When a salesperson says a customer wants it, the first thing that comes to my mind is, “Which customer?”
Behind that question sit two definitions of done, and most of this piece is about the gap between them.
Two lenses, one goal
My experience as a PM is that the fights are happening because everyone has their own viewpoint on things, and they feel very strongly about their viewpoint. Although both of them are trying to achieve the same thing, since their method or their lenses are different, these fights actually happen.
As PMs, it is our job to bring in a fresh lens and focus on seeing the common ground.
A common fight is between product and sales/commercial in a B2B environment.
In a B2B environment, people think that sales are the ones dealing with the customers. Customers want it, and customers are always right. That is what they think.
People sitting in product are not opposed to that. We just need to figure out what our definition of a customer is, or who we are addressing.
Which customer?
B2B2C has three parties in it: us, the business we sell to, and the customer that business is trying to reach.
If we are addressing it in a B2B2C environment, we are listening to the businesses’ feedback to serve their own customers. It’s the C that we need to focus on, where we need to align on: yes, the B wants to serve the C. The other B, which is us, also wants to serve the C. We need to align it from that perspective and offer validation for the C. That is when things start coming together.
Back to that first question, and what I do with the answer.
I try to dissect the problem and figure out that when a customer says they want it, it means they want to serve their customers through this. They want this because that needs to help them solve that problem, so that becomes the root cause. That is the lens that I usually start with.
Two definitions of done
Here’s where the two teams split.
Sales are looking at it from their customers’ perspective, which is the middle B’s perspective. For them, the definition of done becomes: have we done what they have exactly asked for, verbatim? For me, the definition of done is: are we serving the true customer? Is serving the true customer happening with the solution to this thing?
What we usually find out is that everyone tries to treat the symptom, not the root cause. That is where the main fight starts happening.
Your customer wants it because they want to serve their customer.
An example makes the split easier to see. The one below is made up, and it uses an online marketplace on purpose.
An example from a marketplace
Take a marketplace with a default listing, the products a shopper sees before filtering anything. A seller asks to show up there, and the reasoning goes like this.
People think that if I always appear in the default listing, I will have higher visibility. As a result of that, I will have more orders, and I will have more shoppers buying from me. That’s not a fair assumption to make.
The thing is, if the search result is not relevant, then your appearing is actually an annoyance for the shoppers, for the real customer. Your appearance is actually an annoyance, and in that annoyance, although you have amazing visibility, you don’t have conversion, carts, or orders.
From a customer’s perspective, if they are trying to solve a problem, they are looking for their solutions. If you are not the right solution provider, even though you appear, you appear as noise.
So the seller needs to hear something different from what they asked for.
What matters here is your relevant appearance, because then the customers that you acquire through us are truly looking for the solution. Otherwise, the customers that you will end up acquiring from us do not care about your solution. They just mindlessly clicked through, which brings you little value. It always becomes the quality-over-quantity game.
When the seller pushes back
Here’s how that message usually lands.
They do push back. They get offended. They feel that we don’t know their business, so they think that we are questioning their existence or their credibility, which definitely stirs up a lot of different emotions.
Each of those feelings makes sense from where the seller sits. They came in wanting the same shopper we want, and they heard a question about whether they belong in front of that shopper.
Draw it in front of them
One of the things that helps me here is analogy and drawing things out, because when we actually connect the dot in front of them visually, they see you are trying to achieve this goal, right? Then they will say, “Yes, we are also trying to achieve this goal. Your way is this, and what we propose is this way, because we feel that your way has these problems.” That is when they realize, “Ah, now I see it. Now I get it, what you are trying to say.”
That has been my personal go-to, which is why I have always been a big-time Miro user, but lately I have stopped using Miro and I’ve moved into Excalidraw because it’s quick, it’s fast, and I can just whip up the whiteboard and draw it in front of them.
What to do on Monday
The next time sales tells you the customer wants it, start with one question.
Ask which customer first.
Then look one link further down the chain.
If I try and look for their customer’s problem, this is a symptom that we are treating. We are not treating the root cause. If we do this instead, or the solution that your customer wants is done in this manner, then we are truly able to solve the true customer’s problem. This is how we should test it, and that’s where the alignment starts pulling in, because they then relay that message back to their customers.
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If sales has ever handed you a request with “the customer wants it” attached, this one was written for you, so hit subscribe and the next post lands in your inbox. And if you know a PM stuck between a client’s request and that client’s own customer, send it their way.