5 Essential Meetings that Product Managers need to have regularly — (3) Business Stakeholders Catch-up

A Product Manager works by Collaborating, Information Gathering, Influencing, Strategising. To do this, they have to regularly meet and discuss with multiple stakeholders in the company. For this reason, meetings are an essential part of a PM’s job. In this blog, we will discuss the absolutely important meetings that Product Managers need to have regularly to keep their work in order. We will also cover:

1. Why these meetings are important?
2. Who should be part of these meetings?
3. Who should be leading them?
4. What could be their frequency?
5. How to Ace these meetings?

Meeting 3 — Business Stakeholders Catch-up

Business Stakeholders Catch-ups helps you to maintain planned & regular interactions with the business folks, where you can share product updates, development progress, discuss issues or concerns that you have come across and you need their inputs, keep an eye on any incoming requirements, etc. Setting up a schedule for this will make it very easy for you to get the stakeholders to attend the meeting. Your stakeholders will have other priorities lined up and many a time they will skip this call unless you put effort to schedule this meeting on regular days of the months

Why this meeting is important?

Having regular Business Stakeholder Catch-ups can help you in numerous ways and make your job easy and enjoyable. Here are some reasons why to have these meetings:

Minimize Ad Hoc Requirements

Business stakeholders will be facing issues with the product or they will be having some ideas on how to optimize the product better or they might want to introduce a new flow / new feature/change in the product according to the changing user needs or market conditions that they are observing. But often they will be engaged with other high-priority tasks, and they won’t have enough time to reach out to you

When ad hoc requirements come from the business side, it is usually when they sense an urgency in implementing the changes or new features that they have been thinking about. And therefore these requirements are shared and pushed on priority from the business side

So, if you want to minimize such ad hoc urgent requirements and manage your product backlog better, then start having these calls on a scheduled basis, so that you can know what the stakeholders are observing and thinking about the product, users, and market

Make Business Stakeholders Feel Supported

Having regular communication with the business stakeholders will make them feel supported and heard. As a Product Manager, it is your job to ensure that stakeholders, users, and your team is heard out and can voice their issues, ideas, and information

As a PM, you have to create that platform for people to come and talk, and these meetings can be a perfect way for you to invite the stakeholders and give them a platform to share their experiences with the product, inform you about business strategies or market changes, and talk about ideas and solutions they want to implement

Keep Your Stakeholders Informed

Keep your stakeholders informed about product updates and product usage data — upcoming product/feature releases, any changes in expected releases, relevant product usage data for the business stakeholders

Regularly sharing these details with the stakeholders will ensure that they stay on the same page with you and your team, plus you can also communicate about any issues in advance without them coming to you with problems. This will show that you are alert and aware of what is happening in the product and business

Discuss relevant product usage data with them to indicate gaps or opportunities that can be solved/pursued by the business team. E.g. if tech adoption for your product is also one of the OKRs for the business team, then you can push the business team towards improving this number. Similarly, you can figure out the metrics which are co-shared with the business teams or you can even ask stakeholders to help you achieve certain metrics if it is something that they can influence or help to achieve

Who should be part of this meeting?

Try to have all your business stakeholders in this call, this will help to resolve any inter-departmental gaps or issues. Communication issues and gaps are a major concern in many companies, and this is precisely the reason why Product Managers exist so that they can communicate with multiple stakeholder groups, bring them under the same umbrella, and give them that platform to talk, discuss, and sort issues

Your business stakeholders would include but are not limited to Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance, etc. Keep the duration of the meeting within 30–40 mins depending on the agenda of the meeting

Who should be leading this meeting?

This call should be lead by the Product Manager, but there are some techniques to approach this call. In Business Stakeholder meetings, you are more of a facilitator of the call. Here you organize and plan the call, but you also allow the stakeholders to talk and resolve matters within themselves.

Make sure you lead the meeting so that you can fulfill your meeting agenda and allow additional topics or unplanned topics to pop up in the call so that stakeholders can discuss and resolve those issues by themselves

If you sense that the call is progressing towards longer debates/discussions, try to politely get them back to the meeting agenda by pointing out the limited meeting time and remaining topics that need to be discussed

What could be the frequency of this meeting?

Have this meeting at least twice a month. But depending on the stage of the product, industry, ongoing projects you might have to increase the frequency of this call. E.g. if you are building an MVP, you might need to catch up more frequently with the business stakeholders, to share progress, get feedback, and keep them aligned

How to Ace this meeting?

1. If you want to maintain the schedule and frequency of these calls, then you have to get POCs (Point of Contacts) from the business departments, who will be regularly interacting with you regarding the product/features you are developing. A POC will be someone senior in charge who will be either a direct user of your product (for internal applications) or will be in charge of the product performance on the business side. Business POCs can change as per the product feature/product being developed, depending on who will be in charge of that product on the business side. To learn how to get Business POCs for your product read this blog — https://productpeas.medium.com/why-product-managers-should-work-with-business-pocs-and-how-to-get-them-6ca9e0dab8a6
2. Send out meeting agenda before each of these calls to the POCs. Mention in brief the points you are planning to discuss and close in the call, also mention if you will need any details or anything else from the POCs during the call. This will help you to make these meetings more fruitful. Send this out at least a day in advance to them, so that they can come prepared for the call
3. Gather data and information before attending these calls and prepare meeting notes, which will help you to direct the meeting and not miss out on any important points that you want to discuss

a. Gather data on Product Usage and highlight points you need to discuss with the POCs

b. Look into Business data (BI) and understand if there is anything that correlates with your product performance data. If you see any concerns, take notes to discuss in the call

c. Collect data from the Support team regarding customer complaints and any other issues which you might need to discuss with the Business POCs

d. Make notes of product updates related to sprints, upcoming feature releases, possible timeline stretches, upcoming tasks for development that you can inform the POCs

e. Highlight points that you will need to nudge the POCs for e.g. — Getting PRD sign-offs from them

4. Take notes during the call and file these notes for your future reference

5. Send out MOM (Minutes of the Meeting) to the POCs mentioning the important points that were discussed in the call, any issues that were highlighted, and anything of importance discussed and finalized in the call. You can keep the Business Heads copied in these emails so that there is transparency and no confusion later

Read about the other 4 Essential Meetings that Product Managers need to have regularly

Daily Standup — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-cecc0474b9e0

Team Sync-up — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-2-c4f563d52d7e

Retro Meetings — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-4-3570e9261387

User Meetings — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-5-30f8587d3394