In this episode of ClearPath Conversations, Mark Bernardin tackles one of the most underappreciated skills in Customer Success: internal advocacy. Many CSMs do exceptional work but struggle to make their impact visible to leadership, which limits career growth and advancement opportunities. Mark shares practical frameworks for documenting wins, communicating value, and positioning yourself for promotion without coming across as self-promotional or arrogant.

The episode opens with a story from Mark's time at Palo Alto Networks, where he drove a $385,000 expansion with Lowe's through months of executive relationship building and strategic positioning. When the deal was announced internally, Sales received the spotlight while Customer Success was mentioned only in passing. Mark shares how this experience taught him that proactive communication isn't about taking credit - it's about giving leadership the context they need to understand how Customer Success contributes to business outcomes.

Mark introduces three core components of effective internal advocacy: documentation, communication, and positioning. He walks through his Impact Log methodology, a simple weekly practice of capturing wins in real time with four key data points: date, customer name, action taken, and business impact. This systematic approach ensures CSMs have a complete record of their contributions when review conversations and promotion discussions happen.

The episode provides concrete guidance on monthly manager updates, explaining how to structure communications around outcomes rather than activities. Mark contrasts task-focused reporting ("I had 12 customer calls") with impact-focused updates ("Closed $47K expansion with Ernst & Young after three months of executive engagement"). He emphasizes that consistent, outcome-oriented communication changes how managers perceive CSM contributions and influences decisions about promotions and high-visibility projects.

Mark shares multiple real-world examples, including a retail account recovery at Swimlane where he not only rescued the renewal but also documented his approach as a reusable playbook. When two other CSMs successfully used that framework to save their own at-risk accounts, the VP of Customer Success cited it as an example of how the team was building scalable processes. This story illustrates how individual advocacy can elevate to functional advocacy, demonstrating strategic thinking beyond task execution.

The episode also addresses common pitfalls: taking solo credit for collaborative wins, badmouthing colleagues, overwhelming managers with excessive updates, and waiting until annual reviews to start documenting impact. Mark provides a clear framework for quarterly career development conversations, including preparation steps, conversation structure, and follow-up actions.

A particularly powerful section focuses on elevating teammates alongside personal advocacy. Mark shares an example from his time mentoring seven CSMs at Palo Alto Networks, where he highlighted a colleague's successful account turnaround in leadership meetings, framing it as a learning opportunity for the entire team. This approach positioned him as someone who builds team capability, not just individual success.

The episode concludes with an action plan: start an Impact Log this week, send a monthly summary to your manager, and schedule quarterly career development conversations. Mark emphasizes that internal advocacy isn't about ego - it's about ensuring the people who influence your career have the information they need to support you. The companion download (available at https://clearpathcx.com/) provides a complete Impact Tracker template with weekly documentation structure, monthly summary framework, and quarterly review checklist.

Most CSMs think mentoring is just for people who want to become managers. Mark Bernardin disagrees. In this episode, he makes the case that every senior CSM should know how to develop people - not because they're gunning for a leadership title, but because that's what "senior" actually means.

Drawing from his experience mentoring seven CSMs at Palo Alto Networks while managing his own enterprise portfolio worth millions in ARR, Mark breaks down what actually changes when you take on mentoring responsibilities. Your definition of success shifts from personal execution to collective outcomes. Your calendar fills with coaching conversations instead of just customer calls. And you're suddenly accountable for other people's performance, not just your own.

But here's what most people get wrong: they think mentoring means doing other people's work for them. Mark learned this the hard way. In his first few weeks of leading that team, he was solving problems instead of teaching problem-solving. He was taking over customer calls instead of debriefing them afterward. He was rebuilding EBR decks instead of coaching people on how to improve their own.

That approach doesn't develop people. It creates dependency.

Mark shares the moment he realized he needed to completely change his approach - and what he did instead. He built a coaching framework that forces people to think through their own solutions. He created documentation systems that scaled his knowledge beyond his availability. He set clear boundaries around his mentoring time so he could still deliver on his own accounts. And most importantly, he learned to let go of the work and invest in the people.

This episode also addresses a question many high-performing CSMs face: what if you don't want to be a manager? Mark closes the loop on his Palo Alto story, explaining why he chose to return to his IC portfolio when his manager came back from leave. It wasn't because he couldn't do the job. It was because he discovered he's better at building programs than running them full-time. He loves the mentoring, the framework creation, the system-building - but he doesn't love the administrative weight of formal people management.

And that's okay. Because you don't need a manager title to develop talent and scale your impact.

Throughout the episode, Mark shares practical frameworks including his four-step coaching method (Situation → Options → Recommendation → Next Steps), how to structure effective one-on-ones, how to protect your capacity while still being a great mentor, and how to document your mentoring impact so it counts when promotion and compensation discussions happen.

He also addresses when to say yes to mentoring opportunities and when to say no - because not every request is worth your time, and taking on too much will burn you out.

For CSMs who are already mentoring people, this episode validates the invisible work you're doing and gives you better systems to do it more effectively. For CSMs who aren't mentoring yet but are at a senior level or heading there, this episode shows you what's expected and how to prepare. And for anyone wondering whether they want to pursue formal management or stay in a senior IC role, Mark lays out what both paths look like and how to choose based on what actually energizes you.

The companion download includes a comprehensive mentoring readiness self-assessment, coaching conversation templates, time boundary worksheets, documentation systems for scaling your impact, and a detailed breakdown of the Senior IC development path - complete with role definitions and compensation ranges.

If you've ever been asked to mentor a junior CSM, if you're filling in while your manager is out, or if you're trying to figure out what "senior" really means beyond just having more accounts, this episode is for you.

In this episode of ClearPath Conversations, Mark Bernardin tackles one of the most uncomfortable topics for Customer Success Managers: how to drive expansion revenue without abandoning the advisory role that makes them effective. Drawing from over a decade managing enterprise accounts at companies like Cofense, Swimlane, and Palo Alto Networks, Mark breaks down the systematic approach that enabled him to drive over $1M in expansion revenue while strengthening customer relationships.

Mark opens with a coaching story from his time mentoring CSMs at Palo Alto Networks. When a CSM came to him with a fifteen-slide product deck, Mark stopped him with one question: "What problem does this solve for them?" The CSM couldn't answer. This moment reveals the core mistake most CSMs make with expansion - leading with product instead of problems. Mark guided him through a discovery-first approach that closed a $47,000 expansion while strengthening the relationship.

The episode introduces Mark's 5-Part Expansion Conversation Framework from "The CSM's Personal Playbook." Part one: Context Setting - referencing observed signals without pitching. Part two: Situation Exploration through open-ended questions. Part three: Impact Discovery, helping customers quantify business implications. Part four: Solution Connection, presenting capabilities as options. Part five: Next Steps Agreement, establishing clear timelines.

Mark illustrates with a detailed Cofense example where he managed 50+ enterprise accounts. After noticing a customer repeatedly asking about SIEM integration, Mark prepared before their next meeting. He pulled usage data, reviewed incident response metrics against industry benchmarks, and analyzed SOC workflows. When they met, Mark showed findings: analysts spent $337,000 annually on manual work plus missed incidents due to detection delays. The $85,000 expansion was approved within two weeks.

Mark addresses CSM discomfort with expansion, reframing it as recognizing their unique position to identify opportunities. CSMs identify and validate; Sales handles commercial discussions.

The episode closes with a Swimlane example where Mark facilitated a peer conversation between two financial services VPs rather than pitching. By connecting a customer facing alert challenges with a regional bank that solved the same problem, Mark enabled authentic learning. The conversation covered implementation, resources, and a 40% reduction in response time. Two weeks later: $24,000 expansion.

Throughout, Mark emphasizes proactive preparation over reactive conversations, strategic peer facilitation over product presentations, and helping customers build internal business cases. The companion toolkit at ClearPathCX.com includes signal detection checklists, the conversation framework, IMPACT qualification criteria, and business case templates.