Salespeople: A Product person’s asshole best friend
In my last post I mentioned that, because I talk too much, I became a salesperson when I needed a real job. That’s only part of the story though. Growing up with brothers made me a hyper-competitive asshole, something that I used to my benefit as a sales guy. It is because of my own experience that I feel comfortable making this sweeping generalization about an entire industry of people: salespeople are assholes.
You may assume that I’m using that phrase in a negative connotation here, but nothing could be further from the truth. To provide some more clarity, I want you to think about your asshole best friend. For me, it’s my best friend since high school, Kyle. We’re brutally honest with the other, rag on each other incessantly, and generally act like we have for the last 15 years. Basically, Kyle can be a real asshole, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Salespeople are a lot like Kyle; they’ll shameless tell you what they think even (and maybe especially) if you didn’t ask, they swear a lot, and they’re great people to get beers with. You also need them the way you need your best friend.
They tell you what they think, even if you didn’t ask
In any company, there’s going to be a tension between Sales (and by extension, other customer-facing teams) and Product. In some organizations, that tension is a healthy one where the teams hold each other accountable. In others, it’s wildly toxic and problematic.
Having been on both Sales and Product teams, I’m sympathetic to the arguments from both sides. For a salesperson, few things feel worse than being on a call with a prospect and realizing you’re about to lose a deal because of a missing feature. For a product manager, few things are as irritating as Sales swooping in with product demands that seem out of context.
In a lot of cases, the Sales Swoop™ happens because there’s no structure around gathering feedback from internal teams, so they provide that feedback as it comes. Over-communicating product strategy and setting expectations helps, but having an opportunity to really explain why you can or can’t accommodate a recommendation is better. Ideally, organizations should facilitate internal feedback gathering in a way that’s standardized so everybody is on the same page. This gives customer-facing teams and Product teams a time to come together, think about the suggestions they’re presenting more deeply, and discuss what does or doesn’t fit in the broader strategic vision.
They swear a lot
As somebody who learned how to swear at a young age thanks to my Aba, being on a Sales floor where f-bombs are flying left and right felt like home. It’s been my experience that salespeople are typically some of the most, let’s call it outspoken, people within an organization. Another kind of swearing popular with salespeople is the, “I swear if we just had this feature, I could sell a shitload more.” variety. I am definitely guilty of saying this.
There are a couple problems with this phrase and the thinking behind it, though. First, this is a big driver of the tension discussed above. Not having functionality a customer expects makes your colleague feel like an asshole (the bad kind) and it’s fairly embarrassing. The other big issue is that this type of thinking leads to feature arms races with your competitors — a position nobody wants to be in.
Seen another way, though, this is an opportunity to really dig in and potentially innovate on your solution in a creative way. It is unfair to ask customer-facing teams to get as deep into the weeds about why a customer feels they need a particular feature or functionality as a Product person would. They have other priorities, like closing the business that pays for your check and the coffee that keeps you alive. That said, when the same, or similar, feature requests come up again and again, it gives you a clear idea of what to investigate next. You may very well find after identifying the underlying outcome a customer is trying to achieve that you do need to build that feature exactly as requested. You may also find there’s a more valuable solution that you can offer your customers they hadn’t thought of themselves.
They’re great people to get beers with
Perhaps unsurprisingly, for people like me, salespeople are great to hang out with. They’re generally loud, ostentatious, and are great drinking buddies. Underneath all of that, though, customer-facing folks are ultimately people driven by relationships. At the heart of the most cynical Alec Baldwin-style customer-facing person is somebody who nurtures relationships (whether that’s to ruthlessly hit a number or genuinely help the customer is irrelevant in this case). Taking the same curiosity Product people bring to the problems they’re solving and applying it to your customer-facing teams will reap dividends down the line.
Fostering a relationship with customer-facing teams is nothing but beneficial for Product people. This may seem obvious, but customer-facing teams hold the keys to customer access. While there are a number of tools available today that get Product folks closer to customers than ever, few things beat hopping on a sales demo or a QBR call with a Customer Success manager. You get to hear the language that real people use and break out of the internal acronyms and industry buzzwords that come up in research.
Additionally, they’re also on the crest of what’s happening in the market. Reading reports and analyzing the latest trends is an important part of being a successful Product person, but salespeople are the ones talking to the real people that are paying real dollars for things. This helps illuminate what your customers and prospects find valuable today, but more importantly, what problems they’re willing to spend money to solve.
Above all, being genuinely curious about what’s going on with customer-facing teams builds crucial empathy between two camps that are often conflicting. It’s easier to deliver bad news about why a feature can’t be developed if you know the person who you’re giving the news to. On the other hand, it’s that much sweeter when you get to share in the successes of rolling out a new feature that makes somebody’s life a little easier.
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