Leading a design-first initiative

Background

LinkedIn offers a product called Sales Navigator, which helps sales reps tap into LinkedIn's extensive network more effectively and land more deals. One of the key features of this product is the Lead Page, which helps sellers understand the profile of these potential buyers and engage with them. The Lead Page, along with Sales Navigator’s core features had proven successful in its seven years of existence.

However, as Sales Navigator was approaching to be a $1b business, there was an increased need to look ahead into product innovation opportunities. From a Product perspective, there was interest in revamping the Lead Page to be better than what LinkedIn.com profile pages offered for its free consumers. From a Design leadership perspective, I saw an opportunity to increase the influence and presence of my Design team in leading product direction.

Project Details

I spearheaded and proposed a Design-led initiative with the goal of demonstrating Design’s value and impact at the Product table, along with providing my team the opportunity to practice core design skills that would lift their overall effectiveness and confidence. I led my Design and Research team in discovering new, unexpected opportunities both inside and outside of Sales Navigator and making them tangible. Unlike other design projects, this initative was not meant to produce definitive designs, but to inspire the product team and spark meaningful discussion around new opportunities.

Inspiring product ideas with partners and sparking creativity within designers.

My Role

In my role as Design Manager, I proposed and socialized the idea to cross-functional stakeholders, prioritized this project for my team outside of normal quarterly deliverables, and led my team of designers and researchers through this 6-week sprint to deliver multiple future-facing concepts.

In order to gain buy-in from stakeholders to prioritize and protect my team’s time, I proposed the exploration starting point to be aligned to an area that cross-functional leaders were already interested in, which was centered around improving the Lead page. Thus, understanding and exploration started from here.

Design Challenge

How might we help sellers see information about a person anywhere they need it?

Method

Shaking up the double diamond and making every step collaborative.

UXR, with a twist

Switching up the normal way we do research, we spoke with 4 ‘extreme’ Sales Navigator users who either had unique use cases or had unique needs when interacting with our products due to a disability, or when having to “hack” Sales Navigator to fit their workflows. Extreme users exhibit latent or interesting behaviors more clearly than the mainstream, and can point towards a future change or simply spark inspiration for new features or experiences.

Analogous Research

This type of exploratory research broadened the team outside of our industry to seek inspiration in the ways others have tackled similar challenges. It allowed us to move beyond our expertise to see challenges with fresh eyes, unlock “aha!” moments, and build new levels of understanding and empathy.

Collaborative Synthesis

Collaborating as a team to identify interesting key themes. Unlike our ‘typical’ synthesis, this process was driven by the entire project team and involved early sketching of ideas that came up during the conversations.

Validating ideas quickly via sacrificial concepts

Research Insights

Sellers' needs vary by industry and product

Sellers can have unique and niche needs in terms of the different types of information they need to see. This information can vary depending on their industry and product.

Selling consists of emotional highs and lows

Participants spoke of the emotional rollercoaster that sales can be, especially for those participants who were still very early in their careers. Additionally, some participants spoke about how they were forced to cold call by their company, even though neither they nor their customers enjoyed it, and they didn’t feel like it produced good results or the value-add type of relationship they wanted to build with customers.

Opportunities may arise from collaborating with competitors

A matchmaker spoke about how she collaborates with other matchmakers to optimize finding matches for their clients. She explained that by referring clients to one another that are a better fit for their matchmaking speciality, clients are more likely to get successful matches and the matchmakers get more customers.

Opportunity Area I

Customizing lead information

How might we adapt the buyer info to the sellers’ interests, needs, and context? 

How might we enrich existing information with new types of information?

Concept

A spectrum of customization tailored to each individual’s needs

In order to tailor to each individual's needs, we could provide a range of control to the user--from lots of user control to automation via smart data from LinkedIn.

Quick notes

Allow users and their teammates to easily create and see any highlights, annotations, or custom notes, users can make quick notes not just on Lead page, but also in their messages and posts integrated within their CRM.

Custom and automatic tags

Touchpoints across experience and make our recommendations smarter.

Scannable “B.A.N.T.” section

Including information about the budget, needs, authority, and timeline of the buyer and their respective company better informs the seller if the person is a viable lead.

Dynamic page based on deal stage

Display what’s most relevant based on deal stage synced from CRM.

Opportunity Area II

Acknowledge the seller’s emotional journey

How might we celebrate our users’ wins and soften their losses?
How might we make growing expertise with Sales Navigator visible and “felt”?

Concept

Supporting sellers during their low points and celebrating their high points.

The Seller Society

A place where sellers can come together to engage in discussions, meet other sellers, and learn the best industry tips from experts.

Sharing leads

When a seller find out a lead that is not a good fit for their product, he/she can still share valuable insights about this opportunity to the Seller Community.

Unlock lead info from
the community

As a member of the Seller Society, viewer who find the lead shared could be relevant to them could unlock to view the lead info.

Celebration moment for sharing leads

Once a lead has been viewed by other group members, SN user who shared the lead will receive a success message to appreciate their sharing.

Results

Elevating Design’s seat at the table

Tangible product impact

Tangible concepts that were well-received by Product, Engineering, and other cross-functional leads, resulting in them getting prioritized for the next half of the roadmap. Additionally, internal teams demonstrated much inspiration and enthusiasm for these concepts as longer-term initiatives.

Attitude shift towards Design

The team successfully managed to change the mindset of our cross-functional counterparts and leaders towards the types of work and impact that the Design team is capable of.

Personal growth within the Design team

Most importantly, one of the biggest results was the opportunity for our Design team to uplevel their skills, reinvigorate their energy with the opportunity to work on something creative and outside the box, along with gaining personal confidence in handling ambiguity, while bonding with the team and having fun.

Team testimonials

“This is awesome team! Thanks for getting so creative here. Lots of great takeaways for the whole team on how to innovate and inspire really user centered roadmaps. Excited to see analogous research and sacrificial concepts from more teams as Design org ups our game on really driving company roadmaps and strategy.”

-- Sarah Alpern, VP of Design, LinkedIn

“I haven’t felt so inspired since all of my time at this company.”

-- LSS Design team member