September 15, 2021
September 15, 2021
Working with product and tech teams is a very natural step for user researchers. You start to understand their timings, rhythms, what information they need, and which questions to ask them. But many other teams can benefit from your attention as a user researcher.
The first time I sat down with the sales and marketing teams in an earlier role, I attempted to convince them to do user research. I wanted sales to tell me who they were talking to and I wanted marketing to test content. Unfortunately, the meeting wasn't particularly successful as I just sat there, begging the teams to listen to something that would add extra work to their already large piles.
Through the years, I've realized how valuable these teams are and learned an important lesson: it isn't about convincing people to do what you need, but showing them how you can help one another. As a result, working with sales and marketing has made my practice more robust by giving me extra insights, but also allowing me to help them reach their goals.
This article is part of our collaboration playbook series:
As researchers, we are taught to empathize with users—that empathy should also extend to our colleagues. By understanding what teams are doing and empathizing with their goals, we can unlock the potential of a more holistic appreciation of our users.
Sales is a wonderful team focused on getting more revenue and profit for the organization. This team is striving to increase the number of new customers and upsells or cross-sells. They typically have a set target per quarter of sales they are trying to hit.
The marketing team's goals surround brand awareness, competition in the industry, and consumer or market behavior trends. In addition, the team is trying to get more customers engaged with the product and increase growth and market share.
Don't take my word for it, though! Sit down with them and ask them about their goals, targets, and what they are doing on a day-to-day basis. After understanding their role, you can dive into how user research can positively impact them.
Regardless of the team, it is essential to understand their previous experience with user research or any biases they hold. The best way to learn this knowledge is by asking a lot of questions. So after I get to know the members of these team's roles, I set up separate meetings to discuss user research.
In these meetings, I typically cover the following questions:
Through this question, you will understand any knowledge gaps or biases the person may have about user research. With this information, you can help inform or educate your colleagues.
By understanding how they have worked with user researchers in the past, you can uncover how you can best work together in the future.
This question can help you better understand their fears or anxieties surrounding user research, allowing you to brainstorm ways to counteract them.
By hearing about a previous project, you can gather colleagues' expectations, pain points, and needs when conducting a project.
With this information, you tie it all together and plant the seed for working together. The answer to this question can give you specific action items to get started on facilitating your relationship.
Now comes the most critical part—helping each other. This concept allows you to move away from begging people to involve you in projects. Instead, by pinpointing each team's goals, you can start to brainstorm how your skills can help them achieve those goals.
There are a few ways that I like to help sales:
Many times, the outcome I end up with is a mini-playbook for the sales team. In this playbook, the sales team can find different customer roles, what part of the journey each role interfaces with, and the most common pain points each encounters.
Putting this information into a small playbook makes it easy for sales to access it at the moment and use it to their advantage.
Market research and user research often have significant overlap. We both care deeply about customers and their respective behaviors.
Here are some ways I like to help out the marketing team:
As I mentioned, always check with both teams as there may be organization-specific ways user research can help teams at your company.
Just as we can help these departments, they can also be a great resource for us. Working with sales has led me to become a more informed researcher and learn things I may not have on my own.
So how do we work together with these teams? Here are some studies that work best with the sales and marketing teams:
Not all teams will need the same regularity of meetings and insight sharing as product and tech teams usually do. When it comes to the marketing and sales team, here is how I like to interact with them:
Usually, I’ll sit down with the marketing and sales team once a month to review the most important insights for their respective teams. I make sure to select the more relevant insights for the teams so I am not overwhelming them with information that doesn't apply to their goals.
As soon as I do any customer journey, service blueprint, or persona work, I sit down with these teams for a workshop. During this time they share everything they know about the customer and I use it to build a prototype of these deliverables that we can later validate.
In the past, I've synced with marketing about once every two weeks, especially since there can be cross-over in the type of research we do. This bi-weekly sync can help ensure we are sharing insights and not doubling up on certain research projects. I meet with sales once a month during the share-out, but always keep an open channel in between meetings.
Overall, the more people you involve in your user research practice the better. You can provide more assistance to your organization and have a deeper understanding of the users.
You can start with small steps. First, understand how your colleagues feel about user research. Then, once you learn how you can help them, start building a plan to collaborate!
Nikki Anderson-Stanier is the founder of User Research Academy and a qualitative researcher with 9 years in the field. She loves solving human problems and petting all the dogs.
To get even more UXR nuggets follow her on LinkedIn, or subscribe to her Substack.