Connecting sales, marketing and product

I’ve been thinking recently about how critical and interconnected the relationship between sales, marketing and product is. Especially in an open source startup context. 

Positioning, for example, is often thought of as a marketing exercise. First of all, I’m here to tell you it is not. Most of the companies I work with on positioning end up changing their product roadmap as a result of a positioning change. And positioning forms the foundation for what you should say during a sales conversation — and in general, sales and marketing exist on a continuum and really share many of the same fundamentals. 

And if you’re thinking about product-led growth — which you should be, if you’re an open source company — then you should be expecting your product to drive growth just as much as your marketing activities. It’s all interconnected. 

If you’re thinking of marketing, sales and product as separate, immediately look for ways to bring them together. They are all working on different the same problem: How do you get your project and your product used by and loved by more people.