Getting alignment across internal groups
As a Product Manager, one would think that your job is done when you have finished the specifications for a feature or a new product. Engineering will build and test and maybe you might do a spot check to confirm. On to the next feature.
In reality, your job is actually not fully done yet. The feature or product still needs to be used and adopted by your customers or users. More importantly, they need to first hear about it. Most PMs will react, well that is marketing or the onboarding team’s job.
Not so fast. While the actual messaging of your product may be done by other departments, it is imperative for product teams to convey the value of their products.
Typically, product marketing is responsible for messaging the value proposition and training sales to talk about it. They also use messaging to drive demand generation programs like webinars, trade shows, ads, press releases etc.
In some organizations I have seen a divide between product management and product marketing. Not only are they in separate organizations internally, many times they don’t even sit close to each other. Which means the only interaction is a 30 min weekly status check meeting at best or a quarterly sync up.
Even worse, marketing is going about doing it’s market and competitive reviews and product teams are doing their own. And often they don’t compare notes.
This is a missed opportunity. There needs to be closer alignment between the inward facing aspects of the product (development, release) and the outward facing (marketing, onboarding). A few organizations will have these functions under the same exec but most in my experience are separate with product marketing under the CMO.
Let’s solve this using first principles.
What do customers want? They want a solution that solves their vexing problems. The product or features are a means to an end. It’s the value they crave and pay for. Yes, it is important that we help them use the product effectively, but even before that they need to be told about it. This is especially true in a complex B2B software where there are 100’s of capabilities that vie for a user’s attention, not to mention other applications they have to use. (A typical B2B user has to use on average 10-12 applications on a daily basis including email, zoom, chat and so on). If you think a capability will significantly add value to your customer then you are duty bound to clearly convey the value to as many customers. Otherwise they will not even know about it. Customers are not actively reading your release notes, or youtube videos or press releases. It takes some work to get the word out and get them to the starting point.
What do sales want? The ability to sell the value so that customers consider buying your product, repeatedly with least friction. Do not expect sales and marketing to just get it, even if they have been involved in your planning processes.
As a product manager, you have done your market research, competitive analysis, wrote great specifications and worked with engineering to build. You already know how this will impact the customer. Now you give a demo to marketing, and hope that they get it like you do.
But that rarely works. Marketing may interpret something else on what is valuable. So it is upto product management to convey the true value, in business terms.
Let’s use an example. Imagine you are a product manager for a capability that allows a customer to create an invoice and email to their customers. The current version has some limitations – you cannot customize the invoice i.e. it’s a cookie cutter format. It works fine for certain types of small businesses. You have received feedback from customers that they want to customize as they sell complex products or have sophisticated terms that need to be shown on the invoice. You build a customization feature.
Now you give a demo to marketing or sales. Hey – look at this cool new feature. I can drag and drop fields and customize the invoice. According to product management, that’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. According to product marketing, that’s lame….or more likely ‘oh finally after 2 years of complaining”. And that’s what they may end up selling. You can drag and drop fields.
But is that the true value? No.
With this capability, customers can create different kinds of invoices and even different kinds of bundles which allows them to create better offers for their own customers. It helps them solidify their brand and makes their business process more flexible. That’s the true value that needs to be communicated to the customers. You have empowered your customers to sell better.
Product marketing should also interpret this for internal value. They can now communicate to sales that with this capability we are now expanding our addressable market. All those deals we lost because we did not have this capability can now be within our reach. That will excite the sales team much more than saying drag and drop.
Bottom line, it is product management’s job to convey the true value of the product in customer and internal facing terms.
Product Management and Product Marketing need to be much more closely aligned.
At the early stages, when product management is finalizing priorities and writing up the specifications, product marketing should be engaged so they know what is coming and start internalizing the value proposition. In fact, they should also be part of the planning process and provide their market input.
When the product is close to ready, a demo to product marketing will help them visualize the value and start planning their messaging. This is the time when marketing has to position all the value from various features and create a compelling theme and story.
Finally when the product is ready, product marketing is already on board and can start generating content.
Every major release, the product management team should come up with a written document in which you write a one pager about the major marketable feature(s) or product(s). The main sections of this document could be something like the below (inspired from Amazon’s internal press release process). Each PM should write this one pager for each of their major features or product at every major release point.
- Headline: If you had to write a press release, what would be the headline. Look at announcements from established companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, VMWare, Oracle, and so on and how they convey the headline.
- Opening paragraph: Create a catchy opening that draws attention to why this is an exciting feature or product.
- Problem being solved: Explain what pain point is solved and the cost of not solving it
- Solution: How the new product changes the situation. Also an overview, screen shots.
- Customer Value and benefits – List out the benefits for your users and the value the customer received. Any examples or metrics will be useful. For example, this feature will save x hours of time for sales operations each month.
- Audience: Who is the intended audience. E.g. business user, admin.
- What type of customer is this for e.g. B2B customer in XYZ industry
- How to use the feature: How does the customer use this and how do they get it (any special ordering process)
- Customer quote: If you have a beta customer who has used the feature, then try to get a quote.
For everything you release you have to clearly articulate the value. Remember, the product managers have done their market research, customer interviews and prioritized the roadmap. They chose to build this capability because it had value. If you cannot articulate the value, then you need to question why this was built in the first place. At Amazon, they have this process of crafting a “Internal Press Release” way before anything is built. The idea is to ensure we work on the most impactful areas of the product. That’s an extremely effective technique if you can incorporate it in your process.
You may ask, shouldn’t marketing be involved with product teams right from the beginning. Ideally, yes. But in reality they have their own processes and metrics. In one case, the product marketing and product management had not met for months or exchanged emails. A meeting was forced to share mutual activities. Turned out, product marketing had their plates full on topics that product management had no clue about. For example, they were extremely keen to position a new partner product and no one in the product management had a clue what this product was, let alone having an owner.
It is the product managers responsibility to ensure the true value of their product is conveyed to all stakeholders – internal and external. You can divide and conquer the mechanics of who writes what, but the important part is to create that alignment.
