How we ensure alignment between sales and product

A great partnership between product and sales requires shared definitions of success and an agreed upon process to collaborate. Product teams need to understand the value, marketability, adoptability, justifiability, security, scalability, reliability, usability, and sustainability of their products, while sales teams must understand these same criteria as well. Mutual understanding is key to collaboration on the product roadmap, which should capture customer problems, stack rank, status, persona, segment, and order of magnitude, allowing for feature requests prioritization based on problem severity and size. A successful product business requires a balanced approach, weighing different inputs such as table stakes features, recent launches, new innovations, and causes of customer churn to achieve a dominant market position.