AMA: 6sense Former Senior Vice President Product Marketing, Jam Khan on Building a Product Marketing Team

I'm not a fan of connecting metrics to promotions for a role like product marketing becuase there are so many other dependencies that can't be controlled. Rather I like to establish some expectations of responsibility for each seniority level. Seniority levels can usually be attached to the level of responsiblity you can assign someone. Can they run a launch end to end? Can they take a new offer to market? You can use success of some of those outputs to make a determination of how and when to pr ...Read More

A team of three needs to be really agile and nimble. At the same time if you don't really prioritize you're going to risk burn out and poor quality work. For a team this size I would prioritize sales needs above all else. You probably want three areas of focus: 1. positioning and competition: who do we sell to, what value we create, why people should care, what alternatives they seek 2. messaging: who buys from us, what better future can we promise them, how can we prove our ability to deliver o ...Read More

This depends a lot on the companies business goals. In the beginning you'll be on the hook to support the GTM with assets so focus on content creation. It's pointless trying to be too strategic in the early stages. Look to the exec team for priorities and focus on the most important use cases and value drivers your GTM needs help with.  As the team grows think about the best way to support your messaging and positioning. Is if easier to focus on the personas for your product (good when there are ...Read More

Trusting the team and tracking key results and progress versus tracking what people are working on. Tracking what they are working on ends up being micromanagement. Things can change fast, especially if you're in a startup.  Stay agile, get disciplined about the key results you feel support the objective, and have your team share their progress on those. Be sure to assign ownership to those objectives. The classic V2MOM that Sales force defined had the O has Obstacles. Our CMO modified that to O ...Read More

These days everyone is remote is it's important to establish a process that works for your organization. Content and collateral can exist in so many places it can overwhelming. A sales enablement platform is essential for evergreen content. Tools like slack are great for quick updates and real time knowledge sharing (e.g. Sales just had a call where they discoverd a competitive weakness, or ran into an obstacle).  Easy access tools like battlecards are useful for regular consumption. For things ...Read More

Cultural nuances are a real thing. Get comfortable with not having the same amount of high touch, but bear in mind that the regional differences do matter. In the UK words that we would spell with a Z (materialize) are spelled with an S (materialise). These innocuous differences do matter. In a former role we sold a platform that managed entitlements, and that literally had no direct translation in French.  In many Nordic countries gifting isn't just frowned upon, it's against the law. So my big ...Read More

The hardest part in growth and scale is the balance between process, oversight and autonomy. A 5 person team is well aligned, you know what everyone is working on, and easily collaborate on projects. A 20 person team, not as easy. The first step once you get past a team of 7 is to start thinking about team structure and leadership structure. The team I get to serve has 6 pillars: messaging & positioning, partner marketing, customer marketing, product evangelism, market intelligence, activati ...Read More

Regional needs differ. We tend to look at things through a US lens and that's a mistake. Buyers in EMEA vary even within that region. Southern and Northern Europe are different. UK is different in its own way.  If possible in person meetings (QBRs) are one of thr best ways to understand local needs.  Its impossible to meet every regional variation so I like to break out assets by stories that will stay consistent across regions and then areas that need to be adapted. Core value drivers aren't go ...Read More

Map out the various deliverables your team is responsible for. Some are consistent (launches) and others are point in time (website relaunch). List out all the stakeholders you interface with regularly: product management, Sales, Sales Enablemenrt, Marketing comms. Develop a process thats sustainable that allows you to work with each of these groups.  The biggest dependency will be on product so establish a framework and rules of engagement on how product updates will be communicated. How regula ...Read More

Product Marketing teams sit at the nexus of so many other functions in the organization. While this makes for a pivotal and strategic role, it can also create an atmosphere of pressure, and the feeling that you're always behind.  A big part of creating a culture is reenforcing the impact that product marketing has on the organization and making sure the wins are recognized and celebrated. As a product marketing leader clear alignment with the exec team on priorities helps determine what you can ...Read More

I actually don't that's true. We tend to be really hard on ourselves when it comes to messaging and positioning. The number of solutions in each vertical has just exploded and getting audience attention is just really hard. And buyers have so many more options to do their own discovery these days. So companies have to distribute their message across so many different channels. The biggest challenge is the discipline of staying focused on your key personas. Who are the people that really love you ...Read More

This depends on where you are in building your org, and your own experience. My path to PMM is that of a career generalist. I started my career as an engineer, then a sales engineer, then made my way to product management and marketing. I then took a left turn into consulting services before returning to product marketing. If I have a small team I will favor PMMs with some experience, but as I scale I like bringing in other perspectives and experiences into the organization.  Strong communicatio ...Read More

International teams are no different and should go through all the same enablement. In my experience since international teams are used to getting a lot less they are scrappy and more self sufficient. My advice is not to treat them as "international" teams, rather to carve out time to connect with those teams regularly.  Listen to the feedback from those teams, and if the business is large enough consider regional support. I've found some of the most informed and thoughtful feedback comes from i ...Read More

There are few things i'd look at based on the rhythm of the business. How fast is the business growing? How fast is the organization innovating, and how fast is the sales team growing. How many product managers are there (the PM to PMM ratio should be at least 4:1).  How often are there launches that need to be supported? What does the competitive landscape look like.  Factoring all of this you can get an assessment of how complex the solution is, how large the addressable market is, and how muc ...Read More