Gathering support for a product feature or enhancement is a critical skill for Product Managers. Talking to customers, working with key stakeholders in the business and convincing development that a feature is necessary can be a daunting task. Join Product Management expert Cait Porte as she covers how to sell your ideas internally by leveraging data to drive decision making.

1. Selling Data and Decisions To
Your Team
Cait Porte Dave Martin
With: Moderated by:
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2. About the Series
6 Education-packed sessions

3. 3
Click on the Questions panel to
interact with the presenters

4. About Cait Porte
SVP Product and Customer Experience, ZMags.
Cait Porte has been working with companies to improve products - and users’ experiences with those products - for
more than a decade. At Zmags, she oversees Product, User Experience and Global Services. She manages a team
that is intimately involved in marketers’ daily use of the Creator by Zmags and Publicator products. She helps
customers extract maximum value from the content-building platforms, and shares insights with the product team to
facilitate constant product iteration, innovation and improvement.
In addition to her role at Zmags, Cait is the co-founder of Boston Women in Product, a community that empowers
women in their product careers. She is also an instructor at General Assembly and was previously on the Board of
Directors for the Boston Product Management Association. Cait holds an M.B.A. from Babson College.
About Dave Martin
Chief Product Officer, Tes
Dave is Chief Product Officer at Tes where he can fulfil his obsession with lean product management, growth innovation
and process improvement. He has learned loads from working or consulting with a few interesting folks such as PepsiCo,
Google, Monster.com, Essence Digital, Skybet, Comparethemarket.com, Bauer, ThoughtWorks and various startups.
Dave gets excited about digital product strategy and lean operational process transformation to deliver sustainable profits
and growth. When away from a laptop he is a keen mountain biker who enjoys camping with his family all over the UK
wilderness.

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Where are we going?
• Leveraging data to make feature decisions
• Gathering feedback to uncover roadblocks and objections
• How to involve and align key stakeholders in prioritization
discussions
• Disagreeing, but getting to commitment
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

6. 6
“In God We Trust…
All Others Bring
Data.”
- W. Edwards Deming
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

7. 7
Some helpful context:
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Creator by Zmags helps
retailers create and
publish engaging web-
based content without the
traditional limitations of
development.

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Leveraging Data
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

9. 9
Leveraging Data
Feature Usage
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

10. 10
Leveraging Data
Weekly experience views
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Created experiences by week

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Leveraging Data
What metrics should YOU be looking at?
• What are the company goals?
High-level: retention of 95%
• Which activities drive retention?
 Product Usage
 Proving ROI
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

12. 12
Gathering Feedback
Data is only one part of the equation.
Gathering feedback is a
critical component of the
feature development process.
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

13. 13
Gathering Feedback
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
The best advice I’ve gotten:
• Nemawashi
• Empathy
• NIHITO

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Gathering Feedback
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
SOURCE: http://www.japanintercultural.com/en/news/default.aspx?newsID=234

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Gathering Feedback
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
“Building a consensus using one-on-
one discussion with each member of a
decision-making group.”
AKA
“The Meeting Before The Meeting”

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Gathering Feedback
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
• Meet with the “tough guys” first
• Understand where the
roadblocks might be
• Do your homework
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godfather

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Gathering Feedback
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
“It is Product’s understanding of the
customer that produces value for the
company, and a company that doesn’t
understand who it’s selling to
is bound to fail.”
SOURCE: https://medium.com/@cthrin/empathy-a-product-managers-key-to-success-462686e9e77f

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Gathering Feedback
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
• Set a regular cadence to
talk to your customers
• Remember why you’re
doing this

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Gathering Feedback
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
NIHITO
Nothing Interesting
Happens In The Office

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Gathering Feedback
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
• Usability testing and
user research
• Build a customer
advisory board
SOURCE: https://twitter.com/gmvoices/status/604030151706288129

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Alignment for Prioritization
Once we’ve looked at our data
and talked to stakeholders,
how do we prioritize?
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

22. 22
Alignment for Prioritization
MoSCoW & Stack Rank Method
The key is to
do these exercises TOGETHER
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

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Alignment for Prioritization
MoSCoW
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Must Things you cannot live without
Shoul
d
Considered important, but not vital
Could “Nice-to-have”
Won’t Things that provide little to no
value

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MoSCoW Features
• Share your purchase
• “Refer a friend”
• Tutorial to show purchase
process
• Funny game
Alignment for Prioritization
MoSCoW Features for an Ecommerce Site
• Shopping cart
• Different payment options
• User login and Registration
• Order tracking
• Blog
• Ability to zoom-in on Product Image
• Parallax homepage design
• Quick-view on search results
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

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Alignment for Prioritization
MoSCoW Features for an Ecommerce Site
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Must Should Could Won’t
Shopping cart Blog Parallax homepage
design
“Refer-a-friend”
Payment options Ability to zoom on
product image
Quick-view on
search results
Tutorial
User login and
registration
Share your
purchase
Funny game
Order Tracking

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Alignment for Prioritization
MoSCoW Features for an Ecommerce Site
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Must Should Could Won’t
Shopping cart Blog Parallax homepage
design
“Refer-a-friend”
Payment options Ability to zoom on
product image
Quick-view on
search results
Tutorial
User login and
registration
Share your
purchase
Funny game
Order Tracking

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Alignment for Prioritization
Stack Rank Method
• Three values: Effort, Impact, Urgency
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Feature Effort Impact Urgency Total Rank

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MoSCoW Features
• Share your purchase
• “Refer a friend”
• Tutorial to show purchase
process
• Funny game
Alignment for Prioritization
Stack-Rank Features for an Ecommerce Site
• Shopping cart
• Different payment options
• User login and Registration
• Order tracking
• Blog
• Ability to zoom-in on Product Image
• Parallax homepage design
• Quick-view on search results
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

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Alignment for Prioritization
Stack-Rank Features for an Ecommerce Site
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Feature Effort Impact Urgency Total Rank
Shopping cart
Payment options
Ability to zoom
Parallax homepage design
“Refer-a-friend”
Driven by
development
Discussed as
a group
Values are
multiplied

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Alignment for Prioritization
Stack-Rank Features for an Ecommerce Site
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Feature Effort Impact Urgency Total Rank
Shopping cart
Payment options
Ability to zoom
Parallax homepage design
“Refer-a-friend”
I use a scale of 1-5
Effort: 1 is high effort
Impact: 5 is high impact
Urgency: 5 is high urgency

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Alignment for Prioritization
Stack-Rank Features for an Ecommerce Site
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Feature Effort Impact Urgency Total Rank
Shopping cart 2 5 5 50 1
Payment options 2 5 5 50 2
Ability to zoom 4 4 3 48 3
Parallax homepage design 3 2 1 6 4
“Refer-a-friend” 4 1 1 4 5

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Alignment for Prioritization
Product-driven Alignment
Meetings
• 60 minutes every 2-3 weeks
• Review upcoming priorities
• Key internal stakeholders
• Complete a prioritization
method together
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
SOURCE: http://www.snaptok.com/useful-english-phrases-office-meeting.html

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Disagree and Commit
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team
Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they
disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders
have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the
sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit
wholly.
SOURCE: https://www.amazon.jobs/principles

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Selling Data and Decisions To Your Team
4 Key Take-Aways
1. Decide which data points you and your team can measure to
help drive the company goal
2. Employ tactics to gather feedback (Nemawashi, NIHITO,
Empathy)
3. Prioritize as a leadership team using MoSCoW or the Stack
Rank Method
4. Take a lesson from Amazon: Disagree and Commit
Selling Data and Decisions
To Your Team

35. 35
Don't Miss the Next Session!
www.projectmanagementupdate.com/webinar-series/building-better-products
www.productmanagementtoday.com/webinar-series/building-better-products
www.businessinnovationbrief.com/webinar-series/building-better-products

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Q&A
Cait Porte Dave Martin
With: Moderated by:
SVP Product & Customer Experience, Zmags
Linkedin page: linkedin.com/in/caitporte/
Twitter ID: @PMinHeels
Email: caitporte@gmail.com
Website: www.caitporte.com
Chief Product Officer, Tes.
Linkedin page: linkedin.com/in/mrdavemartin/
Twitter ID: @product_warrior
Email: dave@tes.com
Website: www.productwarrior.com

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Don't Miss the Next Session!
www.projectmanagementupdate.com/webinar-series/building-better-products
www.productmanagementtoday.com/webinar-series/building-better-products
www.businessinnovationbrief.com/webinar-series/building-better-products