Enterprise Client Management is Product Management

Justin DiPietro, COO of SaleMove, shares how he handles feature requests from Fortune 500 clients, prioritizes opportunities, and creates product roadmaps.

Enterprise product management requires a unique set of skills and strategies. While consumer product management entails analytics, rapid iteration, and getting feedback from millions of potential users, enterprise product management entails long sales cycles, client management, and getting feedback from a smaller pool of large clients.

One of the most significant challenges in enterprise product management is handling feature requests. When a client is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for your product, it’s hard to say “no.”

Justin has mastered this art. He’s the Co-Founder and COO of SaleMove, a customer engagement platform that’s used by Fortune 500 companies including Capital One and Deutsche Bank.

Justin says that clients often say they want “X”, but they really need “Y.” So he works to deeply understand the underlying problem instead of simply doing what they ask. Justin is dedicated to building features that improve his clients’ KPIs.

Justin also takes a unique approach to creating product roadmaps. While many product leaders set roadmaps for one or more years into the future, Justin sets quarterly roadmaps. This allows his team to adapt to client needs and rapidly changing market conditions.

You’ll learn a lot from this episode about roadmaps, client management, and handling feature requests.

Here are the highlights:

• The most significant challenges of working with enterprise clients (5:00)
• How Justin handles feature requests from major clients (8:00)
• Justin shares his approach to creating a product roadmap (10:10)
• How Justin prioritizes the product pipeline (13:20)
• Justin’s approach to handling feature requests that don’t fit into the company’s long-term vision (17:05)