Product, Marketing, and Sales Alignment - Why it Matters and Ways to Achieve it
A Product Owner's core accountability is to maximize product value. They must know that a product's success increasingly depends on how well Product Owners connect with stakeholders and the people within the organization who might be outside of the Scrum Team. Marketing and sales teams are often the voice of the market as they have direct relationships with the customer. This makes them essential partners for the Product Owner to deliver a successful product.
Let’s explore ways that Product Owners and other Scrum Team members can build strong working relationships with marketing and sales, and what impact that can have on the value Scrum Teams deliver.
1. Create a shared understanding of the Product Vision
An inspiring product vision isn’t just for the Scrum Team, it should resonate across the organization, including with marketing and sales teams. When these teams understand where the product is headed and why, they can create better aligned messaging and sales strategies. The Product Owner should take the initiative to socialize the product vision across the organization and drive a shared understanding of the current Product Goal, the product's outcomes and customer needs.
2. Integrate Marketing and Sales Insights into Product Decision Making
Marketing campaigns provide a wealth of data that can be analyzed for trends, knowing which terms resonate, which ones don't and more. Sales interactions with customers generate a wealth of data that can provide valuable insights to Product Owners. From customer meetings they bring competitive knowledge, future feature requests, witness how products are used, receive consumer complaints and hear about about emerging trends.
Product Owners should regularly review this input and use it to inspect and adapt their Product Backlog. Whether it's improving a product feature that’s causing churn or developing one that could open up a new market segment, basing decisions on real market and customer data increases the product’s chances of success.
3. Actively involve marketing and sales in product development
Marketing and sales people have invaluable insights into customer needs, market conditions and trends, competitive positioning and customer behaviors. If a Scrum Team does not already have marketing and sales representation on their team, then involve them as key stakeholders. By involving marketing and sales input early and throughout, the Product Owner gains access to input that can validate or challenge assumptions.
The Sprint Review is an ideal Scrum Event to include marketing and sales. This helps:
- The Scrum Team leverages the insights that marketing and sales representatives bring to the table
- Marketing and sales get to know the product and its capabilities and the customers it is targeting, allowing them to align with marketing and sales initiatives
- Everyone get a shared understanding of what direction the product is moving into and is able to inspect and adapt when needed
- The Scrum Team discovers potential market risks and trends early on, which reduces risk
Aside from the Sprint Review, there are ample opportunities to collaborate with marketing and sales. Product Owners should establish a continual feedback loop and discussion points. This might include representatives in Product Backlog refinement, Product Goal discussions, setting up information radiators, or any other feedback loop that brings value and helps the Product Owner stay informed. This way, they can respond to shifts in the market and/or customer behaviors.
4. Support Go-to-Market
Although the majority of Product Owners don’t create marketing campaigns or close sales deals themselves, they do play an essential supportive role in go-to-market and sales activities. Their in-depth knowledge of the product’s capabilities and customer value makes them a key person who can help when it’s time to guide sales teams or refine messaging.
5. Maintain Strategic Focus
It is easy for Product Owners to get pulled into tactical activities like helping write sales decks or chasing down leads. While occasional support is beneficial, their primary focus must remain on product outcomes. Product Owners should maintain strategic focus by using data and insights from marketing and sales to shape the direction of the product. At the same time, they should take advantage of those relationships to get in front of customers and prospects to learn.
Conclusion
Product Owners should treat marketing and sales as part of the extended team when it comes to end-to-end product collaboration. Alignment between the Scrum Team with marketing and sales is a powerful tool to create better customer outcomes. The Product Owner plays an important role in this and should take the lead when collaborating with different functions across the organization.