Employee Spotlight: Meet Spencer McManes, Senior Customer Success Manager

Welcome back to our Employee Spotlight Series, where we highlight all the people who contribute to our amazing workplace. Today, we’re introducing you to Spencer McManes, Senior Customer Success Manager here at DataGrail. 

Spencer joined DataGrail as an Enterprise Customer Success Manager over a year ago. He manages relationships with some of our largest customers and works functionally with all of our internal teams, including our Product, Marketing and Sales teams. He started his career in consulting before pivoting to tech. This month, we talked to Spencer about what it’s like to take the leap from consulting to a tech startup and to learn more about his experience being a Customer Success Manager at DataGrail. 

After almost 4 years in consulting, you made the switch to the startup world and have been here ever since. What motivated you to make the move? 

I wanted to take the skills I built in consulting and put them into practice with my own team. Supporting another organization in their execution is a great opportunity to learn, but I wanted to get my hands dirty building and creating a product.

Based on what you know now, what’s something that you’d tell your younger self when you were considering making the move? Any advice for anyone else considering it?

Once you build a strong foundation and feel comfortable in your industry, especially in consulting, it’s probably time to start considering other options. Whether it is a new company, new project, or new industry at large, when your gut says it’s time to change, trust it. Think of your time as an investment in developing your own skills, and if the time you’re spending is doing that to your liking.

Was there anything about being in the tech startup world that surprised you initially? 

The biggest learning was how important tradeoffs are. In a startup, you want to do everything, but you only have a limited amount of time and energy to do a few things well. For that reason, you have to ruthlessly prioritize and make tradeoffs that will benefit your customers and your company at large over time.

Looking back, what aspects of your consulting experience do you feel really helped set you up for success as a Customer Success Manager at a tech startup? 

A Customer Success Manager is like a mini-consultant whose project is driving software forward. Every customer’s requirements, workflows, and overall business is different, so you have to be flexible and adapt to what will work best for them. Sometimes it feels like you’re juggling tens of consulting projects at once, so having a strong background in consulting can set you up for success. 

What does your day-to-day look like as an Enterprise Customer Success Manager at DataGrail? 

I establish what I need to get done that day, prepare for each meeting, and ensure there is space in my calendar to support the requests that will come from customer meetings and emails throughout the day. Internal prep meetings are also key to being able to crush customer meetings, especially when bringing in other DataGrail teammates, which I so often do!

What do you enjoy most about being a Customer Success Manager at DataGrail? 

I love the accountability that I feel to drive my customers to get the most value out of our tool. They make an investment in us, and the better experience they have with us, the better our company will continue to do. Data privacy is a new and evolving space, so reducing that burden for customers and making it easy to manage their privacy program on one platform is what I strive to do.

Want to work with Spencer? Check out our open roles here.