🗣️Talk to sales for amazing insights
The sales team can give you insights that even your CEO can't!
Hi all,
Sales as a skill, is very important for everyone out there. Have a big idea? You have to sell it to your C-suite and get their buy-in. Interviewing for a job? You have to sell yourself. Wooing a girl/boy of your dreams? You better sell yourself well!
But over the course of the last 5 months, I’ve realized that talking to the sales team can help you build products (or atleast come up with ideas) that no one else has even thought about.
Yes, I’m serious! Unless your CEO is regularly talking to customers, even he/she won’t understand the “pulse“ of the market and that makes it difficult to come up with ideas that can change market dynamics.
As an aspiring PM, it’s very important to perform the role before getting the title and this little activity (and fun activity as salespeople are the best people to hang around with) can help you do just that!
If your organization has a Customer Success team, talk to them instead of the sales team. Are Account Managers in close contact with your customers? Talk to them. Do you have field sales team? Talk to them.
So, the idea is simple. Talk to folks in your organization who interact a lot with customers (both paying and prospective customers). Then, fixate on a problem statement. See if it’s worth solving and then start to ship the product🚢.
It might sound very simple on paper but there are a lot of complications that happen when the rubber hits the road. So, take those “ideas“ with a pinch of salt and work only on ideas that matter. As Paul Graham says, “Build Stuff that Matters.“
That’s about it for now.
Happy New Year folks. Hope you have a great time before getting back to the grind!