Product Planner in action

Product manager persuading development that a feature is needed

Sarah Gibbs is a product manager for a software company and is having a feature prioritisation meeting with the VPs of Product Management, Sales and Development.

As the meeting progresses they struggle to agree which of two final ideas should be added. The VP of development is very keen on an idea that uses the latest “sexy” technology. Sarah logs onto the product planner tool that her company uses. She shows a comparison of the two ideas based on revenue, cost and another criteria her company holds important - alignment to company strategy. Sarah shows that the potential ROI for the simpler idea is much greater than the idea that uses the sexy technology.

The VP of development questions her assumptions but Sarah quickly shows the comments from the customer facing teams that identify a larger number of customers asking for the simple feature, the implementation of which will save existing customers and allow new ones to be booked.

Sales manager preparing for sales meeting

Rob Smith is a sales person for Lexicle, a small technology company. Based in Boston, he's a home worker with responsibility for the East coast of North America.

Rob has an appointment in his diary to meet an existing customer later in the week for a catch-up. He downloads the latest roadmap and datasheet literature from the intranet - Lexicle use Buzz 22 Product Planner, meaning that documents like roadmaps and datasheets are auto-generated and therefore always up to date.

Rob knows he's got the latest data - no more last minute calls to product management asking for the latest version!

Head of product management defending product performance

Bob Hayden is the VP of Product Management for a medium sized B2B services company. Bob is on a conference call with the VP of Sales and Marketing and the CEO to discuss recent poor sales performance. During the meeting the VP of Sales suggests that the poor performance is not down to the the sales teams but the services that the company offers.

Bob quickly logs onto the Product Planner tool that he and his team use and creates a custom report that brings together market information demonstrating that the market is well understood and that all of the recent and planned features are directly related to the markets that the company is focussed on. He also demonstrates that his team have responded to all the feedback that sales
have offered.

Upon reading this the CEO turns his attention back to the VP sales by asking some very difficult questions.

Customer services responding to customer and supplying feedback

Hannah Strebel is a customer services representative for M2 Digital, a telecoms supplier for SME's in the UK.

Hannah speaks to customers daily to help them implement M2 Digital's services and troubleshoot 2nd line support issues. A frustrated customer rings threatening to cancel their contract as a feature found in a competitors service, isn't offered by M2 Digital. Hannah quickly doea a search for the feature that the customer is asking for on the Product Planner tool her company uses.

This allows her to identify that many customers are asking for the feature and that it iwll be implemented in the next release which she communicates to the customer. She also adds a comment ot the tool outlining another customer has threatened to cancel if the feature isn't implemented quickly.

The customer ends the call happy that their supplier is keeping in touch with their needs and impressed that his question didn't disappear into a black hole but was answered quickly.