Product evangelism is, as Guy Kawasaki put it years ago, “selling the dream.” It's helping people imagine the future and inspiring them to help create that future.
If you're a startup founder, a CEO, or a head of product, this is a very big part of your job, and you'll have a hard time assembling a strong team if you don't get good at it.
If you're a product manager—especially at a large company—and you're not good at evangelism, there's a very strong chance that your product efforts will get derailed before they see the light of day. And even if product does manage to ship, it will likely go the way of thousands of other large company efforts and wither on the vine.
We've talked about how important it is to have a team of missionaries, not mercenaries, and evangelism is a key responsibility to make this happen. The responsibility for this falls primarily on the product manager.
There are several techniques to help communicate the value of what you're proposing to your team, colleagues, stakeholders, executives, and investors. Here are my top‐10 pieces of advice for product managers to sell the dream:
Use a prototype. For many people, it's way too hard to see the forest through the trees. When all you have is a bunch of user stories, it can be difficult to see the big picture and how things hang together (or even if they hang together). A prototype lets them clearly see the forest and the trees.
Share the pain. Show the team the customer pain you are addressing. This is why I love to bring engineers along for customer visits and meetings. For many people, they have to see (or experience) the pain themselves to get it.
Share the vision. Make sure you have a very clear understanding of your product vision, product strategy, and product principles. Show how your work contributes to this vision and is true to the principles.
Share learnings generously. After every user test or customer visit, share your learnings—not just the things that went well, but share the problems, too. Give your team the information they need to help come up with the solution.
Share credit generously. Make sure the team views it as their product, not just your product. However, when things don't go well, step forward and take responsibility for the miss and show the team you're learning from the mistakes as well. They'll respect you for it.
Learn how to give a great demo. This is an especially important skill to use with customers and key execs. We're not trying to teach them how to operate the product, and we're not trying to do a user test on them. We're trying to show them the value of what we're building. A demo is not training, and it's not a test. It's a persuasive tool. Get really, really good at it.
Do your homework. Your team and your stakeholders will all be much more likely to follow you if they believe you know what you're talking about. Be the undisputed expert on your users and customers. And be the undisputed expert on your market, including your competitors and the relevant trends.
Be genuinely excited. If you're not excited about your product, you should probably fix that—either by changing what you work on or by changing your role.
Absolutely be sincere, but let people see you're genuinely excited. Enthusiasm really is contagious.
Learn to show some enthusiasm. Assuming you're genuinely excited, it's amazing to me how many product managers are so bad or so uncomfortable at showing enthusiasm. This matters—a lot. Absolutely be sincere, but let people see you're genuinely excited. Enthusiasm really is contagious.
Spend time with your team. If you're not spending significant face time with your designer and every engineer on your team, then they can't see the enthusiasm in your eyes. If your team is not co‐located, you'll need to make a special effort to travel there and do this at least every couple months. Spending some personal time with every last person on the team pays off big in their level of motivation and, as a result, in the velocity of the team. It's worth your time.
If your company is midsize to large, then it's normal to have product marketing play the role of evangelist with your customers and your sales force. You still may be called on to help out on the big deals and partnerships, but you'll need to focus your evangelism on your team because the best thing you can do for your customers is to provide them with a great product.