Finance - Friend or Foe

Friend!

The finance team may be the team that has the most distance from the product in your company. They require you to explain why and how a new feature and/or product will help drive revenue. If you can convince finance, you know that you have your ducks in a row.

You cannot go to finance without a plan, they are super smart and willing to give you a little rope on your projections with sales, but you must have alignment with company strategy, the research, the data, sales buy-in on projections, and a compelling story about why you want to spend resources on one project versus another. Alignment with finance is huge and they feel much better about their projections when everything can be played out for them.

A good CFO, or CEO for that matter, will often take your plan and ask how to get it in half the time. Do you need more resources either shifted from other projects or new hires/contractors? This is what makes business invest and grow.