Marketing and sales teams need different information from you than engineering or design teams require. Here's how to collaborate effectively:

• Share the product vision and strategy early and often. Marketing and sales need to understand the "why" behind your product to create effective messaging and sales approaches. Help them understand the target user, key pain points, and how your product uniquely solves problems.
• Include them in customer research. Invite marketing and sales to join user interviews or share insights from your research. This firsthand exposure to customer needs helps them develop authentic messaging that resonates with real problems.
• Gather their market intelligence. Sales teams talk to prospects and customers daily, gathering invaluable insights about market trends, competitor moves, and customer pain points. Create channels for this information to flow back to you regularly.
• Collaborate on positioning. Work together to define how your product is positioned in the market. Marketing brings expertise in messaging and differentiation, while you bring deep product knowledge. The best positioning emerges from this collaboration.^[1]

In some companies, there are Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) who focus on exactly this. They help connect product and marketing by shaping go-to-market plans and crafting clear, compelling messaging. If your team has PMMs, work closely with them — they can help make sure your product reaches the right audience in the right way.