Rusty Cole
Enterprise Customer Success
20+ years running renewals, expansion, and executive relationships across complex B2B tech accounts, from startups to the Fortune 100. I run the QBRs, own the retention number, and spot the expansion most people walk past.
Sales taught me how deals close. Customer Success taught me how to make them last.
"Rusty was an extension of our team. He came to meetings with proactive ideas, and his recommendations helped us evaluate how we were using the tool and our integrations."
"He provided tremendous value to his customers, yet was willing to challenge them in where they were not using our platform correctly. As a result of his straight forwardness, Rusty earned the trust of his customers as well as helping expand and grow the business in each of the accounts that we worked on together."
01How I work
Three beliefs that run through every account I have ever managed. They are how I understand customers, earn trust, and keep the work interesting.
- Renewals are sales events. Most CSMs treat them as administrative work. I treat them like deals to close, and the work starts before kickoff.
- Risk is a signal, not a fire. A champion leaves, a sponsor skips two QBRs, usage dips. A plan saves the account; panic does not.
- Expansion starts at onboarding. Wait for renewal and you are late. Map the white space early and revisit it often.
02An AI tool for the work CSMs do the most
Every CSM I know does this: dig through old files, hunt for that one template, start a success plan from scratch, or use the last one again with new names. So I built a tool to fix this and help them move faster.
Customer Success Retriever is a custom GPT for enterprise B2B Customer Success workflows. I iterated on it multiple times to produce output I would actually send to a customer. I'm not an engineer; I'm a domain expert who builds. There's a difference.
- Lifecycle emails tailored to account stage
- Renewal risk briefs with cited evidence
- Pre-call account research in two minutes
- Executive summaries to get your point across
- Custom playbooks with associated tools
- Account strategy support
Where to find it. Live today as a Custom GPT on ChatGPT.
Try Customer Success RetrieverReady to talk?
Enterprise Customer Success, the AI tools I build for it, or the five months I lived in Siberia? Pick one.