What are some examples of the types of insights you used to gain insight from internal stakeholders?

Managing stakeholders is a critical and necessary skill, and clear communication plays a significant role in achieving this. What may seem obvious or clear to one person might not be the same for others. Therefore, it's important to prioritize over-communicating to ensure understanding.

An essential aspect of clear communication is simply asking questions. It is an art to ask questions in a manner that aligns with the communication style of the individual you are speaking to. It's crucial to be mindful of your own communication style and adapt it to the person you are conversing with.

I think the best way to gain insights from internal stakeholders is to:

1. Ask them directly. It's easy to jump into transactional work and I like to have an initial meeting where I spend a few minutes to understand their priorities, how they define their personal and team's success, how they see our teams partnering and how they like to be kept up to speed on projects? I like to state my personal communication preferences as a way to get a gauge on what I may need to alter about my style based on their feedback.

2. If I don't have an opportunity ask them directly, I often will see if I can meet with the Executive Assistant or others within their team who can provide some of the insights mentioned above.

Not sure I fully understand the question but here are some thoughts on the types of insights I look for from internal stakeholders:

• What data and information they have access to/would be helpful for the project

• What industry knowledge or competitive analysis do they have/know

• What skillsets and experience on their team compliment or enhance the project we're working on

• What tools do they use/leverage and can they help us in this project

• What are their team's goals/objectives and what does their definition of success look like

One of the best insights I've been able to action on is objections to our solution - whether that's timing, fit, price, etc. Reason being is these types of insights come throughout the sales cycle - from initial outreach to whether or not we win the deal. These are great insights to take back because ultimately you can update your messaging - and take feedback to product if appropriate as well. It's taking a real-time approach to adapting your efforts in direct alignment with the field - that demonstrates you aren't oblivious to the realities of the market while also giving you actionable intel to then bring something back to the field.

One of the best examples is of a time when I learned from the sales team about particular challenge the customer faced during the payment process when using the self-serve model. This helped us identify a serious issue when customers tried to pay using credit card from a particular country. We were able to solve that problem and improve our conversion rates online.

Communicating with field teams – sales as well as presales, always leads to better customer insights and helps improve the customer experience.

Another example is when speaking with the product team, the insights into the functionality of the product – apart from the feature list – become very clear. This improves the way you take the message to the market.