Maturing post-sale motions to optimize for what's next.
Operator. Advisor. Investor. Professor.
"It depends" was always the honest answer.
I've spent 25 years in Customer Success. Long enough to know that "it depends" was a real answer. It was the honest one. CS was always art. It was contextual, shaped by what a specific customer needed from a specific team at a specific moment. The problem is we spent two decades trying to define something that existed to be undefined.
Now AI has proved it. So let's actually learn something and act.
I work with PE-backed and high-growth companies ready to stop optimizing for yesterday's problems and start building for what's already coming next. My perspective is unique. I've spent over four years advising and evaluating post-sale organizations from the investor lens. I understand what boards and investors actually care about when they think about Customer Success.
The work looks different every time, but it usually starts in the same place: the parts of your business you assumed were working. Not because they're broken. Because you can now see a better way.
If you're building what comes after Customer Success, let's meet.
Key Advantages for PE-Backed Companies
PE Diligence Perspective
Advises through the lens of diligence, having evaluated post-sale organizations from the investor seat across scores of companies.
Knows what boards and investors actually ask about post-sale.
Founder & CEO Coaching
Coaches founders and CEOs on maturing their CS organization. Not from theory. From repetition.
Trusted experience to show what your post-sale motion is actually costing.
Academic Rigor, Practical Output
Adjunct MBA Professor of SaaS and Customer Success at the University of San Francisco. The brightest minds in Customer Success volunteer their time in the classroom. That access extends to your business.
Translates complexity into frameworks your team can actually use, tested in the classroom and on industry stages alike.
Growth-Stage Pattern Recognition
Nearly five years of direct engagement with both early-stage and growth-equity portfolio companies.
25 years of CS pattern recognition applied to your exact growth moment.
Insight that compounds.
Diligence, sharpened
No diagnostic delay
Outcome Metrics
The Right Fit
You know you're leaving something on the table in your post-sale motion. You don't know what.
You need an expansion engine and a CS org you can trust.
You want a product roadmap informed by actual customer outcomes.
The fight to stay relevant is over. Harness the power your customers now have in this era.
- Progressive first mover
- Open to being challenged
- Leader of a category shift
- Skeptical of generic consulting
- Knows something is off, can't name it yet
Testimonials
The cost-to-serve analysis is superb. I waved it around as an example of the kind of work we appreciate as an organization.
Incredibly enlightening. The opportunity to learn from Coach Mike and rethink our processes using existing use cases was energizing and created immediate value.
We can now operationalize feedback loops across customers, product, and sales.
The numbers behind the work.
Revenue Growth
Grew the renewable account base 25% (28% YoY) by redesigning customer health processes and enabling CSMs to identify true risk and expansion signals through monthly CSM workshops.
A single one-hour CS workshop activated non-revenue-generating CSMs, immediately generating $21K in month one and catalyzing an expansion trajectory that reached $250K by month three.
Yielded $153K across renewal, expansion, and new business through a Champion Turnover Playbook.
Retention & Churn
Brought $18M in ARR under active coverage for the first time by designing and deploying a Digital CS program for a portfolio company with 214 previously unmanaged accounts.
Reduced cost-to-serve from 13.1% to 9.7% in a single quarter through segmented CTS tooling and coverage redesign, without headcount changes.
Operational Efficiency
Diagnosed ~$4.5M in lost ARR from unmanaged accounts; restructured coverage model and pinpointed primary exit drivers.
Built a real-time cost-to-serve measurement tool segmented by region and tier, exposing coverage misalignment.
Delivered a compensation toolkit that saved at least one full business day of internal effort and aligned CSM incentives directly to GRR and NRR.
Program Design
Designed and delivered a multi-day CS workshop around value and customer journey.
Designed a Digital CS motion, including tiered segmentation, journey maps, automated playbooks, and a renewal heat map.
Implemented Foresight to automate outcome capture, surface risk signals, and systematize voice-of-customer across every interaction.
25 years building Customer Success. Four building it from the investor seat.
Michael Edelstein has spent over 25 years in Customer Success, including customer success leadership roles at Thomson Reuters and Salesforce, where he drove business value and ROI across institutions like Morgan Stanley and large enterprise technology customers like PayPal.
For four and a half years he was Managing Director at WestCap, a growth equity firm, building and leading CS advisory across the firm's portfolio, evaluating prospective investments, and supporting diligence on post-sale organizational maturity.
He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco's School of Management, teaching SaaS, Customer Success and Value Creation as part of the world's first academic MBA program dedicated to the profession, and serves on the program's Board of Advisors.
Operator. Advisor. Investor. Professor.
What is YOUR post-sale motion optimized for?
Operator. Advisor. Investor. Professor.