Inspirational Women Leaders Of Tech: Nancy Sansom of Versapay On The 5 Steps Needed To Create Great Tech Products

Product owners need to see themselves as the CEO of their products and they should have the ability and the authority to make day-to-day decisions about the product (provided they fit into the agreed-upon product vision and priorities). Product decisions made by large committees and product owners focused more on process than on the product are less successful.

Currently, only about 1 in 4 employees in the tech industry is a woman. So what does it take to create a successful career as a woman in Tech? In this interview series called Lessons From Inspirational Women Leaders in Tech, we are talking to successful women leaders in the tech industry to share stories and insights about what they did to lead successful careers. We also discuss the steps needed to create a great tech product. As part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Nancy Sansom.

Nancy Sansom is the Chief Commercial Officer for Versapay, the leader in Collaborative AR, where she leads marketing, partnerships, demand generation, product marketing, events, brand, and communications. She has more than 20 years of experience running successful product, partner, and marketing organizations in high-growth software companies focused on HCM and financial technology. Nancy earned her MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and has been a member of the Kellogg School of Management’s Executive Education program.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before diving in, our readers would love to learn more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I grew up in the Midwest during the ’80s, and at that time there was a lot of concern that America was losing its industrial strength to overseas competition. Manufacturing jobs were being lost to Japan, and our steel industry was struggling to compete. I saw how this shift was impacting the people and towns around me, and I decided I wanted to be in manufacturing to help change the course back to a place of strength. I fell in love with Japanese manufacturing techniques, often referred to as just-in-time or lean manufacturing — which actually has many parallels to agile development. These Japanese techniques were revolutionary at the time, shifting the model from building and storing large amounts of inventory based on forecasted demand to building products to order with significantly less inventory.

So out of college I started working for a steel company in their West Virginia location. My job was to help them get their QS-9000 certification, which is an important quality assurance standard for automotive suppliers. Along the way, I was part of the selection and implementation team for the company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. A lot of people didn’t understand how to map business processes to fit with the emerging technology of ERP systems, and that became my specialty and bridge into tech. I loved it, and what’s more, I was able to have a real impact by introducing technology and practices that helped the industry to modernize.

At the same time, e-commerce was taking off and I was working toward my MBA at Carnegie Mellon University. I graduated with my MBA in 2000 with a focus on IT, marketing, and finance and got a job on an e-commerce team at a software company that focused on order and warehouse management systems, and I haven’t looked back! Being in tech was a much better fit for me culturally, with an abundance of opportunities in tech for women, whereas manufacturing wasn’t yet a friendly environment for women.

It has been said that our mistakes can sometimes be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

At my first job out of college, I was expected to be at the plant by 8 a.m. Fair enough, but at some point I started showing up at 8:05 a.m. I was 22 and assumed there was a little wiggle room on the start time. Well, my boss didn’t. He took me aside and said, “Nip it in the bud.”

I had never heard the term before, so I had to ask someone what “nip it in the bud” meant. He said, “It means don’t be late! End the practice before it becomes a habit.” That was a good lesson to learn, and allowed me to correct the behavior before it became a problem. As I’ve matured as a leader, I’ve realized how important it is to give feedback in a direct way to your team members. It’s not always easy, but giving immediate, candid feedback is a gift.

Today with distributed office environments, we work daily across time zones, and when you start your day or end your day isn’t quite the concern. Instead, our work is more about outcomes. In fact, with a distributed workforce, it’s actually a little bit more difficult to spot behaviors that might be leading someone down a path that isn’t the best for them or their team or the business. In this new environment, candid feedback (both the positive kind as well as the “nip it in the bud” kind) is all the more important. It really needs to be embedded in the culture in order to ensure your teams are performing at their best.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

In 2002 I joined a software startup called Benefitfocus as the company’s first Product Manager. They didn’t have an established product team, so I was their first product person and the only woman on the technology team. Frankly, my coworkers didn’t understand why I was there when I didn’t even have a computer science degree (I guess my tech MBA from Carnegie Mellon didn’t count because I wasn’t an engineer).

I never considered giving up, but instead, I made sure to show value in every interaction that I had with these engineers. At first, the environment they created wasn’t the best. But after a while, they realized they needed not just what I personally had to offer but also the value of having a great product and design team. A couple of years later, one of my co-workers apologized for how he had treated me and recognized my contribution to the company’s success. When people are skeptical or difficult to work with, I do my best to consider their needs and add value. It usually works but takes a little longer with some people.

What do you feel has been your ‘career-defining’ moment? We’d love to hear the lead-up, what happened, and the impact it had on your life.

During my time at Benefitfocus, the CEO wanted to develop our marketing function. At the time we only had a creative marketing team focused on branding and sales support, we didn’t have a demand generation team or formal product marketing function. We needed to establish our broader marketing function and he encouraged me to make the pivot from product to marketing. I had been in product for nearly 10 years at that point and I felt that I was good at it. That’s what I thought I would be doing for my career. However, this is what the company needed. So, knowing that this was mission critical for the business, I ran with it. It helped that my boss had confidence that I was the right person for the job.

But while I had taken marketing classes in college and in my MBA program, I had no hands-on experience in marketing. I had to dig in and close the gap quickly. I went to Kellogg School of Management to take a few classes and brush up on my knowledge. I took the head of marketing role and have been in marketing ever since. You know what? I ended up falling in love with it. I was presented with something, took a crack at it, and it changed the whole trajectory of my career. I didn’t know it at the time, but marketing ended up being a better fit for me. The reality is, many times marketers and product folks grow in their careers in silos: they don’t often have experience over the fence. In my case, I believe my background in product has made me a better marketer and a more well rounded executive.

Ok, super. Thank you for all that. Let’s shift to the main focus of our interview. We’d love to learn a bit about your company. What is the pain point that your company is helping to address? How does your company help people?

Versapay is a fintech company that offers cloud-based software for businesses to automate their accounts receivable and payment processes. Our technology helps finance teams modernize their AR processes while accelerating cash flow, which is especially important in an inflationary environment.

Finance teams initially focused their digitization efforts on their accounts payable processes. They are now turning their attention to accounts receivable. Traditionally, companies viewed accounts receivable as an internal back-office function, but in reality, the company’s AR team interacts directly with customers’ accounts payable teams. The process of invoicing the customer and receiving payment is an important part of the overall customer experience. Sending paper bills and not allowing customers to pay with the payment method of their choice is actually quite archaic. So Versapay helps AR teams not only digitize the invoice to cash process but also transform their process to improve the customer experience.

If someone wants to lead a great company and create great products, what is the most important quality (for example, “determination” or “eye for detail”) that person should have, and what habits or behaviors would you suggest for honing that particular quality?

The most important quality for a leader is the ability to build relationships. For example, if a CEO is right and has a great strategy, but people won’t follow her, she won’t be effective. To build and nurture strong relationships, leaders must be trustworthy, empathetic, and willing to listen to others.

Next, let’s talk about teams. What’s a team management strategy or framework that you’ve found to be exceptionally useful for the product development process?

In my experience, companies, especially fast growing ones, grow around one key area of the business. Some are great at sales, others have a phenomenal product, others have a great idea they can market. Early growth tends to stem from their area of strength. But as they mature, they need to get all areas of the business aligned and optimized.

When companies mature, the most important framework I’ve seen boils down to single-threaded teams that own and understand the desired outcome for the business — design, product, marketing, data and engineering — all focused, aligned and trusting each other. “Focused on what they do” isn’t as hard as the alignment and trust. It’s relatively easy to get each team focused on their area of ownership, but it’s much more difficult to get cross-functional teams aligned and trusting each other. Once that happens, though, they are able to develop a culture of accountability. Team members hold each other and their leaders accountable in a healthy and empathetic way.

When you think of the strongest team you’ve ever worked with, why do you think the team worked so well together, and can you recall an anecdote that illustrates the dynamic?

With successful teams, there are strong relationships built on a foundation of trust. With these types of teams, when things go wrong — as they always do — because there is trust, they skip the back-stabbing. Team members are able to discuss the problem openly and productively. Team members are even comfortable asking for help when they need it to make necessary progress. Obviously, it takes time and intentionality to create this level of trust, but once it’s there, the team can achieve great things together.

And when a strong team has a team member that doesn’t fit — because of a fundamental mismatch with the company’s why, what or how — the situation is ultimately addressed, similar to what occurs when the body expels a splinter. Strong teams won’t allow this type of misalignment, the same way they won’t allow rude or demeaning behavior.

If you had only one software tool in your arsenal, what would it be, why, and what other tools (software or tangible items) do you consider to be mission-critical?

Today it seems like we have more tools than ever, each with different strengths and use cases. For us, we use Salesforce for CRM, Jira and Asana for tracking projects/tasks issues, Slack for communications, Guru for knowledge management, Microsoft Teams for video conferencing, and Microsoft Sharepoint for shared presentations, docs and spreadsheets. ALL of these (and many others) are mission critical to us now, and while we have more communication tools than ever, our team members have ironically reported that our communication could be better across the company.

To tackle this, we’ve put together a cross-functional team to define maxims, rules and best practices for communication to help us use the tools efficiently and respectfully. These cover things like when to use Slack versus email and when and how to run effective meetings.

Let’s talk about downtime. What’s your go-to practice or ritual for preventing burnout?

For me, I need to hit the gym every day. I don’t think our bodies were meant to sit all day staring at our computers. I feel so much better after a good workout. About 10 years ago, I became a Les Mills Body Pump instructor. A few years later I became certified in Les Mills Body Combat, a mixed martial arts conditioning program. Currently I teach 5+ classes each week (unless I’m out of town for work and then I make the best of the hotel gym) and it provides so many benefits:

• It provides accountability — my classes are on my calendar and a group of people are expecting me to show up. Even if I don’t feel like it or work is crazy, I have to show up. This forces me to take a much-needed break.
• Being strong and fit gives me the stamina to maintain my demanding schedule as a mom of three and software executive.
• It helps me continue to work on my presentation skills. Each class is essentialy a performance, where reading and responding to the audience is critical, much like when you present in a meeting, at a conference, or on a webinar.

Thank you for all of that. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience, what are your “5 Steps Needed to Create Great Tech Products”?

First, I think it’s important to have a company-wide culture that is product-centered. Some companies are driven by their sales org, others are more focused on operating efficiencies. I believe tech companies should be product-centered and product-led. The executive leadership team should agree on an overall product vision. This provides the executive, product and development teams with a common understanding of where we want to take the product. The product vision is something that should be referred to often during meetings with these three groups, and used to guide decision-making that happens on a day-by-day basis. It should also be something that is challenged, debated and tweaked if needed.

Second, the product org needs to have an outside-in mindset versus an inside-in mindset. This requires the product team to get out into the market and to spend a lot of time talking with customers and partners. Attending sales meetings and finalist presentations is a great way for product experts to stay in touch with the market, along with talking with customers and partners at industry events and trade shows. Casual one-on-one conversations and feedback can be as meaningful — and sometimes even more so — than formal advisory board meetings with large groups of customers. If your company goes to market via partner channels, the partners usually have a ton of insight not only about evolving market needs but also about what your competitors are doing and how you compare. Product owners that build great relationships with customers and partners will be closer to the market and more effective in all aspects of their work.

Third, focus on solving a specific problem and really nail it. Niche is good — it’s better to solve a few problems well than many problems poorly. This means you have to REALLY understand what your customers value and what your core competency is.

Fourth, a strong focus on design is critical to success. Great design makes your products more sticky and shows empathy for your end users. Of course I’m referring to the design of the UX within the product, but it’s also important to have design-focused thinking throughout the company. A centralized design team will ensure consistency throughout the customer journey both inside and outside of the product. During the design process, it’s important to test your hypotheses early and often — You don’t need a lot of work or resources from engineering to test your hypothesis. We’ve all heard the phrase “fail fast” — it’s best to find out if your idea or design is not quite right before you’ve made significant investments of time and resources.

Lastly, product owners need to see themselves as the CEO of their products and they should have the ability and the authority to make day-to-day decisions about the product (provided they fit into the agreed-upon product vision and priorities). Product decisions made by large committees and product owners focused more on process than on the product are less successful.

Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in Tech? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

I believe tech is a great place for women, especially as companies have shifted to a more results-focused work environment that provides more flexibility for working parents. But as we all know, there aren’t enough women choosing this field. I’m not really sure why — perhaps it is because women tend to choose careers where they have the opportunity to work with people and/or to help people (careers like nursing and teaching), and they don’t see tech this way. Perhaps we can help young women see tech for what it can do to help people and how advancements in technology can change people’s lives for the better.

For the women that go into tech, here are a few ideas to help women stay and thrive:

1. Women often opt out of work or leadership positions at work because they feel they can’t juggle any more between their work and home lives. When companies and managers allow flexibility for their employees, it helps to lessen the tension between home life and work life.
2. Coming back from maternity leave is challenging and overwhelming for new mothers. This is evidenced by the many women we’ve seen throughout our careers that take maternity leave and never come back! Companies and managers should take a long-term view of their employees and support them during their maternity leaves and as they transition back to work. Similarly, hiring managers should be open to hiring someone who has taken a break to care for their children.
3. While women are typically good at negotiating for their company or their team members, they are often less comfortable talking about money and negotiating for themselves. Male and female mentors can help women prepare for important compensation-related conversations and gain the confidence to negotiate for themselves.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I’d love to have a conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ayaan is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and former politician. She is an advocate of women’s rights and has written several books that describe the treatment of women in countries like Somalia. In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Her personal story is fascinating; she escaped an arranged marriage and fled to the Netherlands in her early 20s. Her story was really eye-opening for me and gave me a perspective and appreciation for the opportunities I’ve had, and the struggles that many women across the globe still face today.

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!