As a product manager, leveraging data to influence stakeholders and driving alignment is critical. Having solid, trustworthy data enables product managers to tell compelling stories, provide air-tight justification for decisions, and get stakeholders on board. Rather than relying on intuition or anecdotal evidence, using quantitative and qualitative data makes a case backed by facts.
Strong data cuts through opinions and helps both justify ongoing work as well as sway minds for new features or initiatives. Essentially, good data and smart analysis of metrics empower product managers to get things done and enact their vision. With stakeholders like executives, engineers, investors, and customers, having the right data at your fingertips can mean the difference between a stalled product and enthusiastic partners ready to build the next big feature.
What Types of Data Should You Use?
When leveraging data for stakeholders, product managers should tap into a diverse set of data sources to make a credible, comprehensive case. Different data types bring unique benefits.
Quantitative data:
This includes numbers that objectively measure the product’s performance, like revenue, conversion rates, usage metrics, retention rates, customer lifetime value, and more. The advantage of quantitative data is that it provides an impartial, concrete look at the product’s current position. Metrics like monthly recurring revenue or year-over-year growth make a fact-based case, not reliant on intuition or gut feelings. Quantitative data carries significant weight with most stakeholders.
Qualitative data:
This subjective data includes user feedback from sources like surveys, user research interviews, app store reviews, social media mentions, and customer quotes. While not statistically significant on its own, qualitative data brings in the human perspective and helps illustrate pain points. Combining user quotes with usage metrics can tell a compelling story. This data helps balance the hardness of numbers with human insights.
Benchmark data:
Benchmark metrics compare the product’s key metrics to competitors and industry standards. For example, comparing the product’s Net Promoter Score or monthly churn to rivals. Benchmark data provides useful context for evaluating numbers and goals. Stakeholders prefer seeing metrics that outpace competitors.
Growth data:
Analyzing trends and trajectories in the metrics over time using historical data. This showcases momentum and progress. Showing steadily improving conversion rates by quarter demonstrates optimization gains for stakeholders.
How to Effectively Present Data
When it comes to presenting data and metrics to stakeholders, how you share the information is just as important as the data itself. Follow these best practices for making an influential, coherent data-driven case:
Tailor data to your audience – The types of data and level of detail you present should directly align with the interests and priorities of the stakeholders. Finance stakeholders will want to see extensive revenue and profit metrics while marketing may care more about leads and funnel conversion rates. Executives prefer big-picture views while engineers want details on technical debt. Know your audience.
Use visuals for clarity – Well-designed charts, graphs, tables, and diagrams should be used extensively to visualize the data. Visuals simplify complex data relationships and trends. They also engage stakeholders more effectively than walls of text or spreadsheets. Choose clear, appropriate visualizations tailored to the message. Avoid cluttered, overly complicated graphics.
Contextualize data with stories – Put flesh on the bones of the data by integrating anecdotes, user quotes, specific examples, and case studies. This brings the data to life. For example, combine a chart showing decreasing conversion rates with quotes from users struggling with checkout. Data presented in a vacuum lacks impact.
Focus on key takeaways – For each data set you present, ensure you highlight the key takeaways, insights, and recommendations. Don’t just present the data without interpretation. Drive home what it means and what should happen next based on the data. This focuses stakeholders on the most important implications.
Simplify data into soundbites – For executive audiences or high-level presentations, distill the data down into simple memorable soundbites. Retention is up 5% quarter over quarter is more digestible but conveys the same insight as detailed cohort retention graphs. Adjust the detail level based on the situation.
Make it interactive – Enable stakeholders to engage directly with the data where possible through options like drilling down into more detail, filtering different segments, or manipulating parameters. This facilitates deeper understanding and exploration.
Leveraging Data to Influence Different Stakeholders
While data may be objective, interpretation is subjective based on the stakeholder lens. Effective product managers customize the way they present and leverage data based on the specific stakeholder group:
Executives:
When influencing executives, tie the data narratives to company goals, strategy, and vision. Executives care about data that validates achieving business outcomes. Leading with high-level metrics focused on revenue, growth, market share, and customer adoption is key. Demonstrate how product direction ladders up to company success.
Marketing/Sales:
These stakeholders are laser-focused on driving leads and funnel metrics. Present data like website conversion rates, lead quality trends, sales cycle analysis, and retention benchmarks. Show how the product is performing on key conversion funnels and generating high-quality leads. Tie data to campaigns.
Engineers:
With technical audiences, emphasize data on product stability, performance, technical debt, and ease of maintaining the codebase. Metrics like uptime, latency, bug counts, and refactor backlogs resonate. This data guides the prioritization of engineering investments by quantifying pain points.
Customers:
For customers and external audiences, focus on data that builds credibility. Tout total registered users, customer testimonials, satisfaction scores, adoption or engagement metrics, and case studies. Third-party data or benchmark comparisons also boost trust.
Investors/Board:
Financial metrics take priority with investors as that’s how they evaluate value. Present revenue growth trends, projections, burn rates, product milestones hit, and market opportunity size. Profitability data may influence investors to further fund growth.
For each audience, tailor the data presentation to align with their goals and interests. This makes a credible, relevant case that resonates.
Common Data Pitfalls to Avoid
While data provides a compelling way to influence stakeholders, there are some common pitfalls product managers should avoid when leveraging metrics:
Cherry-picking data – Only showing charts and metrics that tell the story you want to tell, while ignoring less flattering data. This destroys credibility when stakeholders notice inconsistent narratives.
Presenting vanity metrics – Leading with inflated vanity metrics like total signups that sound good but lack strategic value clouds the real issues. Rely on actionable metrics.
Using data out of context – Presenting engagement rates from 2 years ago vs. today without calling out the discrepancy misleads stakeholders on progress. Always provide proper context.
Information overload – Overwhelming stakeholders with endless streams of graphs without synthesizing key takeaways likely confuse more than convinces. Prioritize the most impactful insights.
Inaccurate data – Bad data leads to bad insights. Always validate data quality, check for errors, and clarify limitations or shortcomings in the data provided to avoid advising stakeholders based on misleading data.
By avoiding these pitfalls, product managers build data-driven credibility with stakeholders and establish themselves as an authoritative, objective voice.
Leveraging Data to Influence Stakeholders: Conclusion
Influencing stakeholders to align on product direction requires tapping into compelling data sources and crafting data narratives tailored to the audience. Quantitative data makes an impartial case while qualitative data brings in the human perspective. Benchmark data gives context while growth trends demonstrate momentum. Product managers must synthesize key insights, utilize visuals effectively, and customize the data presentation based on stakeholders ranging from executives to engineers to investors.
Avoiding pitfalls like cherry-picking data and presenting out-of-context metrics ensures a credible data-driven story. Ultimately, leveraging data helps product managers justify decisions, persuade stakeholders, and propel the product vision forward with alignment. Turning stakeholders from skeptics to advocates requires framing the data in persuasive ways that resonate with their specific interests and priorities.