AMA: 1Password Director, Product Marketing, Eric Chang on Product Marketing Soft and Hard Skills

You'll often see something like go-to-market strategy/planning/execution mentioned as the most important skill for product marketers. While this isn't untrue, there is a key blend of hard/soft skills that enable a product marketer to really drive a successful GTM motion. I'll share my thoughts on the top 3 soft and hard skills that every great product marketer should have. Soft Skills 1. Navigating Ambiguity - This is really a blend of multiple soft skills (adaptability, problem solving, organization) but is a good way to summarize THE key soft skill that every PMM should have. PMMs in particular have to deal with an exponentially higher amount of ambiguity due to the highly cross-functional nature of our role and the broad surface area that PMMs can operate in. There can also be a lack of understanding of what PMM is by other functions, especially at early stage companies where the function may be brand new. Understanding how to find opportunities to create value, structure, and alignment in the presence of ambiguity is incredibly important. 2. Empathy - Relating and understanding where someone is coming from is critical in both driving outbound initiatives and also in discerning insights from customers/users. Successful product marketing requires effective cross-functional relationships, and to build those relationships PMMs need to have a clear understanding of stakeholder objectives/goals so that alignment can be created in a way that drives success for everyone. For insights as well, we have to understand what our users/customers are experiencing in order to best help advocate for their needs. 3. Communication - Incredibly important for driving alignment, articulating ideas/plans, getting executive buy-in, speaking in front of the company, webinars, etc. Hard Skills 1. Positioning and Messaging - Positioning is especially important if you're working in company with a complex or wide range of products, or if you're in a particularly competitive industry. Identifying how your products fit next to each other or how you differentiate against other products is critical. Once that's established, you then have to tell the story and connect with your target audience. 2. Data Analysis - There are so many different types of data sets that allow you to detect where there may be an opportunity or problem to solve, whether looking at product usage data, sales pipeline, NPS, etc. You don't need to be a data scientist, but product marketers should be comfortable rolling up their sleeves to dig through data/dashboards, understanding what type of data questions to ask, and then knowing how to partner with the relevant data experts (whether finance, data science/analytics, sales ops, etc.) to take that analysis to the next level. 3. Some sort of GTM downstream experience/expertise - Product marketers lead large cross-functional teams that ultimately handle most of the execution and it's important to understand the challenges of executing a GTM plan. Whether you've previously built integrated campaigns, launched emails, managed CRM, led SEO, worked in sales/support, etc. there's not a particular "right" answer, but the experience is valuable (and also helps provide credibility when you can really say "I get it, I've been there").

I'd recommend making sure to spend enough time on the planning and information gathering phase that is necessary prior to creating messaging. The most common issue I've seen with messaging is PMMs jumping straight into creating a framework before they truly take the time to understand their target audience's pain points, and how the product solves those pain points. As a result, the messaging turns into that individual's view of why they think the product is great. In an ideal world you would be able to find lots of customer research/insights, create a persona, a clear set of problems, establish positioning, understand the product, and then dive into messaging. The reality is you often don't have the time/resources to do all this. In these situations, I recommend you create a simple brief that lays out very clearly your audience pain points, positioning, and key product info. If you have those 3 items the messaging exercise is much more straight forward and they serve as a good reminder of the foundation you're using to build your messaging. Next, make sure to get feedback (ideally from your target audience, but teammates are great as well). Repetitions and practice are important, but getting feedback will help you better understand if messaging is resonating before you push it live. The feedback will help you course correct and deliver more effective in-market messaging, plus it will help you identify how you can improve. From a structured learning perspective, a public speaking or writing class could also be helpful. Effective public speaking requires you to understand an idea and communicate it clearly, which are both helpful and complementary to improving messaging skills. I myself haven't taken a writing class before, but I have known many PMMs (especially those in more content heavy roles) who have and would recommend it.

I am a huge fan of the STAR format (and also keeping answers to two minutes or less)! For any interview, I think it's important to identify and prepare your key 3-4 examples, which you can then use to display a wide range of skills depending on the question type. When you're responding to a question using one of these examples, make sure to take the opportunity to quickly highlight some of those soft skills. Example: If you're asked about a time where you had to analyze data, of course you should convey how you analyzed the data, but you likely had to work with someone from analytics to identify the right data set, perhaps you got a second opinion from a different team that differed from yours which you had to reconcile, and then you had drive cross-functional alignment when you created recommendations based on that data. If you are an experienced product marketer, you should naturally have lots of examples that can display your soft skills. For candidates in other functions that want to transition into product marketing, make sure to identify examples where you've partnered with other teams or engaged with customers that will give you the opportunity to let your soft skills shine through.

If I had to choose one I would (slightly) lean towards soft skills. Having the right soft skills is what I believe enables a PMM to find the biggest opportunities and drive buy-in/alignment so that they can have the most impact. That being said, the main variable that would make me prioritize hard skills or soft skills is the level of ambiguity that you'll have to deal with on that new team. Contrasting two extreme examples: If you join a large team, with a mature product marketing function, for a highly technical/specific product in an established category, with a clearly scoped role, and have many resources/product experts around you that can help you onboard - then I would say that having the right hard skills will allow you to more quickly deliver value in your new role. You have clear sources of information to build positioning and messaging, established data/insights to look at, teammates that you can ask questions + get answers from, your scope is likely narrow, etc. and can get straight to work. If you join a 2 year-old rapid growth 150 person company, growing 400% y/y, with a brand new product marketing function, for a new/disruptive product, the company doesn't really know what product marketing does, and the roles & responsibilities of different functions are hazy - then I would say soft skills are more important. You'll need every ounce of adaptability, communication, problem solving, and organization you have in you. Of course roles will typically fall somewhere in the middle of these two examples. You can also take a look at my answer for the question "What are the required vs nice to have hard and soft skills for PMM roles in big SaaS companies compared to hard and soft skills for PMM roles in small start-ups/scale-ups in the tech space?" to see more of my thoughts around this.

While I believe all the hard/soft skills I mentioned in my previous answer are must-haves for any PMM, my answer here depends most on the level of ambiguity at the company and how specialized the PMM role/scope is. -Start-ups- The ambiguity for a PMM at a start-up will be much higher than that of a large established SaaS company. At a start-up, you're likely working with a lot of rapidly evolving/changing functions, a continuous stream of new hires, lack of processes, and you may even be the first PMM hire. Product marketing tends to be added to the organization well after product/eng/other marketing functions have already been established - so not only are you trying to figure out how to deliver value as a PMM, you're likely also trying to educate other teams on what product marketing is and explaining to them why they should work with you. In this situation, the ability to navigate ambiguity is an absolute requirement as you will spend a lot of time trying to sort out the chaos so that you can properly launch products, drive alignment on user insights, etc. A key complementary hard skill is project/process management - in this environment you will be trying to create new processes to help improve company outcomes. Having the ability to manage these projects/processes along with designing them in a way that fits your company will be crucial to product marketing's success. -Big SaaS companies- Big SaaS companies are more likely to have very specialized and well defined PMM functions due to the maturity of the organization and the large amount of resources available. You likely have lots of PMMs available on your team to whom you can ask questions, learn from, and work together with. Cross-functional partners have probably worked with your role before, and will come to you asking for specific deliverables. Your environment is conducive to quickly learning what is expected of you and how you are supposed to deliver value. While your ability to navigate ambiguity is still important, it's not quite as critical as the start-up example, because you have a structured role in place. The PMM function at this large SaaS company could also be specialized by GTM vs. Usage, Inbound vs. Outbound, Competitor or industry Specialists, Sales Enablement vs. Content, features vs solutions, etc. Given that there are a lot of specialized roles, the hard skills required really depend on the role you're targeting (or where you want to take your career). That being said big B2B SaaS company PMMs tend to have very very close partnerships with sales, so having the sales flavor of hard skills never hurts in these situations (B2B messaging/content creation like pitch decks/battlecards, knowing how to analyze forecasting/pipeline, competitive analysis, enablement, win/loss, etc.).