the right strategies, Sales and Customer Success can become a powerhouse duo driving faster deals and longer customer relationships.
Read this article to learn:
- The key differences between Sales and Customer Success.
- How misalignment can create friction that slows down growth.
- Best practices for achieving stronger team collaboration and business results.
Understanding the Different Roles: Sales vs. Customer Success
Sales and Customer Success might have different day-to-day responsibilities, but their goals overlap more than you think.
At its core, Sales is about driving new revenue through closing deals, while Customer Success ensures that the revenue sticks by keeping customers happy and loyal. Both teams are ultimately focused on growing the company’s bottom line, but they do it in different ways.
Sales is focused on:
- Bringing in new customers
- Hitting revenue targets and quotas
- Building and nurturing relationships with prospects
- Moving deals through the pipeline quickly to close more business
- Understanding competitors and market trends to position solutions effectively.
Customer Success, on the other hand, is primarily about:
- Reducing customer churn
- Achieving customer outcomes
- Increasing product adoption
- Increasing expansion opportunities
- Running the renewal process.
Despite these different focuses, both teams share a common goal: maximizing the lifetime value of each customer. That’s why it’s so important to ensure they’re working together, not against each other.
Friction Points in Sales and Customer Success Collaboration
Even with the best intentions, Sales and Customer Success can run into friction. These friction points often emerge during critical moments in the customer journey, leading to misunderstandings, missed opportunities, or worse—lost customers.
Let's look at some common areas where things break down.
Unclear or Rushed Handoffs After the Sale
One of the most significant friction points between Sales and Customer Success often comes from a poorly managed handoff. Sales teams are often strapped for time and may not provide the CS team with critical details about a new customer or their specific needs.
The lack of integrated tools between departments also contributes to this breakdown. Sales typically work within their CRM, where they keep everything from customer contact info to detailed notes about interactions. However, this data often isn’t transferred to Customer Success, leaving CS without key insights from earlier touchpoints.
For example, if Sales promises the customer a personalized onboarding call within 48 hours but fails to pass that information to CS, the onboarding team might schedule the call for a week later. This disconnect can lead to a frustrating experience for the customer, who was expecting immediate follow-up.
These sloppy handoffs slow down the time to value (TTV) and make the customer doubt your business. It’s not exactly the best way to kick things off!
Poor Communication During Renewal Cycles
Another friction point is renewals. When it’s time to renew, Sales and Customer Success often operate in silos, creating communication gaps. Sales might push for upsells, while Customer Success focuses on customer satisfaction—without coordinating their efforts. This lack of alignment during renewals can result in missed opportunities or, even worse, churn.
Misalignment on Customer Expectations
Sales teams are driven by quotas, sometimes leading to overpromising just to close the deal. Customer Success, on the other hand, has to manage the fallout when those promises don’t align with the product’s actual capabilities. This can quickly erode trust and damage the customer relationship.
Benefits of Strong Sales and Customer Success Alignment
When Sales and Customer Success are aligned, the entire organization wins.
Customers have a better experience, your teams work more efficiently, and the company sees more consistent revenue growth.
Here are the key advantages:
Increased Customer Retention & Revenue
When sales and customer success teams work together, the customer experience is seamless from sale to support, boosting loyalty and retention. Sales hands off a new customer, and customer success ensures smooth onboarding and consistent value delivery. This reduces churn and increases the chances of repeat business.
Aligned teams can also spot upsell opportunities earlier, maximizing customer lifetime value. According to Forrester, companies with this kind of alignment see 2.4x faster revenue growth and double profitability than those without it.
Higher Renewal Rates
When Sales and Customer Success work hand-in-hand, they create a proactive strategy to keep customers happy and minimize churn. Customer Success teams monitor key indicators of account health—such as product usage, customer feedback, and satisfaction scores—so they can spot red flags early.
For instance, if a customer’s engagement drops or they submit repeated support tickets, Customer Success can act fast to resolve issues before they escalate.
Meanwhile, Sales focuses on upsell and cross-sell opportunities, using insights from Customer Success to identify the right moments to offer expanded services or product upgrades.
Better Overall Customer Experience
Lastly, alignment means customers receive consistent messaging and support. They always know who to contact and what to expect next. This creates a cohesive experience that builds trust.
A strong customer experience results in better reviews, more referrals, and longer-lasting partnerships.
So, how do you go about aligning these teams better? We share some strategies in the next section.
4 Best Practices for Achieving Sales and Customer Success Alignment
Aligning Sales and Customer Success doesn’t happen by accident.
You’ll have to be intentional. And you’ll need tools and systems in place to address different friction points.
- Use a Shared Manager, Like a CRO
One of the most straightforward ways to get Sales and Customer Success on the same page is by putting them under one leader, like a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). With both teams reporting to the same person, they can focus on shared goals instead of operating in silos.
Having a CRO helps break down barriers when conflicts arise, like when Sales promises a feature or timeline to close a deal that Customer Success can’t realistically deliver on.
Without alignment, this miscommunication can frustrate customers, lead to churn, and hurt the company’s bottom line. A CRO ensures that both teams are aligned, making it easier to address these challenges before they impact revenue or customer satisfaction.
- Build a RevOps Team to Manage Operations
While leadership alignment is crucial, the day-to-day processes that support both teams are equally important. This is where a Revenue Operations (RevOps) team can make a big difference.
RevOps essentially acts as a central hub, ensuring Sales and Customer Success work from the same data and performance metrics. With this unified approach, both teams stay accountable and aligned on goals. RevOps also plays a crucial role in eliminating data silos, standardizing reporting, and improving transparency across departments.
📖 Related: Revenue Operations vs. Sales Operations: How Do They Differ?
- Leverage Your CRM for Transparency
Of course, none of this collaboration works without the right tools in place. A well-integrated CRM, like Salesforce, provides the transparency essential for both teams to stay aligned. Tools like Momentum take it further by automating tasks like updating contacts, summarizing call notes, and sharing key insights.
This makes it easier for both Sales and Customer Success to keep track of customer interactions without missing a beat, ensuring smooth handoffs and consistent follow-through.
- Create Account Rooms
To make collaboration even more effective, setting up Account Rooms can give Customer Success Managers (CSMs) a clear view into the entire customer journey. These shared spaces allow CSMs to understand the context of deals from the start, which helps them provide better support and maintain continuity as they take over the relationship from Sales.
Plus, these rooms facilitate ongoing collaboration between teams, making it easier to stay aligned on high-value accounts and renewals.
The Final Word
Aligning Sales and Customer Success directly impacts two key metrics: revenue growth and customer retention. When these teams are in sync, everyone wins—including your customers.
For customers, it means smoother transitions, consistent communication, and proactive support, making them more likely to stay and expand their relationship with your business. This, in turn, boosts retention and upsell opportunities, driving company growth.
But to make this alignment work at scale, you need a tool like Momentum!
With Momentum, you can automatically capture and synthesize key insights from every sales and customer success conversation. These insights sync directly with Salesforce and Slack, giving your teams the visibility they need to act on customer needs and pipeline opportunities in real-time. The result? A faster, more efficient path to growth for your company, powered by actionable intelligence from every conversation.
Don’t wait—start using Momentum today to align your teams and fuel business growth.