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Welcome to
After the Close
the Blog
Thoughtful insights and honest perspectives on Customer Success and leadership, focused on the work that happens after the deal is done.
After the Close is a space for reflection, insight, and the conversations that don’t always happen in the meeting or the deck. This blog is here to share real stories, practical lessons, and honest perspectives on Customer Success and leadership.
Whether you’re a CSM, a CS leader, or an executive, you’ll find insight on what happens after the deal is signed. From navigating adoption and retention to leading teams and driving impact, the goal is simple: help you think more clearly, act more intentionally, and build work that lasts.
The Journey Newsletter
The Journey: #52 Stop Playing Small
As we close the year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices that shape our careers; the bold ones and the quiet ones. And the truth is, for a long time, I made the quiet ones. The safe ones. The comfortable ones. The ones that didn’t require me to be seen too much or want too much. I spent years playing small. Act 1: Marketing: When growth felt effortless In my early career, Marketing Kristi, opportunity seemed to find me. Fresh out of college, I landed in advertising wi
Kristi Faltorusso
Dec 29, 20253 min read
The Journey: #51 Time Well Spent
For a long time, December looked the same for me every year. I’d sign off the day before Christmas Eve and disappear until somewhere between January 3rd and January 5th. No email. No Slack. No pretending I was “kind of around.” And honestly, it made complete sense. I host all the holidays. My house becomes the gathering place. There’s food to plan, people to take care of, traditions to keep alive, and a running list of things that somehow only exist during the last two weeks
Kristi Faltorusso
Dec 22, 20252 min read
The Journey: #50 No Success in Comfort
One of the most common things I hear from Customer Success Managers is some version of this: “I didn’t want to hurt the relationship.” It usually comes up when we’re talking about a customer who didn’t renew. One that went quiet. One that felt “off” for months before the decision finally landed. Or when we know we need access to someone more senior, but the main point of contact is acting as a blocker. And every time I hear it, I know the story before it’s fully told. Because
Kristi Faltorusso
Dec 14, 20253 min read
The Journey: #49 White Gloves Get Dirty
When I started as a CSM back in 2012, I was convinced I had the best job on the planet. Enterprise accounts. Fortune 500 logos. Big budgets. Big expectations. A whole lot of white glove energy. And I took that “white glove” part very literally. I met with my customers weekly or bi-weekly. I ran every call. I coordinated every conversation. If they had feedback for Product, I was the messenger. If they escalated a ticket, I was the firefighter. If they were speaking at our cus
Kristi Faltorusso
Dec 14, 20253 min read
The Journey: #48 The PIP Trap
I remember the first time I heard the acronym PIP, Performance Improvement Plan. And I genuinely believed it was exactly what the name suggested. A thoughtful, intentional path for a leader to help an employee improve. A chance to course-correct. A roadmap back to success. It sounded helpful. Clear. Goal-oriented. A tool for growth. Then I became a leader. And the first time I went to HR to terminate an employee, I was told, “Before we do that, you need to put them on a PIP.”
Kristi Faltorusso
Nov 30, 20253 min read
The Journey: #47 Thanks for Nothing
There’s a certain type of manager you meet early in your career who teaches you something important, not through their brilliance, but through their absence of it. In my first SaaS role, over five and a half years, I cycled through a handful of managers. All different. All memorable for different reasons. But one sticks out because she was genuinely lovely, warm, positive, thoughtful, the kind of leader who asked how your weekend was and actually cared about the answer. She w
Kristi Faltorusso
Nov 24, 20253 min read
The Journey: #46 Too Little, Too Late
Lately, I’ve been thinking about timing, not the “trust the universe” kind, but the real-world timing inside startups and scaleups that determines whether you move forward or stall out. After 13 years in SaaS, I’ve seen a consistent pattern: Companies rarely suffer because they make the wrong move. They suffer because they make the right move far too late. You see this everywhere: Waiting to hire Waiting to fire Waiting to buy the technology Waiting to invest in onboarding, e
Kristi Faltorusso
Nov 24, 20252 min read
The Journey: #45 SK-No, It's RKO
When I first started in SaaS, Sales Kickoff (SKO) was this mysterious, high-energy event I wasn’t invited to. It was the Super Bowl of Sales, strategy, targets, enablement, and a whole lot of celebration. At my first company (where I spent nearly six years), SKO was exclusively for Sales. No Customer Success, no Services, no Support. Just the folks with quotas and commissions. So imagine my shock when, at my next company, I learned Customer Success was included. I thought, “W
Kristi Faltorusso
Nov 9, 20252 min read
The Journey: #44 Goal Getter Energy
I perform my best when I have a clear goal and a plan. I’m an executor. A rule follower. A do-the-work-and-get-it-done kind of person. When I was in college, I chased A’s. I remember graduating with a 3.98 GPA because of one single A- in a journalism class, and I was furious. I missed my goal. Still Summa Cum Laude, still an incredible GPA, but in my head… not the goal. During my senior year, I landed my first job before graduation. My professors told me that if I completed a
Kristi Faltorusso
Nov 9, 20252 min read
The Journey: #43 Stay In Your Lane
Some of you may not know this, but my daughter Adriana is actually my stepdaughter. When Anthony and I got together, she was just three years old. She only knows life with me and Anthony… and then with her mother. In our house, we’ve never used the word step. She is my daughter, and I am a mother. Period. But in the beginning, it was hard. Really hard. I was trying to find my place, what was appropriate, what wasn’t, how to show up as a parent without overstepping. I wanted t
Kristi Faltorusso
Oct 27, 20253 min read
The Journey: #42 Choose the Right Journey
Early in my career, I didn’t know the differences between large corporate companies, small independent companies, and startups. My priority after college was simple: get a job. Ideally something that matched my major (or at least sounded like it did). Check. After a few years working for a large publishing company, I decided to take a chance and join a small marketing agency, private and profitable. Then, I moved to a large public company. Then back to publishing. Then back t
Kristi Faltorusso
Oct 19, 20253 min read
The Journey: #41 Who's Who in the Zoo
We can all agree that people matter. In fact, it’s the people who make or break the success of any partnership. So imagine walking into a high-stakes customer relationship… and realizing you don’t actually know who’s who in the zoo. That was me. My very first conversation as VP of CS with one of our largest, most strategic customers. I hop on a call with our main point of contact, a “Director.” Naturally, I assume that means middle management. Important, yes. But not the exec
Kristi Faltorusso
Oct 13, 20252 min read
The Journey: #40 CAB, PAB, EAB ... Oh My
In 2009, I was a mid-20-something marketer just trying to figure it all out. I was using a software platform that helped manage my...
Kristi Faltorusso
Oct 6, 20252 min read
The Journey: #39 No One Owner
When I started in Customer Success, we were trained to say things like: “I’m your trusted advisor.” “I’ll be your main point of contact.”...
Kristi Faltorusso
Sep 28, 20252 min read
The Journey: #38 Silence the Silence
I didn’t grow up in a white-collar home. My parents owned and worked in a delicatessen for over 45 years. Together, they ran that...
Kristi Faltorusso
Sep 28, 20252 min read
The Journey: #37 Leadership, Not Mentorship
We often blur the lines between leadership and mentorship, but here’s the truth: just because you are someone’s leader does not mean you...
Kristi Faltorusso
Sep 28, 20252 min read
The Journey: #36 Planning for Peace
We spend so much time talking about customer journeys, business outcomes, and retention strategies but what about our own team’s...
Kristi Faltorusso
Sep 7, 20252 min read
The Journey: #35 Decision to Downsell
Customer Success has always been about helping customers realize value: understand the use cases, configure the solution, drive adoption,...
Kristi Faltorusso
Sep 1, 20252 min read
The Journey: #34 The Adoption Audit
One of the biggest challenges we faced with our customer base was this: on the surface, things looked fine. Customers had configurations...
Kristi Faltorusso
Aug 25, 20253 min read
The Journey: #33 Flip the Risk
I remember my first CSM role when the business really started to scale. Suddenly, “risk” became the centerpiece of every conversation. At...
Kristi Faltorusso
Aug 17, 20252 min read
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