Meet Productboard 👋

They’re a product management platform that helps teams get their products to market faster by understanding what customers need, prioritizing what to build next, and aligning all stakeholders around the company's product roadmap. 

To support their sales org they implemented Qualified a little over a year ago. We recently caught up with their Senior Manager of Growth Marketing, Lily Cardiner, to break down the success of their program, the challenges they’ve overcome, and get her tips for driving rep adoption. 

How Productboard uses Qualified

Productboard took a very broad approach when implementing Qualified at first. "We were using it for inbound leads through the chat, booking meetings, tracking outreach clickthroughs, and developing personalized experiences for one-to-one ABM programs,” said Lily about the use cases they rolled out. 

This proved to be a little overwhelming for their reps, who took a bit of time to warm up and fully embrace the power of the platform. Now, Qualified is their second-leading channel for meetings booked, across segments–so what changed for their team over the year, and what can we learn from Productboard’s growth? 

Overcoming challenges during onboarding

The main challenge Productboard faced during the onboarding process was their distribution engine. They use LeanData to manage their routing, which doesn’t currently integrate with Qualified. This means they had to mimic the routing as closely as possible, which was challenging, especially for their EMEA team.

The EMEA team is split into different countries, speaking to their buyers in different languages and with different sales cultural norms, which can be much more formal than North America. As a result, they resisted the tool initially, and the language and routing differences proved to be the biggest challenge for them.

Lily’s 3 tips for driving rep adoption

Lily shared some tips on how to get reps engaged and drive adoption when implementing any new technology:

1. Start small: Enable one team at a time and get wins. Build momentum to prove that the investment is the best one for the entire organization.
2. Build champions: Develop the skills of one person from each team and have them show the value of the tool to the rest of their team.
3. Ongoing education: Keep reps engaged and using the tool by providing ongoing education and demonstrating its value.

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It's starting small, really building out your key champions. Within every team, I have one person that I work with and develop their skills to then have them show the value to the rest of their team."

- Lily Cardiner, Senior Manager of Growth Marketing, Productboard

Celebrating Productboard’s wins as a team

Productboard has seen some significant wins from using Qualified. They’ve generated large logo opportunities and reduced the friction within their sales cycles, and they’ve also seen some outreach click-through wins. In 2022, Qualified generated a ton of pipeline for their commercial and enterprise businesses, but Lily is most excited about how the program has sparked internal collaboration and celebration. 

"It’s been really cool just to see how the team's collaborating in a different way than they were before using Qualified. The teams are getting a morale boost,” she said. 

Productboard's experience with implementing Qualified provides valuable insights into how to drive rep adoption of any new technology, especially when your team might be more hesitant around disturbing their status quo. 

Starting small, building champions, and providing ongoing education and value demonstrations can help get reps engaged and keep them using the tool. By focusing on how the Pipeline Cloud works for your unique business case, teams can find major wins and clearly see the difference in their pipeline generation strategy. 

We’re so grateful for our partnership with Productboard, and we’re excited to see what 2023 brings them! They’re expanding their live chat program in the EMEA region to start refining their pouncing and conversational marketing strategies for their EMEA markets. We’re also excited to see what’s to come as they invest time in Signals! Signals will help inform their deal cycles with both research and buying intent data, personalize their outreach efforts, and prioritize their outbound motion.