When a New Executive Joins Your Customer’s Team: What Great CSMs Do First

Executive turnover inside your customer’s organization can feel like a threat. A new leader shows up, priorities shift, budgets get scrutinized, and suddenly the relationship you’ve spent months (or years) building feels less secure.

But here’s the reality: new stakeholders enter accounts all the time. This isn’t a rare event. It’s part of doing business.

What is rare is a Customer Success Manager who treats executive change as a strategic moment instead of a disruption.

When handled well, a new executive stakeholder is an opportunity to reinforce value, strengthen your position, and deepen your partnership. When handled poorly, it can introduce risk that quietly builds until renewal.

If I were a CSM and a new executive joined one of my accounts, here are the first three things I would do immediately to mitigate risk and secure our position in the organization.

1. Start With Research, Not Outreach

Before sending a welcome note or booking time, do your homework.

Who is this person?

Where did they come from?

What companies have they worked at?

What roles have they held?

Have they used a competitor before?

What initiatives did they drive in previous organizations?

You want to walk into your first interaction informed and intentional. The goal isn’t to show off how much you know. The goal is to understand how they think, what they value, and what they’re likely to prioritize.

A new executive will almost always evaluate the tools and partners already in place. That’s their job. If you don’t understand their perspective, you’re walking into that evaluation blind.

Strong CSMs don’t wait for the executive to form an opinion. They show up prepared to shape it.

2. Schedule a Demo and Control the Narrative

Once you’ve done your research, don’t rely on secondhand explanations of your product or value.

Do not assume someone internally will “catch them up.”

Do not assume they’ll review documentation.

Do not assume they understand the full scope of what your solution can do.

Schedule time to walk them through the product yourself.

This isn’t just a demo. It’s a strategic conversation. You want to anchor on strengths, highlight what’s working, and connect capabilities to the outcomes they care about.

Even if the current deployment is strong, you need to control the narrative. Show them what’s been built, what’s possible, and how your solution supports their business goals. Help them see both the present state and the future potential.

When you leave this to chance, the story gets fragmented. And fragmented stories create unnecessary risk.

3. Communicate and Validate Value Early

If you have an ROI story, share it.

If you have impact metrics, present them.

If you’ve driven meaningful outcomes, make them visible.

Do not assume the new executive has context. They likely don’t.

You need to proactively communicate the value your solution has delivered to the business and connect it to what matters most to them. Then, just as importantly, you need to get them to acknowledge and validate that value.

That validation matters. It signals alignment. It confirms relevance. It helps establish your solution as something worth keeping and investing in.

CSMs who wait for the next business review to share value are often too late. The window to shape perception is right when the new leader steps in.

Don’t Be Reactive or Passive

I see a lot of teams with playbooks for executive changes. On paper, they look great. In practice, teams tend to fall into one of two traps: they’re reactive or they’re passive.

They wait to see what happens.

They wait to be introduced.

They wait for the executive to reach out.

Waiting is where risk grows.

A new executive stakeholder is a pivotal moment in the lifecycle of an account. It’s a chance to reinforce your position, clarify value, and align on priorities. But it requires intention.

You have to be methodical about what you do, how you do it, and when you do it.

Executive Turnover Isn’t the Root Problem

It’s easy to blame churn on executive turnover. But executive turnover is rarely the root cause. It’s a trigger that exposes underlying issues.

If your value isn’t clear, a new leader will question it.

If adoption is shallow, they’ll notice.

If outcomes aren’t well documented, they’ll reassess.

Executive change doesn’t create these problems. It reveals them.

The best Customer Success teams treat executive turnover as a signal to tighten their narrative, reinforce value, and strengthen alignment. They don’t panic. They prepare.

Because when a new leader walks in the door, you’re not starting from scratch. You’re showing them why staying the course with you is the right decision.