{"id":19247,"date":"2019-01-28T17:10:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T17:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=19247"},"modified":"2024-07-25T11:56:37","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T10:56:37","slug":"aligning-sales-and-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/aligning-sales-and-product\/","title":{"rendered":"How we ensure alignment between sales and product"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A great partnership between product and sales needs to be based on shared definitions of success and an agreed upon process to collaborate.<\/p>\n<p>Without these things, the relationship retreats to the magnetic stereotypes of both industries: Product teams think sales teams will do, say and sell anything to make money, while sales teams think product teams will build anything cool except things that actually make money. It\u2019s not a good place to be.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"ingredients-for-success\">Ingredients for success<\/h2>\n<p>First, for a product to truly be considered successful, among other things it has to be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Valuable \u2013 solve a real problem people are willing to pay for.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marketable \u2013 be attractive enough to differentiate itself from competitors.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adoptable \u2013 have sufficient table-stakes requirements for features such that the majority of the market can adopt it.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Justifiable \u2013 demonstrate its value as being greater than its cost (time and money) to the customer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, a great product is more than something that \u201cthe market accepts\u201d. There are other hard requirements in building a successful product business. The product must also be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Secure \u2013 features must be added thoughtfully so as to not create new attack vectors.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scalable \u2013 every new feature must work for your largest customers and future largest customers.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reliable \u2013 business critical software can\u2019t have features with bugs that go unresolved for years.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Usable \u2013 you can\u2019t build features with no cohesive vision that need layers of solution consultants to walk every new customer through them.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sustainable \u2013 the footprint of the product can\u2019t grow exponentially to accommodate every new feature request, which jeopardizes all of the above.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 id=\"mutual-understanding\">Mutual understanding<\/h2>\n<p>Product teams that don\u2019t understand the first list will never connect with sales. Sales teams that don\u2019t understand the second list will never connect with product.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote-style-one\"><p>&#8220;If your product team isn\u2019t taking roadmap input from your sales team, you\u2019re not listening to the potential market&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Second, sales and product need a way to collaborate on the product roadmap. Sales is usually the only team that has in-depth conversations with would-be customers who couldn\u2019t proceed due to a product problem.<\/p>\n<p>If your product team isn\u2019t taking roadmap input from your sales team, you\u2019re not listening to the potential market. You can go deeper in your current niche, but you\u2019ll never expand out of it, nor will you move upmarket.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"solving-customer-problems\">Solving customer problems<\/h2>\n<p>At Intercom we take inputs into the product roadmap written in the form of a \u201cproblem.\u201d Each problem is an atomic unit that articulates why a deal can\u2019t be completed. The problem has an abstract statement (\u201cI can\u2019t connect conversations in Intercom with my user record in my CRM\u201d), a reason it\u2019s a problem (\u201cusing Intercom would make my sales process too inefficient for SDRs who would have to copy and paste all day\u201d) and then instance details (\u201cI need to see sales conversations in the Hubspot CRM\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>In addition we capture things like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stack rank<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Status \u2013 is it currently being worked on?<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Persona \u2013 who in the buying process speaks to this need?<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Segment \u2013 what customer group does this first occur in?<\/li>\n<li>Order of magnitude \u2013 often the gap between #1 and #2 in the list is substantial, as seen in this diagram<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/FeatureRequestsRanking1.png\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: small;\"><em>Feature requests by rank of problem and by size of problem \u2013 your second-ranked problem might be far less important to resolve than your top-ranked problem.\u00a0Idea <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kennorton.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">popularized by Ken Norton<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>All of this is refreshed at every roadmap session, and detailed discussions are had with sales as a new problem is tackled. It can be easy to let this list become your roadmap, and if you\u2019re really lacking the table stakes features in the market, that might be the right choice.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s important for both sales and product leadership to remember you can\u2019t \u201ctable stakes\u201d your way to a dominant market position. You need to differentiate. Faster horses will get you only so far. Your roadmap should have many other inputs, such as iterating recent launches, new to market innovations, and causes of customer churn. What changes and evolves is the weight of each input, depending on where the shared priorities are. A roadmap, at its core, is just a page of trade-offs, arguments and priorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Product teams and sales teams need a way to collaborate on the product roadmap, because otherwise, you&#8217;re not listening to the potential market or answering their needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"category":[5],"tags":[14233,167,363],"coauthors":[348],"class_list":["post-19247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-and-design","tag-problems-to-be-solved","tag-product-roadmap","tag-product-strategy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.3 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How we ensure alignment between sales and product - The Intercom Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Product teams and sales teams need a way to collaborate on the product roadmap, because otherwise, you&#039;re not listening to the potential market or answering their needs.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/aligning-sales-and-product\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How we ensure alignment between sales and product\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Product teams and sales teams need a way to collaborate on the product roadmap, because otherwise, you&#039;re not listening to the potential market or answering their needs.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/aligning-sales-and-product\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Intercom Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/intercominc\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/destraynor\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-01-28T17:10:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-07-25T10:56:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Aligning-Product-and-Sales.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1968\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"932\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Des Traynor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@destraynor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@intercom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Des Traynor\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/aligning-sales-and-product\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/aligning-sales-and-product\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Des Traynor\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/eca2beed88876408030509097abe63c2\"},\"headline\":\"How we ensure alignment between sales and product\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-01-28T17:10:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-07-25T10:56:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/aligning-sales-and-product\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":714,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/aligning-sales-and-product\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2019\\\/01\\\/Aligning-Product-and-Sales.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"problems to be solved\",\"product roadmap\",\"product strategy\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Product &amp; 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