How To Talk To Your CFO About Customer Success

I sat down with Guy Galon and Bhumika Arora for a CS Angel Pay It Forward session to tackle this exact challenge. The conversation reinforced something I see every day: when CS leaders learn to translate their work into financial outcomes, everything changes. You stop defending your existence and start driving the conversation about growth. Scroll down for the full session on YouTube.

Bhumika Arora (Founder and GTM Success Coach, Ruffday Services), Brent Grimes (Founder and CEO Reef.ai) and Guy Galon (Chief Customer Officer, Obrela) left to right

Here's what we unpacked.

Learn to Speak Finance (Really Speak It)

What I've learned from hundreds of conversations with CS leaders: the biggest barrier to getting budget isn't proving the value of customer success - it's speaking the language of the people who control it.

Guy nailed this early in our conversation: "You need to be proficient in revenue language."

This isn't about dropping buzzwords in a meeting. It's about actual fluency. You should be able to explain how customer retention flows through a P&L, why net retention matters more than gross retention in certain business models, and how your initiatives impact cash flow - not just satisfaction scores. For more on this, check out another Pay It Forward video and recap on financial literacy by Jan Young.

Guy shared how reading P&Ls early in his career transformed his credibility. He wasn't just advocating for customers anymore; he was connecting customer outcomes to financial performance. That preparation is what earns you the right to ask for resources before you ever walk into a budget conversation.

Start With What Keeps Them Awake

Every CFO conversation I have starts the same way: with context. What your CFO cares about depends entirely on where the company is. A growth-stage startup under pressure from investors? They're thinking acceleration. A public company? Margins, predictability, and shareholder expectations.

When you connect your CS initiatives directly to the financial outcomes your CFO is accountable for - retention, expansion, or overall growth efficiency - you're not asking for investment anymore. You're offering a solution to their problem.

Before your next budget meeting, ask yourself: What is this CFO being grilled about in board meetings? Then position your work as part of the answer.

Translate Metrics Into Revenue

Bhumika, who comes from a finance background, made a critical point: not all revenue works the same way.

If you're in a usage-based business, revenue isn't recognized until customers actually use your product. That means adoption isn't just a health metric - it's revenue. If you're in a subscription business, churn doesn't just hurt future quarters; it impacts the present value of your customer base.

CS leaders need to understand how their actions show up in a P&L. Net retention rate, gross retention, health scores - they only matter when you can translate them into the metrics finance teams actually track. If you can't make that connection, your data is just noise.

This is where Predictive Revenue Intelligence comes in. It connects the dots between customer behavior, renewal risk, and revenue forecasting — helping teams translate customer signals into measurable financial outcomes before they ever show up in a report.

Protect Before You Expand

We all agreed on this: you can't grow if you're bleeding customers.

Guy put it perfectly: retention is the foundation; expansion is the multiplier. You don't get to scale the multiplier if the foundation is cracked.

This is where I think CS leaders have a massive opportunity: become the internal owner of net retention — even if you don't directly own upsell or cross-sell. Be the person in your organization who reports on it, analyzes it, and drives the narrative around it. It’s one of the fastest ways to expand your influence without waiting for an org chart to change.

With Predictive Revenue Intelligence, you can see those retention risks months before they hit, quantify the financial impact, and prioritize interventions that protect revenue at scale. The CS leaders who treat retention as a strategic KPI — not just a defensive metric — are the ones who get bigger budgets and broader mandates.

Prove It Before You Scale It

CFOs don't fund potential. They fund predictability.

If you want budget for another CSM, show that the last hire directly improved retention by X%. If you want a new tool, prove it improves forecast accuracy or engagement in a measurable way. Proof builds trust. Promises build skepticism.

I've seen this pattern play out repeatedly. Start small - pilot an initiative, prove it works, then expand from there. One example that comes to mind: a CS team wanted to improve renewal forecasting accuracy. They started with a single pilot, proved they could beat their manual process, and that one proof point unlocked budget for broader adoption. The lesson here is to anchor on one clear, quantifiable win before you try to sell a vision.

No One Wins Alone

Guy shared a great example of aligning with Product on a shared business case. What started as a "nice-to-have" CS idea became a cross-functional priority because it solved a problem for multiple teams.

Bhumika reinforced this: working alongside Sales, Marketing, and Engineering makes your proposal feel strategic, not siloed. I'd add that bringing in data science or analytics teams early can be a game-changer - especially if your solution involves any technical component. They validate your numbers and become internal credibility partners. The best business cases are collaborative efforts.

Be Curious, Be Credible

We closed with something I repeat in every customer and board conversation: don't guess what people care about - ask.

Curiosity signals respect and data turns that respect into credibility. When CS leaders learn to tell their story through a financial lens, something shifts. Budgets stop feeling like battles. You stop defending headcount and start influencing how the company measures success itself.

That’s the real opportunity — and tools like Predictive Revenue Intelligence can help make it possible. When you can tie customer health, engagement, and retention directly to revenue outcomes, you’re no longer just managing customers — you’re managing the financial engine of your business.

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