If you're in sales and account management and you have tons of field data to justify features but you can't convince product managers, this presentation are just for you. Learn why product managers have to be diligent in prioritizing features, how they get their inputs and how to present your ideas in a compelling way.

1. Proprietary and confidential
HOW TO GIVE PRODUCT FEEDBACK
Yvan Castilloux
Product Management
Jana Mobile (www.jana.com)
1

2. Proprietary and confidential
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM - 2 COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
2
PRODUCT: Dev resources are scarce and product must focus to build the next BIG features.
SALES: Has aggressive sales targets to meet every quarter. Has a field view of how the
market is evolving.

3. Proprietary and confidential
SALES PERSPECTIVE OF PRODUCT
3
I have $1m of
business at
stake. This is
huge. Let’s do
something quick.
Product people
are not
supporting us -
they don’t
understand our
customers.
I know what the
market wants. I
talk to customers
every day.
Why does it take
so long to build
stuff? This
feature is super
simple.
I have worked so
hard to build up
this account. Can
they just help
me?

4. Proprietary and confidential
PRODUCT PERSPECTIVE OF SALES
4
My engineering
team is getting
distracted by
short-term
features with no
clear benefits.
Can they just sell
what I just built?
We have so
much stuff to do.
We need to
create disruptive
features to win
the market in the
long run.
Sales doesn’t
understand
engineering. They
keep giving us too
many ideas
without context.

5. Proprietary and confidential
BUILDING SOFTWARE CAN BE ANALOGOUS TO BUILDING AND MAINTAINING A HOUSE
5
… AND SALES IS ALREADY
SELLING THIS AMAZING
EXPERIENCE!
• BUILDING THE FOUNDATION
• BUILDING THE RIGHT STRUCTURES
• INSULATING / PROTECTING
• MAINTAINING / FIXING
• + BUILDING A GREAT INTERIOR EXPERIENCE!
SOFTWARE IS HARD TO “SEE” BUT THESE NEED TO GET DONE!

6. Proprietary and confidential
6
NOBODY WANTS THIS (I.E. AN UNLIVABLE MESS)

7. Proprietary and confidential
WHERE DOES PRODUCT TAKE ITS INPUTS?
7
• MARKET TRENDS (READINGS, CONVERSATIONS WITH EXPERTS)
• EXAMPLES OF PRODUCTS THAT HAVE HIGH VALUATION / CUSTOMER TRACTION
• COMPETITION
• ANALYTICS ON MANY EXPERIMENTS DONE IN THE PAST
• COMPANY VISION / MISSION
• DATA ON “ALL” CUSTOMERS
• SALES TEAM
• ENGINEERING
• BUGS THAT NEED TO BE FIXED SO THE HOUSE DOES NOT CRUMBLE
… AND WE GET IDEAS FROM SO MANY PEOPLE… IN SLACK, IN DISCUSSIONS, EVERYONE
HAS AN INPUT (MGT TEAM, ENGINEERS, OTHER TEAMS, URGENCIES)
THE TASK / STORY BACKLOG OF MOST ENGINEERING TEAMS WILL BE HUGE WITH BUGS,
FOUNDATIONAL WORK, AND OTHER GREAT IDEAS!

8. Proprietary and confidential
GIVING PRODUCT INPUTS THE WRONG WAY
8
Our volumes are low
today. I’m sure this will
work. What is the
ETA?
What is the ETA of the
feature we
brainstormed over a
beer?
One customer had a
great idea. Could we
do this? If so when?

9. Proprietary and confidential
GIVING PRODUCT INPUTS THE WRONG WAY
9
WHY CAN’T THE PM PRIORITIZE THIS?
• There are many great ideas in the backlog. Many are “proven” with analyses and
experimentations.
• It is crucial to have some analysis in relation to our revenue and retention metric
• Engineers can’t change epics all the time -> product quality could suffer tremendously
• The PM does not know the ETA until the feature is scheduled, and only a few tickets per
week are.
• Simple conceptual ideas can take tremendous amount of time.
LET’S TAKE AN EXAMPLE, AND LET’S QUANTIFY AN EXAMPLE OF A TRADE-OFF:
1.Current strategic epic (e.g. targeting): $1m per month of potential revenue
2.Team reprioritizes it for a new unproven idea, which turns out to only bring 0.5% of
revenue ($500 per month) or the customer pulls out last minute (then $0 per month).
3.Then this is 2 extra weeks that we’re not capturing the million $ per month (+
competitors coming at us).
The risk of a thrashing and not being diligent is high!

10. Proprietary and confidential
GIVING PRODUCT INPUTS THE RIGHT WAY
10
Our volumes are low
lately. How can we
figure out why this is
happening?
Our biggest customer —
10% of our revenue — has
seen lots of strange
behavior recently. I think this
may be true for everyone.
What is the best way to
analyze this? I can help out
since I just learned SQL.
With the help of all AMs, I
have gathered a list of 5
product ideas that could
be big. I want to see what
you think and how it can
be prioritized vs. all of the
great things you’re doing.

11. Proprietary and confidential
GIVING PRODUCT INPUTS THE RIGHT WAY
11
THINK LIKE A PM!
• It’s never obvious what to do. Engineering resources are scarce, things take a
lot more time.
• Product can’t afford the risk of not being diligent, even when something is
conceptually interesting.
• Most new things are not obvious to prioritize right way.
• I personally have a backlog of 20 great things I want to prioritize (coming
from Mgt, other PMs’ ideas. data science, slack, other Ams / Sales, iHop,
engineering teams)
• If you think your idea is great, then help us out by doing some the leg work -
> think like a PM.