Scanning in soccer is the “skill of observing the field to gather information” according to soccer training expert David Copeland Smith in the blog “The Art of Scanning in Soccer: Elevating Your Game Intelligence.”
Scanning can be a helpful skill for CSMs to apply as we must be aware of our customers’ changing situations.
Smith says that “this constant head-swiveling gives elite players a mental map of the game situation … critical for decision-making, anticipation, and executing plays under pressure.”
This post will explore why CSMs should scan, what we should scan for and issues we may encounter with scanning.
Let’s review.
Why Do CSMs Need to Scan?
Each day CSMs face a changing landscape with our customers as they do business with our solutions.
We must scan to monitor the changes, collect information about what’s new and evaluate against our current situation.
It’s important we determine the right action since our customer relationships are built on individual moments that shape our partnership.
What Are We Scanning For?
Here are some common items a CSM may be scanning:
- Moments of Truth: our customer may call on us urgently for an important deadline or a critical question they need us to answer. Our customer will be awaiting our response to win the moment.
- Emotional Bank Account Situations – while less urgent than MoTs, some customer situations have the potential to move our relationship forward or cause the relationship to take a step back. Can we influence these moments by scanning?
- Hot projects – we may be working with a customer on an onboarding or resolving sensitive issues. We need to pay special attention to some situations in the short term.
- Our daily plan: we have daily tasks we’re working on for our clients. Keeping an eye on our to-do list through the day helps us stay committed to our obligations.
- Internal clients – our colleagues and leaders rely on us to help with deliverables and dependencies we have with our teams. We can show we are a reliable colleague by scanning for important tasks.
How Should We Scan?
In “Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts” author Oliver Burkeman recaps the Pomodoro technique developed by Francesco Cirillo which involves segmenting your schedule by 25-minute working sessions followed by a break.
The idea of the Pomodoro technique can be a helpful way to break our time into buckets and scan over set periods such as every 25, 45 or 60 minutes. This allows us to focus on our work tasks while being available to monitor changes through the day.
When scanning we will want to review our to-do list and think about how our incoming information matches with our priorities.
We may be continuously reorganizing and regrouping our schedule as we determine where to focus. We can ask ourselves questions about how certain tasks fit in our day based on a hierarchy such as Moments of Truth, emotional bank account situations and our daily priorities.
Scanning Side Effects
We want to be aware of distractions when we check our email or messages. Scanning can also drain our energy when we are on the lookout for new information continuously.
Scanning can also put us in a shiny object state as we may start to jump on any task that’s new.
Balancing scanning with structure can help avoid the consequences of lost focus.
Finding Customer Success with Scanning
As soccer trainer David Copeland Smith says scanning gives us a mental map of the game situation which can be the basis for “…decision-making, anticipation, and executing plays under pressure.”
CSMs can use scanning in our work to create the ideal situation for decision-making, anticipation and executing critical moments for our customers.