Podcast: Cross-Functional Soft Skills for Product Leaders

I joined Richard Chen of Product Gym for a podcast about product management, soft skills, and understanding what motivates other functional groups – Sales, Marketing, Engineering and Support.

We talked about:

• How Sales & Marketing folks may be less interested in how we prioritize (and more interested in whether their items are in plan)

• Dunning-Kruger effect on both sides: development/product teams underestimate how hard sales & marketing are; GTM groups underestimate how hard it is to validate or build products

• Rich’s view that product feedback from salespeople is less useful than from support, field engineers, and direct from end users/buyers

• The long view on funding for startups (periodic downturns every 8-10 years)