Episode 227: Inside LinkedIn’s Product Strategy Culture with Monica Lewis
In this episode of the Product Thinking Podcast, Melissa Perri sits down with Monica Lewis, VP of Product at LinkedIn, to explore how AI is transforming sales solutions.
Monica shares her journey from engineering to leading LinkedIn's billion-dollar Sales Solutions team, focusing on creating powerful AI-driven tools that increase the effectiveness of the sales team.
Monica discusses the integration of AI in sales processes and highlights the importance of understanding customer needs to create solutions that address real-world challenges. She emphasizes the role of AI in streamlining tasks, thereby enabling sales professionals to focus on strategic activities that create value for buyers and sellers.
If you want to learn how AI can reshape your approach to product management and sales strategy, tune in and gain valuable insights from Monica's experience at LinkedIn.
You’ll hear us talk about:
00:02:54 - Grounding AI in Customer Needs
Monica explains how LinkedIn ensures their AI solutions are centered around customer problems, emphasizing the need for understanding audience and customer requirements first when developing AI-driven products.00:10:27 - Leveraging AI to Improve Sales Effectiveness
Monica shares how AI is helping salespeople become more efficient by automating non-customer-facing tasks and providing valuable insights for better decision-making.
00:30:01 - Embracing Failure and Rapid Testing
Monica shares a pivotal moment at LinkedIn where rapid experimentation and smart risk-taking led to an increase in customer acquisition, highlighting the importance of quick testing, learning, and iteration.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Monica Lewis: When I was a new pm. And I was owning this area within LinkedIn, That was our job posting experience and so my first effort let's redesign the job posting flow on LinkedIn. I remember we had a product review with a very senior leader at LinkedIn, his first question what customer problem are you solving? And my heart sank. I was the most junior person in the room. I could have been left out to, suffer on my own and my leader at the time, immediately without missing a beat, stepped in. The extent of support that I felt from that leader and accountability that he took in owning that in the moment, really stuck with me and helped me think about leadership. It's about taking that accountability for the team and I really appreciated that.
AI has been at the heart of, a bunch of things we do across LinkedIn for a long time, and obviously, certainly more recently with the evolution of LLMs and generative ai, it's helped us unlock a lot of new value for our customers. Doing these repetitive tasks, looking up people, doing a bunch of research on an organization. It's helped us bring all that in one place and make it really turnkey for sellers to be able to unlock those insights that they need.
I think a couple ingredients that successful teams have together is like. Getting your cross-functional partners onboard at the same time, so it's not like product says this and then designer engineering down the line, go execute. So having this like really healthy cross-functional team to drive that.
Intro
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[00:01:23] PreRoll: Creating great products isn't just about product managers and their day to day interactions with developers. It's about how an organization supports products as a whole. The systems, the processes, and cultures in place that help companies deliver value to their customers. With the help of some boundary pushing guests and inspiration from your most pressing product questions, we'll dive into this system from every angle and help you find your way.
Think like a great product leader. This is the product thinking podcast. Here's your host, Melissa Perri.
[00:02:01] Melissa Perri: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Today I'm excited to have Monica Lewis, the VP of Product Management at LinkedIn joining us. She leads the LinkedIn Sales Solutions, a billion dollar business that leverages AI driven insights to revolutionize sales teams effectiveness.
I'm thrilled to learn from her experiences and insights on how AI is reshaping the sales landscape and her approach to building product teams that can get ahead of innovation. But before we talk to Monica, it's time for Dear Melissa.
This is a segment of the show where you can ask me all of your burning product management questions, and I answer them here every single week. Go to dear melissa.com and let me know what's on your mind.
Hey, product people. I have some very exciting news. Our new mastering product strategy course is now live on Product Institute. I've been working on this course for years to help product leaders tackle one of the biggest challenges I see every day, creating product strategies that drive real business results.
If you're ready to level up your strategy skills, head over to product institute.com and use code launch for $200 off at checkout.
Dear Melissa
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[00:03:00] Melissa Perri: Here's this week's question.
Dear Melissa, I'm moving from an in-house B2B product manager to a product owner for a small boutique IT consultant. What are some key skills to develop to make sure I hit the ground running with new clients to ensure that I can move through discovery effectively and understand a range of different industries quickly?
All right, so as somebody who's been consulting for quite a while I have to get up to speed on different industries all the time, very quickly. And to me that's very exciting because I like learning about all of these different. Solutions and value that we deliver. So my biggest piece of advice here is that first, always center on the customer and the value that the product provides.
So you're gonna wanna learn about who is that customer really deeply understand. What does the solution that they're trying to propose or that they already have do for that customer? How does it provide value and why is that important to them? If you can anchor on that, then you can start to think about how does that customer use it?
Where does it fit in their life? And then you expand from there. So even if I was getting caught up into healthcare, like I've had to learn so many different things about healthcare and I don't have a healthcare background. When I was looking at that, I was always saying who are we solving this problem for?
So in one company that I came into, it was an electronic health record system. And that one, I knew that doctors were using it, nurses were using it. But then I also had to learn how insurance companies were using it and how we process payments and how we did billing. And for me, I mapped out. All those different roles that were contributing to it.
And then I try to understand why we were valuable, right? What did our solution do that provided value? How did they use the workflows? Where did it fit in their daily lives? What were the points of contacts with it? So I'm a very user experience driven person as well. So I wanna see the flows, I wanna see how people are using it.
So it would go into the product and I'd start to look through it. One way that I found that you can really get up to speed quickly as well is to work with the sales team. So in a lot of organizations that I'd come into, especially this one, when I said, wanted to learn what kind of value we provided and why it was different, I went to the sales team and I said, can you do your presentation for me as if I was a customer?
Walk me through it. Walk me through how it works, why you're better, why the solution's, the right one, and they usually have packaged up in those sales calls. Why you're important, right? Why it actually matters. So it's a great way to get up to speed really quickly on what the product is, why it's important, why it's helping to provide value in unique ways to the customers.
From there, then I'd go back and I'd dig into it with customer support. I'd dig into it with product managers that were working there, user researchers. I'd listen to customer calls if I was not doing the product management work myself, just to get up to speed with what was going on. So that is where you can wrap your head around what the industry is and what's happening there pretty quickly.
And I'd also go out and do my research. So if I knew what their competitors were, I would read reviews about how they were perceived in the market. So I'd go to G-Tube software is a good one where you can read reviews about what people think of the products, what's failing, what's working, and then that helps get you up to speed about what's good and what's bad pretty quickly as well.
So that's one of my biggest pieces of advice, focus on the customer here in new industries. Focus on what the value is for them. I'd try to wrap my head around is this a workflow for them? Is it something that replaces part of their job? Is it a a way to streamline getting them to an answer quickly?
What's the value? What's the piece of the pie here that's really going to make a difference for them compared to what they could be doing? And then if you center on that helps you really understand the landscape of things, and then you can dig into the problems faster. I'd also say my other piece of advice is if you're moving from in-house to consultancy, really set the right expectations with your customers upfront.
So in a lot of consultancies people will hire you to build software and they might already have an idea in their head and they're like, oh, we don't need discovery. You don't have to go out and do these things. Just build me the right thing. So make sure that you have set expectations upfront about how you work, how you want this to work, why it's important to actually get in touch with your customers, their customers and understand them better so that you could do this properly.
So make sure that you set that off on the right foot so that you could do the best work possible. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you enjoy getting up to speed on all these different industries, just like I did. Now it's time to talk to Monica.
Welcome to the podcast, Monica. It's great to have you here.
[00:07:04] Monica Lewis: Thanks so much. It's great to be here.
[00:07:06] Melissa Perri: So you have an interesting background going from engineering to product management. What made you wanna take the leap?
[00:07:13] Monica Lewis: I always noticed this part of myself that was loving building, but that also felt the need for this creative outlet and was also really driven by understanding the customer, understanding the business sides of things. I found my way to product management. I actually went from engineering to marketing and then working closely with PMs realized, oh, you know what that role is at the overlap of those three, technology, business and like creativity. So was able to moonlight a little bit before making the leap over formally at LinkedIn.
Building Sales Solutions at LinkedIn
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[00:07:46] Melissa Perri: Very cool, and you now lead the sales solutions at LinkedIn. All across product management there. Can you tell us a little bit about what are the sales solutions, because most of the folks listening here are probably product managers, so what is the other side of LinkedIn that usually hits us up in our dms?
[00:08:01] Monica Lewis: Absolutely. Tons of folks across all different professions use LinkedIn for different purposes. One really valuable use case for LinkedIn is if you're in sales or an outbound role. It's a great way to research organizations that you wanna do business with, find people that you don't know that you need to know to do business. And ultimately it's really about matchmaking. Between someone who has a solution or product to offer and someone that has a problem that can address. So this is all about creating simple to use highly valuable tools that help enterprise sales teams all the way down through, single person sellers at smaller organizations. Find the right people, do everything they need to successfully engage and build those relationships.
[00:08:46] Melissa Perri: Awesome. And with the sales solutions what are the types of products that you oversee there?
[00:08:50] Monica Lewis: Yeah, it's a, it's primarily a subscription business, so there's a consumer subscription you can buy directly on LinkedIn that lets you, unlock powerful search filters and really hone in on those right potential buyers on the other side. And then there's more advanced versions of the subscription that lets organizations.
Sync it with their CRM to really help it power their entire sales organization.
[00:09:13] Melissa Perri: Cool. And you guys have been incorporating AI into some of these technologies lately too, right?
[00:09:18] Monica Lewis: Yeah. AI has been at the heart of, a bunch of things we do across LinkedIn for a long time, and obviously, certainly more recently with the evolution of LLMs and generative ai, it's helped us unlock a lot of new value for our customers. Doing these repetitive tasks, looking up people, doing a bunch of research on an organization.
It's helped us bring all that in one place and make it really turnkey for sellers to be able to unlock those insights that they need.
[00:09:46] Melissa Perri: When you're considering putting AI into your product strategy or figuring out how it gets incorporated, what are some of the decisions that you are thinking about or making before you decide to make that leap?
[00:09:58] Monica Lewis: Yeah, I think at the core. For us, for myself, it's about making sure we're really grounded in the customer. What's the problem? What is the need? AI is a really powerful solution. I think we're all still learning what it can do for us, but at the end of the day, you start with really deeply understanding your audience and your customer, and then AI comes in terms of hey, how can I solve this? How can I solve this most effectively in a trustful efficient way? And I think specifically where we've really found resonance, many of us are using these open-ended chat models but what we found is really helpful is how do we hide some of that complexity, take that on ourselves and enable our users to just the outputs of that, and at a click of a button, be able to get those summaries and so forth, versus maybe bringing a heavy textual UI to them, um, which certainly has its place, but we've just been really excited at the ease of use and adoption we've been able to get when we start with a customer problem, figure out applying AI and other solutions, but just make it really easy for the end user who's busy time strap, attention 10 to other things to unlock that value at the click of a button.
[00:11:08] Melissa Perri: When you were considering this how did the solutions come up? Was it through customer research and observing the problems and somebody saying, Hey, like I think we can use this to help solve it there. Like what? What really led you to wanting to incorporate some of these new features and building them.
[00:11:25] Monica Lewis: Great question. I think we started with some core belief based on here's where we see sellers are spending their most time. And where LinkedIn can add unique value, I think it's helpful. When all of us are building, how do we find a really important, valuable problem that like, our context, our point of view, our team, our company can add unique value.
'cause that's where you have this sustainable differentiation. So we started with that and it's, we spend a lot of time with our users. We have a lot of sellers within LinkedIn, and then obviously our customers and prospects that we, that are not even yet our customers. and had a sense of here's some of the things that are more time intensive, more repetitive, that AI could play a role in? I think personally for me my approach also has been like, I try to be very open to ideas coming from anywhere. So actually funny story, the initially we set off on two areas that we were interested in and my energy to the team was, we need to pick one.
We need to focus, let's pick this one. It's a bigger, problem around searching. And it was actually the determination of the team and their sense of safety. And you know what Monica said, maybe not that. But we're gonna still test and build a prototype and show what's possible and prove like it's not based on a business case or a, a strategy doc.
It's based on, look, let's show us what we can do. And it's been really fun being in a team where everyone feels empowered to test and learn and be part of driving what the right solutions are versus expecting it all comes from a single leader or a single source of truth.
Creating a culture of experimentation
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[00:12:57] Melissa Perri: I think a lot of leaders struggle with creating the environment that you're describing right now, and where I see them get tripped up is like we're locking people into super hard roadmaps or like lockdown roadmaps we're like asked, we're not giving people time for discovery. How did you cultivate this environment? What are the factors that you think lead your team to say, Hey, I'm comfortable enough, just like testing this out, and then I'll bring it back to Monica and we'll see what happens.
[00:13:21] Monica Lewis: To be very self-aware. I still have a lot of learning to do. But I think some of the things that I try to do and that my partners also, it's, it's about close collaboration with my eng partner, my design partner and so forth is: own mistakes, own when we're wrong, own it from the rooftop.
So I've been in front of the company all hands and told that story that like, Hey, I was wrong. And it was a great thing that the team drove that. So I think they've seen me personally embrace those failure stories. I also try, although again still in the journey, I try to share thinking early and really open it up to the team for feedback.
And we're constantly iterating our processes. So even right now, for example, as we're, thinking about planning what's next, my previous mindset was like, I need to create clarity. I can't share this, these early scratch notes with the team until I have a little bit more clarity. I need to circulate it with a few other senior people.
And we're trying something new that's like, here's the skeleton doc. What do you all think? How does this change things? That also, that gives them not just time to react and say, Hey, why does that make sense? And share their unique perspective. It also gives them more time to do some of that discovery research versus the just in time.
Here's the guidance on the roadmap, now you have two weeks to come back with this exact plan and then, lock it down. So those are some of the things that I do that I hope helps influence the culture in the team and gives everyone a sense of Hey, my voice matters, I know how I can make an input and an impact.
[00:14:47] Melissa Perri: When you're encouraging them to go brainstorm what are the problems we could solve? Or is that, were you also doing it with a mandate of like, how could we use AI or was it just more part of a broader strategy discussion?
[00:14:59] Monica Lewis: I think, AI is what's new. So there is this question things that before we've looked at and said, it's out of our wheelhouse. That's too hard to tackle. I can't imagine. So I think that's what's causing us to reevaluate things that previously we may have not prioritized or not gone after. And I think certainly, in all of us are trying to explore in our own jobs, how do I use AI personally embrace it. So there definitely is this like context change that's driving that, really trying to stay grounded in, hey, what does the customer tell us? How can we lightweight validate our ideas early through conversations, through paper prototypes, through, barely functional prototypes and user research to make sure we're on the right track.
So I think that's why we're seeing like. AI plays a big role 'cause it's what's new. But certainly if we can solve something through, let's just clean up this copy, let's fix this workflow, let's make this clear. Like it's, I think it's really important that we celebrate those wins too, so that folks understand like it's about solving the problem, not about taking the AI hammer to everything.
Although it is a very powerful hammer and it's actually the Swiss army knife hammer. So there is some reasoning there.
[00:16:05] Melissa Perri: Some people are definitely hammering too, in whatever direction they can, when it comes to AI.
Trends in AI and the evolving role of salespeople
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[00:16:09] Melissa Perri: When you are looking at the whole scope of this and trying to steer the direction of the sales solutions from a top level. What kinds of things are you looking at in the market and how have you seen AI shaping the way that sales is being done? And what have you seen as trends that are happening?
[00:16:25] Monica Lewis: Yeah, I'd say we see it's really great spending time with salespeople because they are so innovative, resourceful, they push the boundaries on the org way of doing things to figure out how can they be more effective. So there's a big part that is just like understanding what's happening and how can we extrapolate from there, how can we make that easier?
How can we build that into the core flow? the big opportunity that we're excited about is, folks spend so much time in non-customer facing work, 70 plus percent of their time is in updating trackers and researching, prepping for meetings, reminding themselves, et cetera. And the biggest challenge that many salespeople encounters, how do I get a meeting, with the right person at the right time, to be able to share how we can work together and partner together. So that's been a job to be done area that we're really excited about. Given that, LinkedIn is so uniquely placed in having a pulse of the professional global network how can we help advance that and help take some of the rote work out of that to make it easier for me to just, get those conversations going and start to build relationships.
[00:17:34] Melissa Perri: So it's a, it's very much like a taking the work away and anticipating the needs of what's coming out here.
[00:17:39] Monica Lewis: Yeah, I think there's like a huge role for AI to do a bunch of the tasks then to help me level up in the remaining tasks that are more truly human, and where I add value. How do we make it easier for them to be more effective as well?
[00:17:51] Melissa Perri: Yeah. And I think that's like the part that maybe scares everybody about AI is that because it becomes so easy to, draft emails or put these things into a computer and then have it spit out that we all get, the same type of messages from people. They all use the same strategies. They all sound very similar. In what ways do you see sales teams succeeding as well in those like initial outreaches to then be able to earn the right, to have the face-to-face conversation or have your personality shine through?
[00:18:20] Monica Lewis: Yeah, I think the most effective sellers, they have certain habits that they're deploying and whatever the tool set around those. If you look at salespeople who are more likely to hit their quota and outperforming. They are really understanding the accounts or the companies that they're doing business with, and the people at those companies, they're spending a lot of time getting the lay of the land, researching, understanding what problems are they facing. So they're talking to folks, they're running a ground game, meeting with different folks in the organization and building that model of: what are the problems? How can I help? And how do I get my foot in the door? What's the right path in to that organization? And they're the most effective sellers. They're certainly using AI to help. Simplify some of those tasks, but they are spending still the time on, Hey, now that we're in the conversation, I can learn things from you and I can offer ways to support you that I'm not gonna get through searching the web or what have you. So they're the ones who are really using these tools to help them more effectively piece together that mental model. And they're getting themselves out of the drudgery so that they can be more effective in those conversations.
[00:19:31] Melissa Perri: Yeah, it sounds like a lot like consultative sales or bringing the the personality back into it and the advice and the tailoring and really understanding a lot of customer research, it sounds like too.
[00:19:41] Monica Lewis: Yeah, I think it, to your point with messaging automation it's just a higher bar. How do I stand out from the noise? And that's where I really appreciate like the human ingenuity. AI can create a great starting point. How do you add that special touch? Or how do you realize, you know what, I have a shared connection.
Let me start there. And that's my path into the organization versus a cold email that who knows if it's gonna, get seen or received and so forth. So it's that human ingenuity on top of the AI starting point that can really help folks.
[00:20:11] Melissa Perri: That's nice. And it also makes me see very much how like LinkedIn is positioned as well compared to some, there's some other sales tools out there with, AI powered ones like Apollo and stuff, but they don't have the connection piece that you do. And do you see like people leveraging those different factors of LinkedIn have a lot more success.
[00:20:27] Monica Lewis: Oh, absolutely. If you reach out to someone through a warm introduction versus a cold outreach, you're four times as likely to get that response. So we're working on how do we help surface more of those. You can already find those warm leads and ask for that intro through sales navigator.
But how do we just make it easier for you to access that and for organizations to access that? We also let you see not just your connections, but anyone at your organization because you can ask a colleague, even if you don't have a close relationship, you may not be connected on LinkedIn.
You can ask a colleague for an introduction, and that's a typical approach, but really excited to see folks making use of that functionality in Sales Navigator. And we're finding ways with AI to make it that much more accessible and valuable.
[00:21:13] Melissa Perri: That's really neat.
[00:21:14] Monica Lewis: To everyone in the process. Yeah.
Balancing metrics, data, and user value
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[00:21:16] Melissa Perri: That's cool. What kind of metrics and data are you using when you're deploying these new features and these new products to like measure success, how do you keep your team like rooted on outcomes?
[00:21:25] Monica Lewis: That you, you started with my, or you ended with my starting point as well is, wanna have the what is the customer problem. a perfect world, a perfect measurement, how would I know that the customer problem is solved? Oftentimes, we may not have full visibility into that outcome that happens offline, but really wanna make sure that we have metrics that are as close to that as possible. It's best if those are simple. Like for example, hey, if I wanna start a conversation, if I send a message to them, did they respond? Did the next thing happen that we can look at and say, Hey, we know we've started that relationship. In other instances, it's a bit more complex and we work with our data science team to try to get as close a causal link on what that metric is as possible. Then, upstream of that, maybe those outcomes they take longer to measure. It's harder to run an AB test. So you, we have some scaffolding around, Hey, what does our weekly retention rate look like? Or how are the new users in particular, are they set up for success in the first session, in the first seven days. They can also be helpful proxies if that outcome that we're after is a little bit further down the line or harder to measure. So it tends to be a basket, and I think that's a really high value thing that we can think about. What exactly is the goal? What's the problem?
And do we have the right measure? Because as soon as you set a measure, high performing teams are gonna drive towards that measure. So it's really important that it's understandable and that it's, as the right one as possible for the team and the effort.
[00:22:53] Melissa Perri: You mentioned like using the data science team to help you dig into the metrics and understand what's happening there. Are you basically looking for relationships between if people do X, Y, and Z this is more likely to happen. Are you pulling out like data from the uses already and finding patterns in there and then that's where you go to set the metrics?
[00:23:10] Monica Lewis: Yeah, like for example, for customers who are CRM syncing, hey, can we predict what set of actions leads to good outcomes that are tracked through the CRM, like opportunities being opened or deals being closed. And that's where our data science team can help us unpack that. And it's obviously a fine balance. If you don't wanna model as a metric, you don't wanna opaque, multifactorial thing that then you can't performance manage. It goes up. Why it's so complex to unpack. But it is helpful in confirming this thing that we're doing. How is that driving the ultimate outcome for the customer when possible?
I wouldn't say it's like the first place that we start is like drawing on our data science team necessarily for that, but it can be really helpful in more complex context where there's a bunch of different actions that need to, or often happen, and result in an outcome.
[00:23:59] Melissa Perri: It also makes me think that, with all this data you have this expert view of what works, right? What like causes more relationships? What will allow people to be more successful? How do you translate that as well into the user experience and to help the salespeople achieve their jobs?
[00:24:15] Monica Lewis: Yeah. We have a framework that sort of helps, you don't just wanna shove something to a user and do these things because LinkedIn said so. So we're always trying to make it explainable to them and connect it to what task are you trying to complete right now? What is in your mind?
And nudge them along the way to the next action they might wanna take. Hey, you just found this person that you think is a good fit. You've saved the lead, you saved this account. Nudge, nudge. Why don't you reach out? We've started a first draft message for you. Edit that message and reach out. So it's through a set of like nudges and us having as clear a perspective as possible on what's the happy path that's useful. But also know that we shouldn't be forcing everyone down that path, giving them the control and the flexibility. If they have a different objective in mind, great, how do we make it easy for them to achieve that as well? But those are some of the ways that we try to help set the customers up for success when they're in the tool.
Designing user experiences with smart cues
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[00:25:11] Melissa Perri: How do you think about designing the user experience for that and making sure that it's not overwhelming? Because I have seen places where it's you must be in this path and I will never let you out of it, 'cause we are the experts versus the nudging ,like you're talking about, the careful balance. What types of factors do you think. Go into that and how do you know where the line is?
[00:25:27] Monica Lewis: That. a really good question, and it's hard to always tell, did I get it right? You're talking to users, you're looking at the data. I think we try to make it really easy. here's the what and the why. And if they need to know, here's the how that you're taking and just making it simple for them to dismiss.
If they wanna get out of here, they can always dismiss. You don't have a forced workflow. You have to get through these, six actions or else. And then there's also a part where in working in enterprise software, you have the end user as your user. You also have often like an admin or someone else who's thinking: Here's how this tool fits in for my organization. So we also empower the admins. To set up and configure and so forth so that it, can, it's not truly customized, but it can be configured in a way it's gonna resonate more with, the sales process that they run or how their team runs.
So I think you can also think about what different user groups can I empower maybe the end user. They're so busy, they're going from meeting to meeting. They're not gonna dive in and like configure all their settings, but the admin really wants to, they can create leverage for hundreds or thousands of users at once. So those are some ways that we can help try to strike that balance of not too much noise, but also flexibility when needed.
[00:26:41] Melissa Perri: I like giving people the configurations to be able to do a lot of that too. And it sounds a lot, but automated onboarding or self-managed onboarding there too, which doesn't put a lot of pressure on your team or LinkedIn to actually go customize those things.
[00:26:53] Monica Lewis: Yeah, we're excited trying out, like also how can Gen AI help prefill, some of that onboarding. A ton about you from, other folks on your contract, what products you sell, et cetera. So there are opportunities also to prefill things and then it becomes, it's always easier to edit something than start from scratch.
So yeah, just mentioning that's another way that we found helps create speed's user to value. That's like a question we're often asking. How do we accelerate the time for the user to unlock that value?
[00:27:20] Melissa Perri: Very cool. With what you're talking about as well. You mentioned the admins, you mentioned the end user sales people who are actually using it. A lot of organizations I see struggle when they're in a situation where. If they've got a different customer, let's say somebody who's buying it and then there's a lot of different people who are using it.
How do you navigate like building for the person who's actually buying and going to market for that versus the end user and making sure that some people are just not getting lost in that.
[00:27:43] Monica Lewis: Yeah. I think the most important thing is having alignment between those. The organization will realize value. it's the connected value of the end users, adopting the product, valuing the product and so forth. So making sure that those value stories are aligned so you're not telling your buyer one thing and then delivering something else on the ground.
'Cause. Yeah, those gaps can't be sustained for long before before the music stops. So I think that's the first part. And just making as many as possible like connection points so that you're not needing to do this translation of here's how the end user is getting value, measuring value, what makes them happy and excited.
Like how as much as possible do you translate that an organizational level. Not to say it's always gonna be perfectly lined up, 'cause an end user maybe isn't asking this what is the ROI of this investment question, right? They're more at their personal level, Hey, does using this tool help me be successful?
And, how do I drive that forward? But we try to put most of our investment there for on the end user, 'cause that is the driver of value. And then make sure that it connects with the problems for the organization, that the buyer, the decision maker is thinking about.
[00:28:57] Melissa Perri: Hi. Do you incorporate that feedback as well from the buyer, from the organization into your roadmaps? Especially like when you're going to, going out to market, going to, do the sale and you're hearing about all these things. I know some people are tempted to just grab that, throw it on a roadmap.
How do you balance all of that?
[00:29:12] Monica Lewis: Yeah, there's no shortage of ideas from our customers, also from our own team. It, it is fun building for salespeople because all my customers are my own sales team. I think it's a balance, we have some ways of just saying, Hey, these are no-brainer quick fixes to reduce friction, et cetera. And we have a process for making sure that we're constantly trying to eat those down. For bigger investments, I think the question is. Making sure you're building things that will help your customer win in a way that you at some point have line of sight to, how does that help grow your business? So we partner really closely with product marketing and other partners on the go to market team, particularly if we're looking at a bigger swing. How do we run some customer validations upfront to just confirm, Hey, is this a single or is this a home run for you? And if we had this, would you see yourself investing in it? And you said, yes. Where is that budget coming from for you to invest in to just make sure we really understand that it is a true unlock for the customer. And then we can feel more confident. You still have this iterative process that you're building and testing, but it helps us try to stay focused on that customer value that's measurable to them.
[00:30:26] Melissa Perri: I like that question too. Where's the budget coming from, if you're gonna invest in this? I don't think a lot of people are asking that one.
[00:30:31] Monica Lewis: I think like many things it comes down to you made a mistake in the past. And you're like, lemme not make that mistake again. So it was interesting, it was like an initiative I was working on like many years ago that everyone said, yes, great, we'll spend on it. And actually not as many customers ended up doing that, that it was like, okay, you know what?
Let's just dig in further to get specificity to feel more confident in that feedback.
Monica's career pivotal moments and product strategy insights
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[00:30:57] Melissa Perri: That's really cool. When you look back on your career, are there any like moments that stand out to you that have really shaped your philosophy to product strategy and how you think about building visions and incorporating new technologies?
[00:31:08] Monica Lewis: Yeah. I can think of two or three come to mind. The first one. It was when I was a new pm. And I was owning this area within LinkedIn. That was our job posting experience and, grow the business, gotta X, y, Z. And so my first effort and I was coming in for marketing. So it's really oriented around like funnels and so forth.
So we just, let's redesign the job posting flow on LinkedIn. Let's remove friction. Let's, test different experiences, really trying to solve a LinkedIn problem of conversion rate and revenue. And the pivotal moment, I remember we had a product review with a very senior leader at LinkedIn, sat down at the table, his first question what customer problem are you solving? And my heart sank. And it was a, oh shoot. Of course, you know that, that really clear problem. But the other part of this that made it pivotal for me, I was the most junior person in the room. I could have been left out to, suffer on my own and my leader at the time, immediately without missing a beat, stepped in.
This is on me. I asked the team to focus on, X, Y, Z and revenue targets and the feedback is for me, and obviously I knew the feedback was for myself, but the extent of support that I felt from that leader and accountability that he took in owning that in the moment, really stuck with me and helped me think about leadership.
It's about taking that accountability for the team and I really appreciated that. So that is one that comes to mind. Another pivotal moment was it was about like, how can I tell my judgment versus the data? There is a big product change we were looking at making and how customers purchased. And it was this classic, you ask customers, they're like, don't change. I'm gonna churn if you change this. I like it just how it is. And you would have to believe insane things in terms of how it changed our acquisition rates or our retention rates. Couple that with it's a lot of work to go through all the effort to solve this. It just kept getting kicked down the line, kicked down the line. And finally my leader at the time was like, that's it. We need to learn to take intelligent risks more quickly. And he threw down the gauntlet. He was like, you have five weeks to prove or disprove how this is gonna work out. Just figure it out. And at a larger organization that is a very fast timeline to turn around and we figured out it was a painted door test that then had support on the backend. So we weren't leaving customers hanging. And in five weeks we learned, holy moly, we had a 70% increase in customer acquisition.
[00:33:41] Melissa Perri: Wow.
[00:33:42] Monica Lewis: blew away all of our expectations.
So that just taught me about it was challenging 'cause all of this evidence said no, except for this, like the voice inside. And we can't always just follow the voice inside. We need to be customer grounded. But the unlock was. What can we do in a short amount of time to actually answer this question that's got me in this frame of, okay, we have some big vision, we have some big problem.
What are the, what you need to believes that you can prove or disprove in a shorter cycle to de-risk this and fail fast or find the unlock faster? So those were two moments that were really pivotal for me in terms of how I think about my job as a pm, how I lead, and just like the approach to getting to product market fit faster.
[00:34:26] Melissa Perri: I think the second one too is such a great story. I was just talking about it with somebody else on a different podcast earlier about how. People are so used to the way it always is that they can't even imagine what it would be without it. And I think we get into this trap as product managers sometimes of asking people what they want instead of observing their behaviors and figuring out where there's pain that they might not even realize yet.
And if they saw it go away, they'd be like, oh, okay. That's a lot better.
[00:34:51] Monica Lewis: Absolutely. And I think like the challenge is when you're doing something that's more radical, you've changed so many different variables that it is gonna be harder to unpack if it's, if it fails, why? But certainly that, like how do we balance, yeah. Trying to understand what our customers are telling us, but like also what questions are hard to answer. On a theoretical basis, and therefore you need some other means of testing and learning what's true and what's not.
[00:35:19] Melissa Perri: When you're testing something that big too, like you said it's hard to figure out what exactly is causing the success. What's your approach for doing that? Like you did the painted door test in this acquisition study, right? You saw that it was really increasing there. What's enough to say we understand this, and how do you make that decision of, okay, now this is what it should be like. This is how we build that whole thing.
[00:35:38] Monica Lewis: Yeah. I think for me it comes down to having clarity of. thought. It needs to be less than five things that you're like uncertain to about and either are play out one way or the other that defines the outcome. I think, as quickly as possible establishing, okay, here's what I think those three things are.
Let me check with my marketing partner, let me check with my end partner. Let me check with my design or my strategy team and really refine that and then say, okay which of these is the gnarliest thing? Let's solve that first 'cause we want bad news early, and you can unpack that. It comes down to really being able to understand what you know about the customers, what you know about the market, what you know about your organizational context or company context.
Here's the most likely make or break. And just finding a way to then construct a test that gives you good signal. I think the other challenge that sometimes happens is we did a test, it failed. Is it 'cause we did such a scrappy MVP test that it was an execution failure or was it an actual proof that the strategy is wrong? And I, I find like it's hard to have a bright line test of that, but it's just knowing you need a good enough execution and maybe decide let's do the 80 20 execution and if it fails, we're willing to invest so much more. But just having that sense of what's my horizon for like playing this one out can help get that clarity sooner.
Managing innovation, bets, and experimentation
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[00:36:57] Melissa Perri: And when you're leading your team and looking across your portfolio and figuring out where do I place like my big bets and how much should I invest? And like where do we test? What's your methodology for kind of thinking about that? And how much effort let's say, or how much you wanna put into these different tests or these different concepts and giving people room to go explore them.
[00:37:16] Monica Lewis: I've seen it. It may depend on the context of the organization, right? If you're on a zero to one, then that's it. Let's swing for the fences and really lean into taking risks. If you're running a team that's like reasonably mature, the company is counting on us to deliver some engagement, to deliver some revenue, et cetera. we try to think about, the different buckets that these investments fall into. Here's the sure bets we know they're gonna pay off. Let's fund them. Let's figure out the most expedient way to, to get these wins in. And then there's a next set of things that are either like strategic, we're pretty sure about, there's a couple unknowns, and then there's the swing for the fences, venture bets. And I try to keep in mind, okay, roughly we want, whatever. 60, 30 10 or 70 20 10 across those categories or maybe it's a more disruptive time and I feel like there's more risk to our business, and I wanna swing a lot more for the venture bets. I have that resource allocation in mind, but really the resourcing comes down to. Here's our goals and objectives across these buckets. And maybe actually maybe the sure bets I can get these with less resourcing and I don't need to see exactly 70% of all the people in the team working on this thing. It's a, just a sense check that can be helpful. But just, understanding what do I need to deliver to the customers or to the company that can then help you think across those like shorter time horizon. And then the like bigger swing bets in your portfolio.
[00:38:45] Melissa Perri: When you are looking at setting the teams up so that they can go experiment successfully too. What do you think, besides, we talked about safety, the ability to actually go do it and the time to go do it. What are the things do you put in place or do you practice at, at LinkedIn, whether it's the way you run tests or the tools that you use so that people can actually orchestrate these really well and get feedback.
[00:39:04] Monica Lewis: I think a couple ingredients that successful teams have together is like. Getting your cross-functional partners onboard at the same time, so it's not like product says this and then designer engineering down the line, go execute. So having this like really healthy cross-functional team to drive that. Second, just making sure we really understand like what do we think the outcome of this is going to be? And then if it's an AB test. Make sure that's implemented in the platform so we can get that read, self-serve. Hopefully we don't need some intensive ad hoc analysis. And if it's not an AB test, if we're not able to do that for some reason. Okay, who are the right customers that we can put into this beta and know that we can have conversations and feedback from to be able to elicit that feedback. We also use an OKR process at LinkedIn. So at various times teams have set, okay, here's my, deliver high confidence stuff. And we're actually gonna make sure we set these exploratory OKRs that are more about planting the seeds for next quarter or next half. So that we're not always in reap, reap mode. We need to be sewing bets as well. So there's other mechanisms that you can use depending on your like accountability or target setting structure at your organization that can help create that space, and tell the teams, no, it's not just that I want you to do this, like we're all expecting you to do this 'cause that's what's gonna drive the future growth of the future outcomes.
[00:40:26] Melissa Perri: It sounds like a great way to, to bake in some innovative thinking and get people to start. Pushing boundaries that way too.
[00:40:32] Monica Lewis: It's been helpful. Obviously, you get into the throw of the push and the pulls. So I think the other part is knowing like if we're not green across the board on everything and we need to make trade-offs, knowing at the front where things move can also help too.
The future of sales and advice to younger self
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[00:40:43] Melissa Perri: Yeah. Monica, when you're thinking about the landscape of sales and how things are changing with AI and you're looking to the future of where all this technology is going, what do you think we're gonna be seeing in the future? What are you looking forward to?
[00:40:54] Monica Lewis: I'm really excited about how AI is gonna help. I know we're gonna, we talked earlier about, oh, it may increase noise. I think at the end of the day we'll see much more empowerment for buyers in this journey. How do we help them learn more and more effectively? Buyers are already doing a lot of their research before they engage with a seller. How How do we make this, two-way connection, more effective and more efficient and more transparent? And I think it, it really is gonna help elevate sellers into a more strategic role. So I'm not having to manage all these tasks as much. And ultimately, like in success, that'll help organizations have their problems more effectively solved to have them be, more effective, more revenue driving and so forth. But I think AI is gonna help shape a lot of that through, you know, the sales, the sales process is still the same. It's there's a question of do I understand the problems? Do I understand my value, my products value, my services value? And then connect the dots across the board and get to close. The other thing that we're seeing in organizations is. There's a proliferation of like, who makes a decision to make a purchase? And to date, we're seeing the typical enterprise has over 11 stakeholders in a buying decision. And you you can have lots of people say yes, and you just need one, like the wrong person to say no, that can stall or derail a deal. So I think we're also gonna see this helping sellers better understand. Who do I actually need to know? Who are my hidden allies, my champions, that I can empower and connect with to help drive that through? And that's something that we're also excited about working on delivering in Sales Navigator. But I think just at the end of the day, it's about solving problems between buyers and sellers. And AI can play a huge role helping both sides of that equation.
[00:42:44] Melissa Perri: I had no idea there was 11 stakeholders involved. That's a lot.
[00:42:47] Monica Lewis: It is a lot. Yeah. And that, yeah, the most effective sellers, we call it multi-threading. You're like, great, I've got this really excited champion. But are there any past customers? Are, is there any past employees or X, Y, Z that can help you really get the lay of the land? Enterprise sales, it is a highly strategic. All hands on deck team sport between the seller. There's often customer success. Maybe they have some technical support as well. So it really is a complex motion that, excited about how I AI can help make that more effective and more efficient across all of them.
[00:43:22] Melissa Perri: That's really cool. I'm excited to see what it does too. Monica, my last question for you is if you had to go back and give some advice to your younger self, what would it be?
[00:43:30] Monica Lewis: My younger self was very interested in what's next? What's the next thing? And I think I had a misperception that. Oh wait. More things on the list of stuff that I own is the way that I'm gonna grow. I remember at 1.1 of my peers left LinkedIn and I, oh, who's gonna own that product area?
Oh, I'm gonna make a pitch to my manager that I should own that product area. 'cause surely two things is better than one. And he just, he is very direct. He is a straight shooter. He is Monica, empire building is not your way to grow. You have a huge scope for impact, learn and grow where you are and make that impact.
And I'm so glad he gave me that advice. So I think my advice in my past self is it's not to settle for the hand that you've dealt, but just like being curious, being hungry to learn and to make impact, Within what you have, is gonna be such a rich experience and set you up for future growth versus trying to play some more tactical game of like, how do I be seen as more senior?
So that's what learning that sooner might have been helpful for me. So that's my advice of my past self.
[00:44:36] Melissa Perri: That is great advice for all of our listeners out there. Thank you so much, Monica, for being on the podcast. If people wanna connect with you, where can they go?
[00:44:42] Monica Lewis: know what, you can find me on LinkedIn, Monica Lewis
[00:44:45] Melissa Perri: Surprise surprise. That's great. And we will put Monica's LinkedIn link in our show notes at productthinkingpodcast.com and you can find out more about LinkedIn Sales Navigator and their solutions there as well. Thank you so much for listening to the Product Thinking Podcast. We'll be back next week with another amazing guest.
In the meantime, if you have any product management questions for me, go to dear melissa.com and let me know what they are. We'll see you next time.