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CHAPTER 75Evangelism

One of the critical roles of strong product leaders—especially in medium‐ to large‐sized companies—is evangelism.

Evangelism in this context means marketing to your own organization (e.g., product marketing, marketing, and sales).

In this case, you're not trying to get people to buy. You are instead trying to persuade them that this is going to be very important and something they should care about and contribute to making a reality.

There are many techniques to help communicate the value of what you're proposing to your product teams, executives, key stakeholders, and investors. Here are my top‐10 techniques:

1. Use prototypes. For so many people, PowerPoint presentations just don't cut it. Show them a prototype. It will probably need to be a high‐fidelity prototype, which means that it would look realistic, even though it's just a mirage. This is probably the single most effective technique for persuasion of a product idea.
2. Share the pain. Show the customer pain you are addressing. You can share quotes or even put together a video montage. This is also why I love to bring developers or executives along to user testing. For so many people, they just have to hear the customer's words and witness their pain themselves to get it.
3. Share the vision. People don't just want to know what you're doing today—they want to know where you are heading. The product vision shows where you hope to be in 3–10 years.
4. Share the learnings. As discussed earlier, when your teams ...