Salespeople know what customers want. Really?
Has any salesperson (or CEO, …) told you “I know the customers’ needs very well because ONE customer told me that…”
Why did this happen? There are many reasons, but certainly the “hype” we see lately in product management does not help to bring product teams closer to the rest of the functions. On the contrary, it has created barriers and silos.
On the solution side the tracks I’ve seen work best,
▶ a “thinking product” culture within the company as a whole… (I recently wrote an article about this https://salvabocchetti.com/articles/does-your-organization-think-product/ )
▶ An integration of sales into the product teams, from the product design
▶ and product teams into sales (joint discovery)
▶ Business oriented CPOs, and who do not run away from commercial topics (pricing strategy, sales…)
This last point seems very important … and unfortunately not yet enough of the “norm”.
This post originally appeared on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexandra-lung_leadership-productmanagement-collaboration-activity-7055065131256303617-4OjU
My name is Salva, I am a Product executive, helping tech companies discover, shape, and sell better Products. My work and writing are mainly about subscription models, product pricing, e-commerce/marketplaces, and creating top product organizations.
My superpower is to move between ambiguity (as in creativity, innovation, opportunity, and ‘thinking out of the box’) and structure (as in ‘getting things done’ and getting real impact).
I am firmly convinced that you can help others only if you have lived the same challenges: I have been lucky enough to practice product leadership in companies of different sizes and with different product maturity. Doing product right is hard: I felt the pain myself and developed my own methods to get to efficient product teams that produce meaningful work.