Customer Success Team Lead, SMB – Fitness & Wellbeing

Overview

You lead a team of 4-8 CSMs who manage Mariana Tek's SMB fitness studio clients—single locations and small chains (2-5 studios). You're responsible for your team hitting retention and expansion targets, coaching them on customer conversations, and making sure they're efficiently managing their books of business. You also handle escalations and work cross-functionally to improve the SMB customer experience.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Owned by Xplor (acquired company, mature product)

Size: Unknown (likely mid-size given customer base)

Growth: Expanding CX team, hiring team lead for SMB segment

Market Position: Established in boutique fitness software, facing competition from cheaper and premium players

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• Your team manages existing SMB clients (post-onboarding)
• CSMs own 60-100 accounts each in a pooled model
• High volume, lower touch than enterprise

SDR/AE Structure: CSMs handle renewals and small expansions; larger upsells get handed to AEs

SE Support: Limited—CSMs handle most technical questions themselves or route to support

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Mindbody, Glofox, Zen Planner, Pike13, newer players like Gymdesk

How They Differentiate: Boutique fitness specialization, better member experience vs legacy players

Common Objections: "Too expensive for a small studio", "We don't need all these features", "Mindbody has more integrations"

Win Themes: Easier to use than Mindbody, built for boutique model, better support

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Team Coaching (30%) | Performance Management (20%) | Client Escalations (20%) | Strategy/Planning (15%) | Cross-functional Projects (15%)

Key Activities

• Weekly 1-on-1s: You meet with each CSM to review their accounts, coach on at-risk renewals, and help strategize expansion opportunities. You're listening to calls, reviewing emails, and giving tactical feedback
• Pipeline Reviews: You run weekly or bi-weekly pipeline meetings where the team reviews upcoming renewals, at-risk accounts, and expansion opportunities. You're pressure-testing their plans and making sure they're not going to miss targets
• Escalation Management: When a CSM can't resolve an issue or a client is threatening to churn, you jump in. You're running damage control calls, negotiating retention deals, and coordinating with product/support to fix problems
• Performance Management: You're tracking individual CSM metrics (retention rate, expansion revenue, customer health scores, activity levels) and having tough conversations when people miss targets
• Process Improvement: You identify bottlenecks in the SMB customer journey and work with operations, product, and enablement to build better playbooks, improve onboarding, or automate low-value work
• Hiring and Training: When the team grows, you're interviewing candidates, onboarding new CSMs, and ramping them up on the product and customer base

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• SMB retention is brutal—small studios are price-sensitive and have high failure rates (especially post-COVID). You'll lose clients to business closures, not just competitive churn
• You're managing CSMs who each have 60-100 accounts, so they can't give everyone white-glove service. You're constantly balancing scale vs customer experience
• Firefighting is constant—SMB clients escalate quickly and emotionally when things break. You'll spend a lot of time doing damage control
• Your team's comp is heavily tied to retention, so when the economy is tough or the fitness industry struggles, everyone feels it
• You're caught between leadership wanting better retention numbers and your team saying they need more resources/better product features
• Career path can be unclear—you're managing managers, but the next step up might be Director of CS or GM of the segment, which is a big jump

What Success Looks Like

• Team hitting 90%+ retention and expansion revenue targets
• Individual CSMs performing consistently (low variance across the team)
• Reduced escalations and improved customer satisfaction scores
• Your team voluntarily staying (low CSM attrition)

Who Your Team is Working With

Primary Buyers:

• Studio Owners (small business owners, often first-time entrepreneurs)
• Studio Managers (operational leads, often promoted instructors)

What They Care About:

• Price (SMB clients are very cost-conscious)
• Ease of use (they don't have IT support)
• Reliability (downtime directly hurts their revenue)
• Support responsiveness (they need help fast when things break)

Requirements

• 5+ years in customer success or account management, with 2+ years managing teams
• Experience managing SMB or mid-market accounts at scale (volume-based CS model)
• Fitness or wellness industry experience strongly preferred
• Track record of hitting retention and expansion targets as a manager
• Strong coaching skills—you need to develop CSMs who are managing 60-100 accounts each
• Comfortable with CS metrics and data analysis
• Experience building playbooks and processes for volume-based CS
• Calm under pressure—SMB CS is high-stress with constant escalations