Many sales team members don't realize (or are concerned with) the importance of their interactions with prospects as a source for product and messaging insights. What do you do to encourage enthusiastic communication on what they're learning in the field?

Great question – I’d recommend 3 things to ensure you’re getting insights from the field: 1) Create a slack channel devoted to this so people have one place to submit insights from their client meetings (especially competitive insights), 2) conduct at least 1 client meeting ride-along per month. Get in the field and hear first-hand how content is being presented, how it’s resonating, what questions get asked, and what insights you might collect, and 3) conduct win/loss surveys for all deals each quarter. Ensure these surveys ask more than the raw data you can get our of your CRM system. Ask for real insight into why the prospect went with another option, or what positioning was used in the deal cycle to win.

The key is to make it easy for them to share this information with you - so make sure you are creating the right channels of communication. Whether it's creating slack channels where these discussions can happen or having more formal sessions to capture that feedback or creating the right fields and processes in Salesforce - whatever you do, you need to make it simple and easy for the sale team to transfer that knowledge to you.

Secondly, you want to show the sales team that the insights they give you are actually taken into consideration and make an impact - whether you update your messaging to reflect their feedback or whether it shows up on the product roadmap in some way - you want some positive reinforcement that will encourage the teams to share more feedback on what they're learning!

I've found that the best way to get sales excited about giving feedback on how messaging is resonating is two-fold:

1. Make it an ongoing ritual. Set aside regular time that is devoted purely to feedback. Don't wait for sales to take the initiative, and set the expectation that they should prepare feedback for product marketing regularly. Set an agenda beforehand and give them the structure to ease the burden of preparing feedback. If you make things too open-ended, then you won't get the insights you are looking for.

2. Showcase how their feedback is having a positive impact on your efforts. For example, say that you're hearing from sales that it's hard to quantify ROI during prospect discussions. In response to that feedback, you might create an ROI calculator asset. As part of the internal launch, be sure to call out that this was a product of feedback directly from the field. The team feels good because they feel that their voices are heard, and because they have an asset that directly helps them.

Explain to your sales team members that their feedback is valuable to the company and can help to improve the product and messaging. Make it clear that their input is not only welcomed but also critical to the success of the business. In addition, schedule regular feedback sessions with your sales team to discuss their interactions with prospects and to gather insights. Make sure to actively listen and ask follow-up questions to encourage further discussion.