Product Launch — 3
- The partner teams we need to connect with before launch
- Why it is so important to connect with these teams
- Creating collateral for Sales and Customer Support Team
- Writing a user guide for our product
New Terms
Release notes: These are notes or documents that will accompany your launch and describe new features or bugs that were fixed. Apple App Store, for example, requires Releases notes which contain all the new features coming to your latest release.
Sales: The Sales team is responsible for selling your product.
Customer Support: A customer support team is a team that takes care of all customer complaints.
Technical Writers Technical writers are responsible for writing all of the documentation in the company. In some cases, they help with UI copy as well.
Product Specialists: The Product Specialist role varies based on the company and product. In some cases, they work closely with sales and customers with large accounts. In other cases they act as a bridge between Product and support teams.
Things to Remember About the Additional Teams We Need to Work With
As we get closer to launch we need to work with the teams that are closer to the users
- Sales
- Customer support
- Technicals Writers
- Product Specialists
How is it different for different types of products?
There will be different workflows if you work on different types of products:
- Consumer: you will probably work closely with Customer Support, maybe with Technical Writers if there is a help center for your product.
- Enterprise Product: you might work with all different teams, including Sales, Technical Writers, Customer Support. It all depends on your product and the structure of your company
How to work with different teams?
- Create collaterals and documentation
- You must work closely with them because they own the communication channels with your users
- Your role is to empower these teams to be successful by providing them information about the product
What if there are none of these functions in your startup?
Then it is probably your responsibility as the Product Manager to handle these items.
Collateral Materials for the Party App
We are getting closer to the launch of our Party App. It is time to figure out which other teams we need to work with and what collateral materials they need to support our launch.
Remember that we have two types of users for our app: party organizers and vendors.
Also remember that we are a well-supported startup with fully staffed engineering, marketing, sales, legal, testing, and customer support teams.
My Solution
Partner Teams We Need to Work With
- Sales Team for outreach to sign the vendors up for our platform
- Technical Writer to write our release notes for the App Store
- Customer Support to help with user questions and issues
Collateral Materials We Need to Create
- Guidance for Sales on how to sell our product
- Help center information and articles
- Guidance for the Customer Support team
Additional Reading
Learn more about working with Sales and CS here:
- Product managers and sales: The alliance that leads to a better product
- How Product Management Can Work Effectively with Sales
- Why Support Should Have a Voice in Product Development
- The Intersection of Product Management and Customer Success
Working with Sales and Customer Support Teams
Things to Remember About Working With Sales and Customer Support
- Smaller companies might not have as many defined teams and processes so the PM may have wider responsibilities
- Give the Sales and Customer Support teams enough time to get approvals, prepare communications and do the necessary training.
- Inform the Sales and Customer Support teams every time you add features to your product so they are prepared to sell and support the new feature
- Think about tools that you may need to build so that the support team can help and debug issues for users
While it is PM’s responsibility to lead the launch process, including deciding on timelines and crafting the messaging surrounding the launch, she still needs help from partner teams. PM is responsible for outlining the launch process, working with Marketing on the go-to-market strategy, working with Sales and Customer support. All of these are essential to have a successful launch
Sales and Customer Support Collateral Materials
New Terms
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) An early version of a product with only the features necessary to meet the needs of early adopters. It is used to get feedback for future development.
What to Include in Collateral Materials for Sales Team
- Our value proposition
- How our product solves the user’s problem
- Our product vs. competitor’s products
What to Include in Collateral Materials for Customer Support Team
- Product overview
- Potential issues for users and work arounds
- Current vs. future product
- Known bugs
Work with your partner teams to make sure they have all the information they need
Example: Working with Sales and Customer Support
Things to Remember About Working with Sales and Support
- You can learn a lot about your product by sitting next to support and listening to in on their calls with our customers
- The Sales Team can help you understand customer needs better by sharing what they hear from customers and potential customers
Important! Your role is to understand and solve the underlying problem.
The solution the customers are asking for might not be the best solution for the problem they are having.
My Solution
Your guides may be different. This is what I would put in mine:
Sales Guide
- Section 1: Our platform
- What does
- Why we think it is great
- Value it provides for the vendors
- Section 2: Revenue sharing
- Explain how revenue share will work on our platform
- Section 3: How to use
- Explain how easy it is to use our platform
Customer Support Guide
For Vendors:
- Section 1: Onboarding
- How to become a vendor on our app
- Section 2: Features
- What users can do on our app
- How to use it
For Party Organizers:
- Section 1: App Features
- What users can do on our app
- How to use it
- Section 2: Bugs or issues
- Issues that Customer Support will need to be aware of to help our users
It is also a good idea to share your PRDs with Sales and Customer Support teams
Supporting Materials
PMND C4 Party App Training Guide For Sales And Customer Support
User Guides
Things to Remember About Communicating With Users
- There are a lot of tools on the market today to create a help center or support center.
- Users want to be able to express their opinions and provide feedback.
Remember that you are building your product for your users.
Example: User Guide
My Experience
We were launching a totally new product so it had to be very well documented.
- We shared our PRD with the Technical Writers team to make sure they understand the product and its details.
- We also shared:
- Main flows
- Known issues
- Issues that would not be solved before launch
- Specific scenarios about how to use the product
My Solution
There are a lot of different things a party organizer can with with our app, but I am going to focus on these two scenarios:
- Signing up for our product
- Organizing a party
And then we will outline these flows in detail, including screenshots.
Since our product will connect users to vendors it might require payments. We will show our users where to find their payment methods.
What scenarios did you focus on in your User Guide? What feature did you highlight?
Enrichment Activity
Analyze the help pages of your favorite product.
- What do you like about the pages?
- What don’t you don’t like?
- How easy is it to find a solution for a problem with the product?
Additional Reading
Learn more about writing a user guide here:
Supporting Materials
Before We Move On…
- Sales is the voice of the customer
- Customer Support can be a great resource
- Monitor the support tickets
- If you have technical writers, use them!
- Use all the help you can get!
You should not be creating your product in a vacuum
Listen to people, get their feedback, show that you care what they think. You will achieve more through collaboration than on your own.
Glossary
