Aligning Sales and Product Teams on Feature Importance Key strategies: Establish a shared vision: Define company goals and link features to them. Use a data-driven approach: Track metrics and use data to inform decisions. Foster cross-functional collaboration: Create joint teams and encourage knowledge sharing. Use prioritization frameworks: Prioritize features based on value and customer feedback. Set clear expectations: Define roles, communication channels, and feedback guidelines. Celebrate successes together: Recognize achievements and build a sense of shared ownership.

These clashes between Sales & Product can be very counterproductive. These needs to be sorted as quick as possible We implemented something called “Product-Sales-CS handshake meet-up every 3 weeks to understand the market asks from Sales & Understand product pipeline from Dev teams Some of the ways that worked for us: * Having shared Product Vision between these teams is important. it helped our Sales team to build Pipeline with clear vision on what’s dev is building * Similarly, our dev team started understanding more on the asks in the market and accordingly modified or course corrected their product pipeline.

1) First, find common grounds. If there's common grounds, we can extend from there. 2) Evaluate the Biz Impact and see the merits of the arguments from sales and products. Understand the short terms and long term goals and provide evaluations on this biz impact. With that, escalate this to top management to align with higher management objectives to reach decision. 3) Upon reaching decision, explain to stakeholders the rational behind the decision. Also it does not mean that the lower priorities party need to feel bad, because all has their merits, but how those priorities matter to organization at that point of time.

1. Facilitate Open Dialogue: I hold regular meetings where both teams can express their perspectives and understand each other’s challenges. It’s vital for them to see how each feature impacts both sales and long-term product goals. 2. Define Common Objectives: I establish shared objectives that tie the teams together, such as customer satisfaction or business growth. This helps both teams see the bigger picture and work towards common goals. 3. Encourage Empathy: I foster a culture of empathy by having the teams shadow each other’s work or discuss real-world scenarios. Understanding the unique pressures and goals of each team builds mutual respect and cooperation.

From a Product Manager perspective: 1. Ground rules for any development: effort v/s impact. Rather than antagonising Sales teams, listen to them intently - distill the problem to have clear asks and guide them through the process of assessing impact (NPS, topline, bottom-line, man-hours saved, etc.). Once you have the impact quantified, next step becomes easier to explain. 2. Maintain transparency with backlog: You will almost always have more stories than you can ship in a cycle. If you have followed point 1, you are in a position to clearly stack your priorities and highlight trade-offs. 3. Repeat 1 and 2 every time till it becomes a practice.