For digital product companies, differences in goals and mindsets between the Product & Engineering teams and the Revenue teams (marketing, sales, success…) can be significant. But it all comes together at user adoption.
This is where the ‘rubber meets the road,’ so to speak. Even with all of the pristine systems and processes on the P&E side, you can’t achieve success if people don’t want to use what you build. And while sellers are often incentivized based on closing the sale, sales leaders know that customers don’t stick around long unless they see value from what they buy. All roads lead to adoption.
Aligning P&E With the GTM Teams
Product managers are often the bridge between these teams. As ‘the CEO of the product,’ their job is to decide what features or new functionality to invest in. But then, they need the help of the marketing, sales, success, etc… teams to help make customers aware, nudge users to try something new, and ultimately help drive adoption.
At Cloud Elements, we work most with digital products teams who have decided they need to make a strategic investment in productized integrations for their users. They may already have built one or two integrations themselves and know they don’t want to hire dedicated Java engineers to deal with complex SOAP APIs, nor do they want to continue to devote hundreds of hours annually to maintaining integrations. If, like Gainsight this past year, you want to launch several or even a dozen new integrations to CRM and ERP systems in a year without hiring busloads of developers, you need to invest in an integration platform to help make that happen.
All this to say that ‘strategic investments’ mean enough time and investment to merit a coordinated go-to-market (GTM) push and product launch. Not surprisingly, our customers often look to us to for help to position their new integration offering. Our first question in these situations is usually, “Have you spoken with the GTM teams yet?” and you’d be surprised how often the answer is, “Not really.”
The Simplified Guide - Start With a Conversation Starter
At Cloud Elements, we see ourselves as more than a technology partner—we want to be a resource for these internal GTM conversations and share the lessons we’ve learned from our experience with similar companies. That’s why we’ve distilled key GTM insights from our nearly a decade of integration launch and go-to-market initiatives into a new ebook called, The Simplified Guide to Marketing and Selling Integrations.
It’s a mouthful, but at least the title is clear. In the Simplified Guide you’ll find straightforward, practical guidance to:
- Develop a GTM strategy and positioning for integrations
- Identify key stakeholders and understand what matters to them when it comes to integrations
- Decide what revenue model makes the most business sense for your investment in integrations
- Achieve alignment and execution of the right product launch or strategic GTM initiatives
