Product Marketing & Management + Sales Ops = Necessary Ingredients to Win

Product management and product marketing professionals have a responsibility list that, when written down, would more than fill a 500 ft. roll of paper. But, it’s not about how much you have on that list; rather, the importance of what the items are. And, if you’re not aware of how to put a query together to run your own sales reports, and know what it means, you’re failing not only yourself but also your product.

Why? Simply put, you are responsible for understanding all elements of your product – and that includes the sales pipeline. As the product owner (I’m not talking about the Agile role here, just a responsibility so please stay calm.) you need visibility. It is often understood why Product Management needs to look at the sales pipeline for what the sales process is telling us – for example, where are the bottlenecks? Is the product value not being displayed because it is not understood?

Product Marketing is typically less involved in looking at the same pipeline. Big mistake! Product marketing is responsible for the messaging, the positioning, understanding the buyers and how they react. By looking at how the sales teams are moving the buyers from buying stage to buying stage, product marketing professionals can look to see whether the artifacts created are delivering the right message and being used effectively by the sales team.

Both roles require insight into sales metrics. But, different metrics. And, metrics that may be different from the standard reporting the sales ops team is providing sales management. You need to be able to look at what matters to you.

 If you do not have access to the query function of your company’s CRM system, get it now. And, if you don’t know how to structure a query, learn. Then, if you can’t do advanced Excel functions – like pivot tables and the (amazing) VLOOKUP command, take a class. The advanced abilities will enable you to slice and dice the data in ways that matter to you. And, make friends with your company’s CRM admin! I can’t tell you how much I depended upon Craig, John, and now Jerry, to answer simple questions that drove me crazy. (And, having a bag of candy with you when you meet doesn’t hurt.)

Sales ops works with sales not product management or product marketing. The data they are tasked to drive and deliver is not for the product review. And, while product management and product marketing are always looking at metrics, typical marketing metrics are seldom, if ever, overlaid onto the CRM data. But, looking in from the outside, you can’t depend on someone one else to pay attention to the product details and processes that matter to you. And, if you’re not paying attention, then who is?

I think your competitors would be interested in that.