Bill and Mercer are joined by Doug Akers of Smile.io to talk about how to best show your support team’s value to the rest of the organization. Guest Expert: Doug Akers (@spiderdoodle42 on twitter and “Doug Akers” on LinkedIn) Guest Caller: Alanna Feinsod (@alannafeinsod) Music by Flavio Mangione. Recap Notes: - Harvest is a saas company, time tracking for medium to large sized businesses. Primary customers: agencies (creative), lawyers to landscapers. - Support is sole voice as a product-led company, so giving insights into the key conversations. - Share the why behind how the information is important. - Speak the language so that the people you’re talking to care about and understand the situation. - Narrow it down even further: for a few minutes, convey information about the overall health of the team. After that, pick a specific team that you need to speak to and compel, and use the rest of your time for that. Relate it back to something another team is working on. - It’s important to understand WHY you are trying to lift your profile and to what end. - Lean on business strategy as your first direction, and then tease out from there. - Try to see if there are ways that you can make it a bit more collaborative across teams—if you shine light on what you’re working on, other teams that might have cross over will be able to reach out and help too. - How do you handle when stuff gets put on the backburner and you have to fess up? Remain on task Determine what capacity you need to be at and hire for it. Talk about why it got put on the back burner and what you could shift in the future. Frame is as a lesson and share that lesson. ALWAYS present your basic numbers so people DO have an ongoing baseline.