Find out what team demand is, and why it's so important when it comes to SaaS product management and development.

1. What Is Team Demand, And
Why Should I Care?
By Joe Daniels

2. Points Of View
1

3. Your internal teams all have their own
perspectives on your product, and therefore
have their own ideas, insights, and feedback
to give.

4. Leadership:
Sales:
Customer Success:
Customer Support:
Engineering:
Product:
Strategic overview, opportunities for growth.
Understand customer demands and pain points.
Improve onboarding, reduce churn.
Identify any product niggles or friction.
Understand time and effort involved.
In-depth product knowledge.

5. Top Tip: Reach out to members of your organization and tell
them how important their viewpoints are, and to keep an eye
out for any feedback opportunities.

6. The Challenges
2

7. There are several challenges you need to overcome in order for
you to make the most out of your internal team demand...

8. The Cushion Effect:
3

9. A phenomenon whereby a person only remembers
the most recent thing said to them.
This leads to a lack of historical perspective and
biased decision making.

10. Overcome this challenge by establishing a
feedback channel for your internal teams to use,
enabling you to look back and see the features
which keep cropping up.

11. Personal Bias:
4

12. People generally prefer to accept feedback from
those they get along with better.
This means that you may miss out on great insights
from people you don’t speak to as often.

13. You can counteract personal bias by encouraging
everyone to access the feedback channel
whenever they have an idea. You could even do
this anonymously.

14. Loudest Voice:
5

15. Some people will have a louder voice within your
organization.
As a result, feedback can often be collected from
these people more than others.

16. You can avoid this issue by allowing everyone to
speak their mind, even if it means approaching the
quieter members of your team one-on-one to ask
their opinion.

17. Managing Team Demand
6

18. Step 1 - The
Channel:
7

19. You need to create a channel that every team
member can access and update with their
feedback.
This allows you to easily analyze the data you
collect.

20. This channel can be as
simple as a Google Sheet
or email address.
Larger companies should
consider using Receptive
or Airtable.
8

21. You can now prioritize your insights and ideas.
And and open channel leads to cross-pollination of
ideas, enabling them to develop and improve.
9

22. Top Tip: It’s useful at this stage to invite your engineering and
dev teams to assess the ideas for time and effort required. This
will help with prioritization.

23. Step 2 - Communication:
10

24. You should ensure that everyone is up to date
with where your product is headed, and which
features are in the pipeline.
This can change quickly so communication is
crucial.

25. Use a roadmap and
release log, accessible by
all, and send status
updates to everyone, so
your team members are
in the loop.
11

26. This creates alignment around a common goal
through transparency and open communication.

27. Top Tip: Software like Receptive automatically keeps team
members updated on feature requests, feedback & ideas so
that you don’t have to do it manually.

28. Start Acting Strategically
12

29. For this feedback to work, you need a strategy.
We recommend a 90 day plan, outlining your big
goal for the next quarter.

30. Once you know your
aim, you can segment
your data accordingly.
13

31. An example: If you wanted to reduce churn over
the next 90 days, you could segment the data to
focus on customer support team members, as they
will have insights into why users are churning.

32. Top Tip: If a team member feels you aren’t paying attention to
their ideas, explain that priorities change over time, and whilst
it isn’t relevant today, it might be tomorrow.

33. Key Takeaways:
● Internal teams all have their own perspectives and insights into your product.
● There are certain challenges along the way:
○ The Cushion Effect.
○ Personal Bias.
○ Loudest Voice.
● Managing team demand requires two steps:
○ A dedicated channel to store feedback.
○ Clear communication at all times.
● Once you have your data, you need to act strategically (90 day plan).
● Segment your data in line with your big goal for the next quarter.

34. Thanks for Reading!

35. Photo Credits
1: https://unsplash.com/search/binoculars?photo=18dsFU_VpZI
2: https://unsplash.com/search/challenge?photo=Jiyoj5B72iU
3: https://www.halloweencostumes.com/whoopie-cushion-costume.html
4: https://pixabay.com/en/rock-craft-people-friends-support-1771913/
5: https://pixabay.com/en/megaphone-speaker-man-sound-alert-297467/
6: https://pixabay.com/en/light-bulbs-light-bulb-light-energy-1125016/
7: https://unsplash.com/search/tv?photo=R1J6Z1cnJZc
8: https://www.goandroid.co.in/google-docs-sheets-apps-lands-play-store/37415/
9: https://pixabay.com/en/honeybee-bee-flying-fly-insect-24633/
10: https://unsplash.com/search/communication?photo=1PP0Fc-KSd4
11: https://unsplash.com/search/road?photo=8ZgJyLGbC7Y
12: https://pixabay.com/en/chess-figure-game-play-board-1215079/
13: https://pixabay.com/en/minneola-oranges-tangelo-429383/