2024-05-22
What is the sales team responsible for?
Most would say closing deals. And they would be correct. That is the outcome they are held accountable to (and their compensation is tightly coupled to it).
But take a step back and you’ll see that sales is a research function [1]. They are literally talking to your ideal customers every day. They are getting more exposure to their lives and problems than any product manager or designer [2]. Ignoring those conversations because they are “just sales calls” is like ignoring technical engineering conversations because they are “just about code”. How it’s built and how it’s perceived is the product.
Similar to user research, you can’t take what you hear at face value. That’s why we’ve developed methods over the years to process raw information into insights [3]. With the advent of call recording tools (e.g. Gong), we can now build highly automated systems to handle a lot of the operational load (e.g. alerts for keywords like use cases, features, or competitors that feed into Notion databases with links to timestamped snippets). But we can’t stop there. We still need exposure to the raw goods.
Product managers need to be excited to co-sell. You can read all the docs and watch all the recordings you want. Nothing will compare to trying to pitch your own product and get someone to pay for it. I’m not saying to send product managers cold into a qualification call by themselves. Instead create ride along programs or touch points where customers have the freedom to speak in an open-ended fashion (i.e. not usability testing).
This is one of the primary attributes I look for when interviewing sales leaders. How do they view their job? Do they only see the money machine? Or do they understand the value of the conversations their team is having and how that feeds into product development [4]?
So the next time someone on sales says they have some product feedback, listen. But then take it further. Ask what conversations made them think of it. Ask to talk to the customers who mentioned it. Ask to join their next call. Use sales as a research function.
[1] Someone is going to say customer success is also a research function. And they would be technically correct. But I think there is a lot more consensus around that and more mature systems to tag / report on tickets.
[2] Someone is thinking “but those are scripted conversations and sales reps don’t understand how to do proper customer discovery!” Get off your PM high horse and acknowledge the value of these teammates. Yes, you as a product manager have refined your ability to interview customers in very specific ways. But to discount those conversations to the point of irrelevance is insanely arrogant.
[3] This honestly deserves its own post. There are a lot of steps when it comes to proper user research. From defining goals, to writing well-framed questions, to conducting the interviews, to tagging / categorizing snippets in those interviews, to forming insights based on patterns, to validating those insights through further testing. It’s a lot and more effective to learn by doing than reading.
[4] There is a flavor of this sales leader that is bad. The one who wants product managers to join calls to show “product cares” or bring more gravitas to a roadmap. That can be one of the reasons, but it can’t be the only (or primary).