What Every VP Product Should Know to Power Revenue
Intro: The Missing Link Between Technology and Revenue
In too many companies, GTM (Go-To-Market) is treated as a downstream function — something that happens after the product is built. But in successful companies, Product and GTM are tightly integrated from day one. The best VPs of Product don’t just build features — they build revenue engines. This post breaks down how Product leaders can become strategic partners to Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success to supercharge GTM impact.
1. Be in the Room Early — With Customers and GTM
What to do:
Product teams should participate in early sales calls, churn interviews, and onboarding sessions. These conversations offer priceless insights about what buyers care about, where users get stuck, and what messaging resonates.
Why it matters:
You’ll hear directly how your roadmap maps (or doesn't) to real buyer pain. That feedback loop makes the product more marketable and reduces go-to-market friction.
2. Co-Define the ICP and Use Cases
What to do:
Work with sales and marketing to define the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), key personas, and use cases — then validate them in the field.
Why it matters:
When product decisions are made with GTM alignment, everyone tells the same story: the feature story, the value story, and the buyer story all sync.
3. Build with GTM in Mind (“Marketable Features”)
What to do:
Design roadmaps that include "headline features" — capabilities that are not only valuable but easy to market and sell. Add instrumentation and UX polish to showcase value clearly.
Why it matters:
If your best features are buried or hard to explain, marketing can’t message them, and sales can’t demo them. Great product design amplifies GTM effectiveness.
4. Translate Product Value into Sales Narratives
What to do:
Help craft the strategic narrative and translate features into business outcomes. Provide sales enablement material: battle cards, value drivers, demo flows, FAQs.
Why it matters:
Product teams that help sales tell the story close the gap between technical depth and executive relevance. You’re not just building the product — you're enabling revenue.
5. Create a Feedback Loop — Powered by Revenue, Not Volume
What to do:
Establish a structured, data-driven feedback loop between GTM and Product. Sales ops and Product should work together to aggregate open opportunities and closed-won revenue by requested feature or capability.
Why it matters:
When you map feature demand to actual pipeline and revenue impact, prioritization becomes objective — not political.
Pro Tip:
Add a “requested feature” field in your CRM tied to each opportunity. Then create dashboards that show:
- Which features are associated with the most revenue
- Which ones are stalling deals
- Which feature gaps are tied to churn or renewal risk
6. Balance Inbound and Outbound Product Operations
What to do:
Great product teams strike a healthy balance between inbound and outbound product operations:
- Inbound = working with R&D: triaging bugs, handling tech debt, managing sprints, and clearing legacy constraints.
- Outbound = engaging with the market: understanding emerging trends, customer pain points, competitor gaps, and buyer expectations.
Why it matters:
It’s easy to become over-indexed on internal firefighting. Product leaders must carve out time for outbound insights like sales calls, competitive research, and market trends.
7. Own the “Product-Led GTM” Strategy (if relevant)
What to do:
If you’re in a product-led growth (PLG) motion, Product owns a major chunk of the GTM funnel. Treat user onboarding, activation, and upsell as part of the GTM motion — not just UX.
Why it matters:
In PLG, your product is the seller. Optimizing user journeys, pricing experiments, and in-product prompts directly influences ARR.
Conclusion: GTM Is a Team Sport — Product Is the Midfielder
Product isn’t just about building what customers need. It’s about enabling Sales to sell it, Marketing to message it, and Customer Success to scale it. The best VPs of Product see GTM not as a handoff — but as a handshake. That mindset shift is the foundation of go-to-market excellence.