Product Communications 101

It's no surprise that communication skills are one of the most critical attributes of a strong product leader. Product sits at the hub of internal cross functional teams - Engineering, Design, Marketing, Sales, Legal, Privacy and Trust, and interfaces with external stakeholders as well - customers, vendors and partners. A successful product leader knows not only which direction to steer the ship by setting the right product strategy and road-map (see Product Sense and Skills section in the previous post), but also knows how to clearly, effectively and efficiently communicate the same to the organization. Without effective communication (and managing without authority - topic for another post), a well defined and coherent product strategy is inconsequential.

Who is your audience?

Let's start with the most important question - who is your audience, and the second most important question - what is important to them? Knowing what's important to them will help you define what and how to communicate to them. Note: This post will focus on internal communications only- I'll cover external communications in a separate post.

Here's the conceptual functional blocks of an organization:

1. Builders

While engineering and design make the bulk of this block, larger organizations also include sub functions such as user experience research and data analytics.

2. Go To Marketers

Product marketing and sales enablement will typically work closely with the Product teams to align and prepare the broader Sales and Marketing teams. Legal, Trust, Privacy). Sales Engineering, Customer Success Managers and Product Support are also a part of this block.

3. Counsel

Legal, Privacy and Trust constitute this critical function.

4. Executives

Depending upon the size of your organization, this could be the Founder and C-level executives, or also include multiple layers of VPs.

5. Cross Product Teams

Depending upon the scope and nature of your product, you might be interfacing with other Product teams as well.

What and How?

Let's talk about what's documentation and collateral would be most useful for each of these organization units, and how best to get it across to them

1. Builders

What's important to them?

• Clear vision and strategy: Engineering, UX and UX Research can do their jobs best of armed with not just - here's the PRD / User story, but also, here's why this feature contributes towards our North Star, here's how it fits in to the overall strategy, and here's how its set us on the path towards the long term vision

• Prioritized requirements of features / changes: This is best done if done collaboratively with the builders, so you can account for cost, timelines and user experience in your trade off decisions. However, this is not a democracy - ultimately, you are the one who has to make the tough calls and move forward

• Visibility into the field: You are the conduit for channeling and celebrating your customer's appreciation for the product back to the Builders. You are also responsible for sharing back the constructive feedback as you hear it from the team, with a plan on how it'll be addressed. For example, we heard from n strategic customers that 'x' is an issue which causes a high degree of customer attrition, and hence we are going to build 'abc' to help resolve and build customer trust.

How to communicate with them?

• Vision and strategy decks: Revisited and updated on a bi-yearly / yearly basis

• Roadmaps: Updated and communicated on a monthly basis

• Field updates: Monthly or quarterly basis

2. Go To Marketers

What's important to them?

• Clear vision and strategy: Just as the builders need to understand the vision and strategy, your PMM and Sales enablement need to be equipped with this information so they can craft their collateral to adequately and accurately represent you and inspire prospects and customers.

• Some level of technical details: Equipping your sales engineering team with high to medium level technical details and high level underlying architecture will help them help you field the first level of questions from the customers and prospects.

• Prioritized requirements of features / changes: PMM, sales enablement, customer success managers and Support need to be informed of the upcoming changes so they can manage existing customers and if needed excite prospects

How to communicate with them?

• Vision and strategy decks: Revisited and updated on a bi-yearly / yearly basis

• Roadmaps: Updated and communicated on a monthly basis - including high level technical details for the sales engineering team

3. Counsel

What's important to them?

• Requirements and designs of features / changes: Legal, Security and Privacy teams would take these as an input and generate product and product marketing recommendations while accounting for legal and privacy concerns, inclusivity as well as accessibility

How to communicate with them?

• Roadmaps: Updated and communicated on a monthly basis

• PRDs and UX design documents: Per feature / change

4. Executives

What's important to them?

• Awareness of the current state of the business

• Visibility into vision and roadmap

• Awareness of challenger or blockers that they can assist with

How to communicate with them?

• Vision and strategy decks: Shared out on a bi-yearly or yearly basis

• Monthly business review: Summary of state of the business as well as product changes from the last month, as well as updates planned for the upcoming month. This includes challenges or blockers that you need their help with

5. Cross Product Teams

What's important to them?

• Awareness of your product vision and roadmap, especially if it overlaps with or affects their product

How to communicate with them?

• Roadmaps: Updated and communicated on an ongoing / need be basis. This is potentially a 2 way exchange.

There you have it. Product Communications 101 - another tool in your Product arsenal. Go ahead and apply it and enjoy your journey towards Product Excellence!