Facing resistance from the sales team on promoting a new product feature?

Opportune and open communication reduces friction, and assures the teams' engagement in delivery and continuous improvement. In my opinion, this resistance happens because of the wrong project's stakeholders, milestones and communication strategy management. Therefore, it's necessary to pivot the roadmaps to capitalize on the learnings and launch actions to sell the product first to the internal stakeholders: at the end of the day, they're a key piece for product scalability.

Actually I disagree with it,Because understanding how is more important than why in this scenario. Sales team will have major responsibility to create revenue and their focus is to complete the target assigned to them. One important thing is to have an open minded discussion on how new product feature can help to achieve revenue growth and better customer relationship. First and foremost step is to collaborate on how to use this feature genuinely in the way that is mutually beneficial for both. It will definitely ignored by sales team if they are not convinced on how.

A new product feature should never be a surprise. Giving your sales team an opportunity to submit feature requests, hear updates on the product roadmap, and provide feedback from clients and prospects is crucial. If your team has done all of the above and provided proper enablement for the feature, then the resistance may not be about the feature itself. Are there competing business priorities? Is a different feature being incentivized to be sold? Are buyers pinching pennies in the market? Understanding what the sticking point is for your sales team will help you unstick it.

Get creative with your communication with sales. Have office hours on slack/teams, send fun loom videos explaining why the feature is necessary for the customers, send bite-sized customer research report insights that answer some of the sales' most pressing concerns, and more. This will not only remove resistance but also inspire hype. Continue these activities among the normal question-answer sessions, emails, and meetings until most of the salespeople feel comfortable with the new feature, especially sales leadership and top performers.

When faced with apprehension regarding a new product and promoting it, there are underlining perspectives the team may see that I do not see. I tend to ask about what holes may be inside the new product, and I then ask them what could be better for it. Not everyone is aligned with what the product can provide, however explaining why the product can align with different clients and experiences they may have had, it will give the team more of an incentive to promote the product. The point is not to force the team to sell anything, the point is to have them believe the value of the product for the client that may benefit from it

Gamefication of product mastery can help keep salespeople engaged and excited to learn and master products. Add 3-4 tiers of achievement in mastery per key product and watch them earn that title of Product A Level 4 certification. New features can be added to master in groups or stand alones. They’ll want to earn that next notch and display the digital and/or physical badge. ??

Feedback Collection in the interval of three months will be effective. Communicating the adjusted action plan that is refined after feedback is best practice if we expect genuine feedback from team.

Opportune and open communication reduces friction, and assures the teams' engagement in delivery and continuous improvement. In my opinion, this resistance happens because of the wrong project's stakeholders, milestones and communication strategy management. Therefore, it's necessary to pivot the roadmaps to capitalize on the learnings and launch actions to sell the product first to the internal stakeholders: at the end of the day, they're a key piece for product scalability.