Yes, there are plenty resources out there for you to continue to sharpen your toolset and learn from others in the community as well. Here are some of my favorites 1. Listening to podcasts - Women in Product Marketing by Mary Sheehan is by far my favorite. She brings on a host of Senior PMM's in their field to discuss topics from messaging, positioning, pricing, getting into PMM, GTM strategy etc. 2. Following thought leaders on Linkedin. 3. Spend time on other websites - Some website I have come to love over time are Airtable, Asana, Snowflake, Zendesk, Gong, Drift, Dropbox, Evernote etc. Here's a good list of good B2B website examples and what makes them great as well 3. Spending time in the field with actual customers - listen to how they talk about their challenges, goals, aspirations and passions. What they like spending time doing and what they don't. Ask specific questions on how your product/service helps them, what they would do otherwise and take notes on the specific words and language they use to describe the value your product brings to them 4. Listen to Gong calls or shadow your sales/Customer success teams - to hear first hand on how your sellers sell your product/service, the slides and pitch decks they use, and their words and language. Pay attention to what resonates with customers, and what doesnt. Listen also, to how prospects describe their problems. 

There are a number of messaging framework templates available these days. I shared an article that I like to reference (link is below again); I also suggest you check out posts from Andy Raskin (https://andyraskin.com/) who I've worked with previously or check out this recording of Tiffany Spencer doing a talk at Heavybit. It's a handful of years old, but still relevant: https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/getting-to-a-messaging-framework-and-value-prop/. More than having the right template, however, the critical second piece to the question is about driving home messaging to internal stakeholders. Messaging projects should not be done in a vacuum. As a product marketer, you have the responsibility and superpower to be closest to what's happening in the market, with your buyers, at scale. Take that information, distill it down into insights that are easily digestible and then use that to take your internal stakeholders along for the journey - show them how the messaging you've helped develop is differentiated from your competitors and they will get excited. Another way to drive messaging home with larger groups is through certifications. Every one of my sales teams has had a certification process and messaging/narrative is definitely a part of that. Align with your sales leadership on this. https://medium.com/@jamiecatherinebarnett/your-must-have-core-messaging-framework-a-guide-for-high-tech-startups-6eb39a6d0864

Now this is a fun challenge. Assuming you did your homework during the interview process, you should have a good idea of what you're getting into. That doesn't mean you won't find some skeletons lurking behind close doors. Rather you should understand how the team views product marketing, what kind of executive support you can expect, and their expectations of you. With that mind, here are a few key things I would want to accomplish after 90 days. * Everyone knows what product marketing does and what we're responsible for. That means internal evangelism and roadshows. You will need to educate internal teams on product marketing and get everyone on the same page. Don't assume they have the same definition. You define and evangelism it with executive support. * Get product marketing added to the cross-functional agenda specifically product and sales teams. It's crucial that you're seen as a leader within these teams. * Find and knock out any quick wins. This will make you look like good and earn respect among other teams. People want to work with A-players and people that can count on to get shit done. * At the end of 90 days, you should be prepared to present a long-term strategy of how why we're gonna win. Depending on the company, long-term could be a year, 6 months, or a quarter. Whatever that timeframe is I would want to see a presentation outlining our go-to-market strategy. Lastly, be sure to check out my Sharebird podcast called Thrills & Chills where I interview first product marketers and those who have established product marketing in company.

I'd recommend having on hand: * Your story. Be prepared to give a brief walkthrough of your background and experience. I always like to see when someone has a strong narrative about their career — why they made each move, the highlights of their experience and what they learned, and what they're looking for next. * An example of a product launch or major project you led that you were particularly proud of. Be prepared to talk about the process of putting it together, any difficulties you faced and how you overcame them, and what the impact was (with actual metrics like revenue, product adoption, or awareness / engagment lift if you can!). * Examples of how you've worked with each of the functions represented on the interview panel. If you're speaking with a PM, a sales director, and a performance marketer, for example, prep stories about how you've worked with product, sales, and performance marketing. * A few companies that you think are doing product marketing well. The first time I got asked this question in an interview, I didn't have an answer prepared, and it was super tough to think of a few on the spot. You may not get asked this question, but you'll be grateful to have an answer in your back pocket if you do. * Questions for each of the panelists. Even if they're basic ones like 'how do you envision the person in this role will work with your team?' or 'what are the characteristics of people who are really successful at this company?' you don't want to be left without any questions for the interviewer. 

I think PMM orgs go through phases. When I started in this role we were strictly by product, but our portfolio quickly became too complicated. We moved to more of a segment or sub-portfolio model. At the same time, the rest of the organizations' PMM teams were sub-dividing by objective. In order to match with the rest of that org we had 'ambassadors' to the objective-based teams. Given that PMM stakeholders are typically PM and Sales, I think the best approach is to best align your PMMs with the stakeholder objectives. In most organizations that's by product line or segment.

These are all interrelated. Messaging: Includes value propositions, your story, and pitch. Also includes things like naming, alternatives, and taglines. Value Proposition: These are the top benefits you want to focus on for your product based on customer and competitive unput Pitch & Story: These should be the same. Your pitch about the world before your product, the current approach, why it’s bad, the business consequences, and the new world with your product should tell a story. This story should hit on your main messaging points and value propositions. Hope that helps!

What are some surprising ways that candidates have stood out to you in PMM interviews? What are your biggest watchouts? PMMs are notoriously difficult to hire. The best PMMs I've worked with are * Balance left and right brain * Are equally adept at fast thinking and slow thinking * Can maintain the 10,000' view while understanding the details at 1,000' It’s important to identify the 1-3 skills that will be most important for your company and domain. Then look for experiences that suggest they’ll excel in those domains. A few examples: * Large enterprise sales force - Here, being able to enable and hold court with a large sales team is critical. Does the candidate have leadership experience (in PMM or outside of work)? One PMM I worked with organized a 1,000 guest annual fundraiser for a non-profit they were involved with. Their ability to corral multiple stakeholders, drive sponsorships, and drive to a productive event suggested they’d be great at enablement. * Technical products - Here, having the hunger to dig into technical details is key. Does the candidate have a personal interest in a complex domain. Perhaps they’re savvy investors in their personal life. Perhaps they’ve built demos or software in the past. In one interview, a candidate came having used our product with dozens of recommendations for how we can improve the product and our marketing. Ultimately, the things I look for: * Grit: Have they demonstrated resilience in high-stakes environments and persistence in the face of volatility? * Leadership: Can they influence peers and leaders across Product, Sales, Marketing, and e-staff? * Persistence: Can they operate in highly ambiguous and variable environments. This is especially important in the early stages. * Domain/Persona: Do they have past experience with your domain/persona? Not necessary but helps accelerate their path to becoming opinionated. * Tenure: Have they been able to build tenure and have impact in their past roles * Pace: Can they hustle in a fast paced environment? * Portfolio: Can they produce a portfolio of high-quality work? * Stage Experience: Have they operated at your stage of company before? * Revenue: Have they operated at the revenue target you are looking to reach in the next 12 -18 months. Be mindful of planning for the future and not today. Candidates should pull your business forward. * GTM Motion: This one is critical, but have they worked with your GTM motion before (PLG vs. SLG)

"Influencing the roadmap" is a phrase that you'll hear often at tech companies as an unwritten goal for marketing, sales and research teams. It's also something that should be approached thoughtfully. You probably won't get very far if in your first meeting with you PM counterpart you say something like, "I'm really excited to influence your roadmap!" Influencing the product roadmap requires you to build trust and confidence with your respective product peers. Here's how I've typically approached: * From my experience, I've found it most effective to first deeply understand my PM's goals, roadmap, and KPIs and come prepared with well thought out questions to develop some initial trust. * Once you have a deeper understanding of your product partner's goals, you can then begin to educate product partners on how you and your team can help contribute to these goals. As a PMM, typically, this will consist of a combination of inbound intelligence (deeply understanding the market, customer needs, and competition) and outbound marketing (determining how best to bring products to market, drive adoption of products). Influencing the roadmap will come from thoughtful, data-driven inbound intelligence that highlights macro market needs and opportunities which goes beyond just specific feature requests. * The trust and confidence will grow as you prove to your product partners that you can provide helpful inbound intelligence and drive thoughtful and effective outbound strategy for a particular launch. Being excellent at both inbound and outbound will increase your chances of being able to influence and inform the roadmap on a regular basis. During my time at Spotify working on the ads business, we introduced something called the bi-annual Market Needs Review. It was essentially a 360 analysis of the biz that analyzed customer and sales feedback, competition, and our own company (3Cs). * This analysis would lead to 3-5 "market needs" or "market opportunities" that we would present to the product teams. We would focus on market or customer needs (the opportunity) as opposed to specific feature request (the solution). * For example, in the early days of Spotify's ad business, ads measurement from leading third party providers was a critical need from most large customers and ad agencies. We collected this feedback from our sales partners and customers directly and quantified the lost revenue by not having these measurement solutions in place. * We positioned the market need as "Best in class ads measurement" along with the supporting customer and revenue data. PMs, Engineers and Designers responded well to data-informed market needs than simply saying, "X company has this feature and we need it too." * The amount of data and rigor put into this analysis, and the objective assessment of what was most needed from our customers helped established a strong partnership with product teams and regular cadence of inbound intelligence that aligned with product planning cycles.

You do not have to have direct reports to develop some of the skills you will need to be a good manager and demonstrate that you are ready to take on the challenge of managing a team. Many PMMs have to mobilize large cross functional teams to get work done. To do this well, you need to set a clear vision, set expectations for what will be done by when, provide feedback and coaching when the work is not on track, etc. All of these skills are critical to being an effective manager. In addition, you can coach or mentor others on your team. If you are a more seasoned PMM, you can help other newer PMMs to learn the role and develop their skills. I personally appreciate and reward seasoned PMMs who step up and help their peers. If you are interested in becoming a manager, talk to your manager about your interest. Ask them what you can do to develop the skills you need to manage. Make sure you come to that conversation armed with some ideas for how you can build and demonstrate those skills. Ideally, come to that conversation with examples of how you have already demonstrated your ability to manage and lead. Feel free to draw upon my suggestions above for inspiration.

Yes, my team uses a document template for what we call a Launch Guide, and what at prior companies I’ve called a GTM Plan or a Product Marketing Brief. The document template is organized into sections that cover a wide variety of topics around the launch, such as the beta and GA launch timing, the members of the launch team, description of target customer and relevant need, summary of competitive research, the messaging framework for the new product, links to key launch resources, and a whole lot more. For the smallest launches, it’s not required for the PMM to create a Launch Guide, and for the somewhat smaller launches, it’s unlikely that the PMM is going to fill out every section of the Launch Guide. The sections of the Launch Guide are intended to ensure that the PMM and the launch team have thought through every consideration around the launch. It’s useful to set up a hierarchy of launch information that is always available to any internal stakeholder (e.g., a sales rep, etc.): 1) A product launch tracker that lists every upcoming release, with basic info about what the release is, its timing, who the PMM point person is, etc. For releases deemed more important (i.e. releases with larger launch size), the product launch tracker also shows a link to… 2) ….the launch guide, allowing the internal stakeholder to drill down and learn about the launch if they’re so inclined.