Product+Marketing+Sales=Growth

Something that’s puzzled me for a while is that in most conversations I see happening around growth, product is neglected. Even in conversations around product-led growth, there’s an expectation that ‘growth’ is about sales and marketing, and product is sitting somewhere else.

If you’re an open source company — or, for that matter, if you’re a product-led company of any kind — product is a critical part of your growth strategy. Your product leaders have to not just ‘be part’ of growth conversations, but product, marketing and sales should be equals in those conversations.

There should also be a tight feedback loop between product, sales and marketing (and, if you have it, support/success). Sales tells product what customers say they want and why they buy, support tells product what they actually seem to need, product teams do user interviews and share how people actual use the product when they aren’t interacting with support, everyone tells marketing what marketing should say, feedback from user interviews, sales conversations and support informs the product roadmap… it’s super interconnected.

Thinking of product as most tightly integrated with engineering is, in my opinion, a mistake. It’s part of your growth strategy, let it sit with the growth people.