How to fuel growth by connecting what the product does and what sales sell
How Product Marketing enables Sales & Product to do what they do best
I often get the question: “Concretely, what does Product Marketing do?”
I usually share the following analogy: Product Marketing is like the best man or bridesmaid at a wedding between Sales & Product.
- Prior to the big day, Product Marketing asks the right and tough questions to make sure “she’s/he’s the one” (👋 product market fit)
- Product Marketing makes sure that everything is on track for the big day: they contribute to picking on the dress or suit, they write their pitch for the toast, they review the vows (👋 go-to-market)
- After the big day, Product Marketing makes sure that Sales & Product keep communicating and adapting their plans based
on what’s best for the k̶i̶d̶s̶ customers.
In short, Product Marketing’s ultimate objective is to connect what the product does and what sales sell. When the product solves customers’ true pain points, sales doesn’t have to over-sell the product and customer satisfaction is around the corner.
Simple, no? In theory, you could say “we don’t even need Product Marketing to make it happen: Sales know how to sell, Product Managers know their job, why add another role into the mix?”.
However the reality is more complex.
We hear a lot about sales-led, product-led, marketing-led, and customer-led growth. At Alan, we decided to combine all approaches to address different segments at different stages.
- [Product-led] The product has always been at the core of our strategy and we have achieved product-led growth, especially in Tech companies.
- [Sales-led] We now have 100+ Sales in 3 countries, our front line in accelerating on core segments and also penetrating new markets (Spain, Belgium, Enterprise, Wholesale, Manufacturing, Retail…).
- [Marketing-led] As a B2B business (we sell our product to companies), marketing is key to generate leads and nurture them — before handing them off to sales.
- [Marketing-led] And as a B2B2C business (our end-users are employees being reimbursed and using our health services, and HRs using our tools on a daily basis), marketing is also key to understand the users’ pain points, convince them, engage them and turn them into ambassadors [Customer-led].
As we scale, the level of sophistication of our product and organization is increasing
We now target different buyers in different segments in different countries, the product gets more complex (with offers for each segment), we have hired 100+ Sales and nearly 20 PMs… which complicates things and requires more and more coordination and processes.
And that’s why, 2 years ago, we introduced Product Marketing.
Building bridges and crafting secret sauces: how to make this connection happen
Feedback is a gift, so we cherish it
To build the best product, the feedback loop between the Sales or the Care teams (= the customer’s voice) and the Product team is central. Product Marketing is here to organize and scale it.
Let’s take concrete examples.
When we open a new market segment at Alan, we have a small task force with 3–4 Sales, User Research, and a Product Marketer embedded into the team. The objective is to be laser focused and to iterate super fast: identify the main personas, understand buyers’ and end-users’ needs, understand how they will use the product, gather product blockers, iterate with the Product team…
For instance, when we decided to penetrate the wholesale and manufacturing sectors we realized that some end-users were not comfortable with digital and expected a customer service they could call. Yet, we were only supporting email and chat. As soon as we spotted it was a deal breaker, we ran user research, challenged our product, tested solutions and finally launched a call-back solution.
It does not mean that we develop any feature requested by customers. Our job is to be informed by customer discussions and user research, understand our users’ problems and see the problems they are not even able to formulate themselves, then build the best product to answer them, test it on the field, inform our vision and iterate fast.
And as we grow, we scale the feedback loop:
- On more mature segments (like the Tech segment or Hotels & Restaurants), the Care and Sales teams log feedback into a tool, Harvestr. Product Marketing structures this feedback, selects the most important items and shares them with the Product team to inform the roadmap.
- Once new initiatives are shipped, we close the loop and make sure the sales are well armed to pitch our product and our vision.
If you want to learn more about our feedback loop, Kevin (our PMM Lead) explained it here in 15 min (in French) at the last Product Conf.
Our secret sauce
To make this feedback loop work, the alignment between Marketing, Sales, Product, Eng is key. For that, our secret sauce relies on 4 ingredients:
- Culture & values. We share the same values: member-first. Each and every Alaner is obsessed with our members, understanding their pain points and their needs, understanding how they use the product, listening to detractors… Everyone is focused on building the best experience to maximize members’ satisfaction.
- Common objectives. We share the same KPIs between Marketing and Sales. The objective of the Product Marketing team is to optimize the sales conversion rate. Now, we know we work on long sales cycles and we cannot have an impact on the conversion rate in 1 or 2 weeks. So we also define intermediary, short-term KPIs to better assess what is working/what is not and iterate fast. For example, we monitor the % of discovery meetings leading to a demo to assess if our value proposition resonates in a new market segment.
- Prioritization. Here again, we share the same priorities. We are very clear on the priorities at company-level and we focus the resources (Product, Sales, Marketing, Eng…) on them. As such, we are sure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same direction. For example, at the beginning of 2022, we decided to shut down Alan Baby, a product dedicated to young parents. Why? Because we wanted to be extremely focused on Alan Mind and the health services we are developing like our virtual clinic (you can read more about one of our toughest decisions here)
- 1:1 relationships. As we scale, we have defined a clear organizational framework relying on:
- Business segments (for example: Enterprise, Wholesale & Manufacturing, Retail & Hotel-Restaurants, Tech…). We aim to have 1 Product Marketer dedicated to each business segment. The objective is to have expert Product Marketers embedded in Sales teams, knowing everything about buyers’ and end users’ pain points, the industry’s challenges and opportunities and craft the best messaging accordingly.
- Product areas (for example: area dedicated to the HR experience, area dedicated to health services…). Here again, we have 1 Product Marketer referent for each main product area, so they are deeply involved in the discovery (understand how the users will use the product) and the go to market (define the unique selling points and communicate them).
- Besides, some Product Marketers own transversal programs. For example, Kristina is in charge of our global feedback loop (structuring the 3.5k+ feedback gathered in Harvestr and building a wrap up to help product teams prioritize the roadmap every 6 weeks).
Reaching this connection between what the product does and what Sales sell is the first step to demonstrate the value of your product.
Building on this will help you achieve a virtuous cycle: adoption > engagement > retention > expansion.
That’s why engaging our end-users is a key pillar of our strategy. When your customers are using your product and are convinced by your product, you can start leveraging the product itself and the customers’ satisfaction to fuel growth:
- You can build in-app mechanisms to let users discover new features and increase loyalty
- You can turn your users and customers into ambassadors
- Ultimately, you can increase the customers’ value over time.
… but that’s for another article :)
