How can you align product research and development with your sales team's strengths and weaknesses?

In my opinion the better Salespeople are those who are able to adapt to different markets, applications, services, situations and products. However, we do all tend to have our specialist knowledge areas. For me that has predominantly been with an Engineering biased, historically in many differing products, applications and markets. The most important element undoubtedly (imo) being the relationship between the client and the salesperson and that, more often than not, is forged over time and is led by personality. In our sales roles and teams we do constantly assess sales colleagues and our own capabilities, as well as colleagues in other departments. What we probably should do more frequently is to document these elements, to set the Datum!

The ability to cultivate professional and commercial relationships is crucial for sales professionals. Externally, they must construct relationships to create a favorable business scenario, understanding the end customer's needs and values that bring corporate advantage. Internally, transmitting these value perceptions to the R&D team is essential. Relationship-building thrives in an environment where professionals have both identified and respected strengths and weaknesses, fostering personal development and corporate goals. In my opinion, self-awareness regarding professional attributes is key not only to an innovation-friendly environment but also to overall business success.

Information requirements for initial authorization of a biosimilar Biosimilar manufacturers must provide information to Health Canada that demonstrates the similarity of their biosimilar to the reference biologic drug. They demonstrate similarity using comparative studies via a step-wise approach: Beginning with structural and functional studies continuing with human clinical studies Because the purpose of these studies is to demonstrate similarity, the type of data required to support biosimilar authorization differs from that required for a stand-alone biologic drug.

One way to align product research and development with the sales team is by involving them in the process from the beginning. Sales teams often have valuable insights into customer preferences and market trends, which can inform product development decisions. By working closely with the sales team, companies can ensure their products are well-suited to meet customer needs. Additionally, companies can provide training and support to help sales teams effectively sell new products. This may include providing product demonstrations, marketing materials, or other resources that help sales teams communicate the value of new products to customers.

To align product research and development with your sales team's strengths and weaknesses: 1. Identify the sales team's strengths and weaknesses through feedback and data analysis. 2. Involve the sales team in the product development to ensure products meet customer needs and align with their strengths. 3. Focus product development on areas where the sales team excels, and outsource or partner in areas where they struggle. 4. Develop sales enablement materials and training programs to address weaknesses and enhance strengths. 5. Continuously gather feedback from the sales team to refine and improve product development. This collaboration ensures products meet customer needs and play to the sales team's strengths, driving sales success.

I view Product as the center of the universe. The Product Roadmap is developed through highly disciplined market opportunity discovery, incorporating customer and market insights, as well as internal feedback from sales and marketing teams. Product then negotiates with engineering and development to prioritize the items that move from the Product Roadmap to the Engineering & Development Roadmap. Effective collaboration between sales, marketing, and product teams is essential for overall business success. When sales teams are aligned with the product, it fosters a collaborative environment where different departments work together seamlessly to achieve go-to-market execution goals.

The product roadmap is where product management/product marketing most exemplifies the strategic vision of the company. A real challenge is to communicate the road map in a way that doesn’t adversely impact existing product sales. It’s common for sales to excite channel partners with the “soon to be launched product”, only to have sales of the existing product slow as customers await the next new thing. Conversely, if a roadmap is not communicated, it is possible for sales to feel there is a limited future for the product line, and focus their efforts elsewhere in the product spectrum. My most successful roadmap presentations were built around new parameters which were designed to accommodate future generations of existing products.

In my experience, highlighting now vs future for any new release helps give the sales team a concrete picture of what they are expected to sell. This conversation also becomes the base of how to create the sales training materials

This step is very important to communicate your vision to align and build action plan towards common goal. This gives everyone in team inclusive and part of the vision.

The Vision of your New product or Service describes the way your product/service will impact customers and key stakeholders related to the use of this New development. Additionally, It is important to highlight that during the product development roadmap, key milestones need to be defined, especially the ones that are related and dependant on your sales team involvement and commitment.

To bridge the gap between product and sales teams, you need to capture and organize customer feedback from various sources, such as productboard. You also need to train salespeople on how to submit feedback that includes context, desired solution, and underlying need, not just feature requests. Moreover, you need to involve salespeople in product discovery and validation, and share the product vision, roadmap, and strategic objectives with them. Finally, you need to celebrate innovation successes together and recognize the contributions of both product and sales teams. This way, you can create a more customer-centric culture and deliver products that solve real problems and create value. ??

It’s crucial for the sales team to understand the product’s target audience, its significance, and how it addresses customer needs. This knowledge empowers them to present it effectively, creating a lasting positive impact.

My experience has shown to me this is an excellent way to foster collaboration but in reality very difficult to accomplish due to “silo” effects within organizations. Managers will lend lip service to support the “co-mingling “ of resources however seldom deliver real interaction between the two groups.

Product feedback and testing should be done with potential customers that sales People and Team have a solid and trustable relationship with. Sales People should facilitate the selection and the testing initiatives and activities.

To ensure that your product Research & Development align with your sales team’s strengths and weaknesses, establishing a strong feedback loop between these two departments is crucial.? This can be achieved by promoting open communication channels (like Slack) where the sales team can offer insights into customer preferences, pain points, and market trends.?You can also create a shared document or database where the sales team can log customer feedback, and R&D can access it easily. Consider inviting members of the sales team to participate in R&D brainstorming sessions or product demos. Regular meetings and collaborative sessions can help bridge the gap between sales and R&D, ensuring that product development aligns with sales strategies.

Before this step you should have the opportuntiy to deeply understand and analyse key findings on New product testing iniitiatives and activities. Sales People will have the oppprtunity to share their thoughts, learnings and findings. By doing so, the sales Team will have a strong sense of belonging and commitment when the New product is launched.

Navigating commercial strategies, especially those grounded in Go-to-Market actions, is a delicate matter. Innovations or new features seldom sell themselves; they must be effectively communicated to the target audience, carrying their relevant value propositions and, when possible, the competitive differentiators. Training equips sales professionals to present these offerings optimally, showcasing the intrinsic value and tailoring the pitch based on each customer's needs. In some instances, empathetic skills empower the sales team to highlight varied added values for different customer types, reinforcing the importance of strategic communication in successful commercial endeavors.

I belive also that the development team should eventualy work with the sales team in order to listen to what the customer is expressing. This is a great input to improve the development process and make the product an service iteration better. Both teams can learn from each other’s.

It would help greatly to have product development meetings attended by the marketing and sales representatives. The biggest alignment is to understand the challenges of sales and marketing teams.

In the dynamic business landscape, cross-team collaboration is crucial for exceeding competitive advantage. The strategic dialogue focuses on effective development and innovation, emphasizing the integration of sales, engineering, and product marketing efforts. The foundation lies in mutual understanding between sales and R&D, ensuring effective communication of customer needs. The R&D team, informed by sales insights, shapes development paths that add significant value. This ongoing dialogue not only defines the product roadmap based on value proposition, rarity, and longevity but also cultivates a cohesive organization, ready for integrated approaches, sustainable development, and lasting competitive advantages.

In a startup environment one is required to collaborate since many small enterprises require those responsible for product development to also be at least partially responsible for sales. Fostering this same degree of collaboration once the enterprise has grown to the point that greater specialization leads to separation of tasks is required will help continue the same collaboration that lead the the initial growth.

A team begins and ends with leadership and a pure focus on the vision or goal. Collaboration does not include chaos, it must be open and free to allow true innovation. However it must be measurable by results otherwise it will not produce effective innovations or shifts in culture or thinking.

‘Stay in your lanes’, keeping brand identity / core competency focus. It’s important to continually improve, adding new innovation/compelling products to your roadmap. However, your sales team needs to be part of the process, before development, as they have direct contact, experience and alignment with the front lines and your customers and should be continually utilized to flush out customer pain points/needs data; critical to releasing new products and having the greatest opportunity for market acceptance and success. Presell and share ideations and prototypes with your key customers and obtain their crucial ‘buy-ins’ and excitement through your sales force, prior to release, while getting pain and need’s analysis prior to development.