When you're at odds with marketing over product features, finding common ground involves open dialogue and alignment on goals. Start by arranging a meeting to understand their perspective and share your own. Focus on the broader objectives, such as customer satisfaction and business goals, to identify shared interests. Discuss the feasibility of their requests and the potential impact on the product’s quality and timeline. Look for compromises that meet both teams' needs, like phased rollouts or adjustments to the feature set. Regularly communicate and collaborate to ensure both sides are aligned and address any concerns as they arise.

I find common ground with marketing over product features by listening to their perspective, sharing data-driven insights, focusing on customer needs, exploring compromises, collaboratively prioritizing, and maintaining open communication to drive a cohesive product and marketing strategy.

Often this happens when there is a lack of communication. Have an open dialogue and hear out their concerns. Once you understand why they are concerned, then you can think about how to mitigate those concerns. Second, bring the data in a way that addresses the things that marketing cares about. For example, marketing cares a lot about brand reputation. Can you show them that this kind of work is necessary in order to strengthen or prevent harm to the brand? Another thing marketing cares a lot about is traction / sign ups. Can you show them that this kind of work helps to grow traction? Third, marketing cares about big logos. Can you show that this work is meeting the needs of flagship customers?

In many organizations, Product Management doesn't consider Product Marketing part of the team and doesn't respect them. It is a big problem that needs to be addressed. A fundamental document that both the Product Management and Product Marketing teams should align on is the Pragmatic Marketing Positioning Document. That document should serve as a foundation for all marketing efforts and drive all associated feature-related marketing. The discussion of whether or not to market a feature should be based on whether or not that feature shows up in the "top 5" list of the Positioning Document. Product Management has a fundamental responsibility to work respectfully with many teams in an organization, including Product Marketing.

+ Schedule frequent cross-functional meetings to discuss product features, updates, and issues. + Encourage free communication in which team members may share their opinions without fear of confrontation or repercussions. + Use project management and communication tools (such as Slack, Trello, and Jira) to keep everyone informed and involved. + Set up seminars where both teams may express their priorities, goals, and restrictions. + Focus talks on the end-user's requirements and how each feature will affect the customer experience. + Recognize both teams' accomplishments, no matter how modest they may appear. This promotes trust and maintains the sense that both teams are working toward the same objective.