Stakeholder management is critical for any successful product manager, and it involves understanding the needs and expectations of all stakeholders, including sales, R&D, CS, Support, Finance, HR, the CEO and of course the customers, partners and distribution chain. Stakeholders have different interests and working collaboratively to achieve goals while keeping the needs of all stakeholders in mind is a kind of an art.
Stakeholder management is all about understanding the needs and expectations of all stakeholders involved in the company. Salespeople are an important stakeholder group, and they often have different interests than other stakeholders. For example, salespeople may be more focused on short-term sales targets than long-term goals.
As a product manager, it's important to understand the needs of your sales team and work with them to achieve their goals while also keeping the needs of other stakeholders in mind. Here are some tips for managing salespeople as stakeholders:
1. Understand their goals: Take the time to understand the goals of your sales team. What are their targets? What are their incentives? What motivates them?
2. Communicate effectively: Develop a communication plan that outlines how you will communicate with your sales team. Make sure they are informed of any changes that may impact them like roadmap changes, delays in features delivery and so on and so forth.
3. Collaborate: Work with your sales team to develop strategies that will help them achieve their goals while also keeping the needs of other stakeholders in mind.
4. Monitor progress: Keep track of sales performance and monitor progress towards targets. Use this information to make adjustments as needed.
Here's an example: Let's say you're a product manager for a software company. Your sales team is focused on meeting short-term sales targets, but you're also focused on long-term product development. You could work with your sales team to develop a strategy that includes short-term sales goals as well as long-term product development goals. This could involve offering incentives for salespeople who meet both short-term and long-term goals, or developing a product roadmap that includes both short-term and long-term features.
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