Sales as a skill for a Product Manager
What handling sales taught me more about products, customer needs, and grievances- a reality check
Want to learn better about your product? Spend time selling it.
When you are building 0-1, you and your team do everything. And biggest acid test here is how did that first sale happen?
If you are bootstrapping, or operate with small teams and tight budgets one can’t afford to hire people for sales, BD etc. You are everything.
At Flinto (both the B-C and B-B) I had the opportunity to sell our products and my entire perspective towards the product, and business changed.
Flinto ran on subscription model, this is a physical product, and renewals were an important part of the cycle because a huge % of our sales came from our 3 month plan (people were testing the product, or it was gifted) so this meant renewals were key.
Selling the subscription for a learning and development toy box was an art in itself. More than the box our sales teams were selling the concept.
Identification of key problem statement- Hook: Keep your children away from TV and mobile phones.
This was a genuine problem for parents, especially for parents with toddlers. The subscription box aimed to reduce screen time while engaging in activities that developed key development skills in children.
Our sales pitch always asked about the time kids spent watching TV/youtube, tried to understand their daily schedule and this helped us pitch better.
This also meant we understood the headspace of the parent too better, empathy goes a long way.
(this wouldn’t have worked in a pandemic filled everything is happening online world.)
Renewals and negotiations: I exclusively worked in renewal sales. Look at customer data who are due for renewal, or whose subscriptions have renewed, call them and make them renew the subscription. Sounded very simple in my head.
What did I learn
— Your product is good but subscription is very expensive: This was a very typical negotiation tactic. We were already giving renewals are discounted pricing.
Original pricing: 1699 for 3 months, renewals were 1499 for 3 months.
During renewal sales we try to explain this price differentiation and beyond that we try to add our worksheets for free inside the box. Might work mostly, but beyond that we do sometimes offer more discount but while talking you can gauge with tone if the customer really intends to renew or is just playing in the field.
Unique problems
While speaking to a customer from Mumbai for renewals I learnt the genuine problem they had. This parent has 2 kids, and had subscribed for 6 months for both kids. This meant they so far got 12 boxes. There were unfinished items in boxes, which was occupying space in their 800sq.ft apartment with 4 people.
This was a real problem and you will comprehend this only if you’ve lived in Mumbai and its pigeon hole sized houses. There was no way I could have won this negotiation, all I did was tell them I will call a month or so later.
This also made us think about how we needed collection centres for our old boxes and it also lead us to write blogs about what our users could do with our old boxes. Insights are everywhere but there are more when you hear from your customers.
What I learnt as a PM?
Speaking to customers for renewals and sales made me understand that our app users had one major concern- when is my box getting delivered.
We moved tracking to homescreen with clear representation of shipment details.
This meant we could add additional features on “while you wait for your delivery” and pitch our DIY videos, worksheets to our users.
This increased open rates, engagement by 27% and reduced call to support by 15% in 3 months.
Negotiation is an art, and there are very few people with mastery over this. Otherwise most of us are just learning, failing, falling, unlearning, and relearning everyday.