Features tell us how a product does something but in most cases they don't tell us what it accomplishes or why we care in a context that's conducive to communicating business value. User stories are the heart and soul of agile development. When written in proper context, they can live on long after product development and offer tremendous value to marketing and sales.

“I need a constant stream of new features and solutions to stay ahead of our competitors.”  “Slow down! I can’t learn all the new functionality that fast.”  “Can you accelerate the delivery of feature X?  The competition is killing us on that one.” 

What’s the appropriate cadence of agile releases that would satisfy marketing and sales?

You can immediately improve sales effectiveness in the following three areas of a B2B sales cycle with a few key contributions from product management.

1. Discovery & Qualification
2. Presentations & Product Demonstrations
3. Negotiations

Most B2B companies want their sales people calling higher in the organization because direct access to executives can wire deals in their favor and shorten sales cycles.  But why do many companies find it so difficult to get executive access?  It has a lot more to do with your value propositions than you think, and the remedy starts with Product Marketing.

The short answer is most product companies don't understand the "real reasons" buyers are evaluating their products.