AMA: Salesforce Former Vice President, Global Enablement, Roopal Shah on Stakeholder Alignment

So I use sprint planning for business. When it works well and we're compliant, it works beautifully. Here, we break our work into two week sprints and continously prune backlogs and review ad hoc requests. We also try to allocate 'white space" within the two week sprints for things that may pop up as needed. And we also have things like V2MOMs at Salesforce along with strategy / alignment decks that ensure we are marching towards the big uber goals. 

Planning ahead for those connects - whether it's scheduled coffee or regular 1:1s or even sometimes inviting them to your team meetings for "fun" is always a great way to build and maintain relationsips - even in this virtual world. And in your 1:1s, don't jump into business all the time right away - make time for bantor and chit chat - too often, especially as we all struggle to combat Zoom fatigue, this becomes especially important. I personally find things become a lot easier / productive when you find common ground with everyone I meet with.

Goes back to the shared goals - which at a high level, are hard to argue with - revenue, cost savings, customer success, etc. Once you get that common agreement, then it's about the strategy / the "how" to get there. If there are disagreements here, I would start with trying to understand why and seeing it from both of their vantage points. Then trying to see if you can get them 1:1 to understand the other point of view or better yet, get them to talk to each other. Ultimately though if all that doesn't work, you may need to get a tie breaker that's someone else and who they will listen to.

We're all human after all so taking the time to understand the baggage but also find a path forward. Find a champion on both sides willing to go on the journey with you and who is as vested as you are in moving forward. And making time for building carmaderie. I remember we once had tensions between our PMM and Marketing organization - so we spend time in workshops doing joint planning, finding operational projects where we could join up people to build bridges, and finally team bonding - including team building activities and dinners, happy hours, etc. And doing this on a repeatable basis. It takes time but is worth it if the teams are critical to the success of your goals.

It starts with aligning on common goals - what I find people get lost is in the "how" we get there. In business, we can all agree on goals that are like motherhood and apple pie - like revenue or cost savings. Hard to argue with those. Once you get aligned on that, then start with understanding what the recommended path is to get there. It could be what you're pitching or it could be something else. As long as you stay grounded in the shared goal, the rest is a lot easier, in my opinion. 

For B2B sales, based on my experience, I would say its the following (1) Product (2) Sales/SEs and (3) Corporate Marketing. Product: because well you need to know about the "product" in product marketing! Sales/SEs/CSG because they will be your first customers and users of your products. Pitch to them before you considering pitching to customers. And lastly, Corporate Marketing because you need those relationships for the outbound portion of your job - campaigns, blogs, SEO, lead generation, etc. 

In addition to product sales, I typically like to vet things out with SEs - they are the ones demonstrating the products and weave stories as they do so - so having them alinged in the key benefits, messaging and positioning is key. Additionally CSG - customer success. They are the ones who have great insight into what's working and not working for customers. And lastly, Corporate Marketing - who ultimately own the brand - so top level messaging needs to align well. 

(1) Learn as much as you can about the product and do your research - it's really easy these days to learn the competitive differentiators of your products, read analyst reports, what customers say, how they market, etc. (2) Be useful and humble - if you're looking for an entry level position - be open to learning and be useful - be willing to go the extra mile to add value - whether it's editing a slide deck or reviewing copy. Anything you can do to add value for your manager. (3) Talk to your sales teams - they are the brand ambassadors and many times, the first users of the products (especially SEs) so use them to learn what you can about and how they demo/talk about the differentiators, handle customer objections, etc.