The Feud Between Product & Sales Needs to End

While I'm not the first person calling for this to end (e.g. https://www.mindtheproduct.com/relationship-goals-how-to-resolve-the-tension-between-product-management-and-sales/ and https://www.aha.io/blog/what-product-managers-should-do-when-the-sales-team-is-hostile), tension is still very pervasive in Product/Sales-relationships.

Banter or framing?

Especially behind closed doors, Product people love to rip on Sales people:

"They don't know anything about the product."

"All they're good at is talking."

"They just say 'yes' to what their customers want."

"They don't understand that tech resources are limited and/or what they're asking for is much more complicated than they think."

I've heard this a lot from people around me. I might've even chimed in way back in the day, in an effort to fit in (though it's not like I really know what I was talking about, come to think of it).

What I eventually realized though is:

None of these complaints matter.

Yes, a sales person who just passes on customer wishlists verbatim is just a relay, and thus a useless team member.

In the same way that a product manager who passes on sales (or C-level) wishlists to development is nothing more than a relay.

Inversely, both excellent Sales and Product people share a trait: being expert negotiators and dealmakers.

Sales people negotiate customer contracts, representing their organization.

Product people negotiate stakeholder requirements, representing their organization.

The other part is leveraging domain expertise.

And just because the one domain tends to be more technical doesn't mean it's more demanding or 'worth more'.

Sales people as allies and assets

Product folks, think about this another way:

If you support your Sales staff by giving them the required information to defend your product, they can ideally pre-empt the cliché migraine-inducing mile-long list of feature requests by negotiating knowledgeably with their customers, which frees up more of your time to do impactful product work.

Also, it strengthens your posture of a product-led organization paradigm.

I'd go one step further –

Being self-employed, I believe there's a lot that product managers can learn from having to do actual selling – in this case, of your own services.

I wrote a longer piece about that a while ago. I believe that it still holds up, so feel free to read on if you're interested.

Check it out here:

https://medium.freelanceproductmanager.com/how-freelancing-brought-me-in-touch-with-my-inner-salesperson-b4dc27d9e49d

Thanks for your attention! ??