AMA: Airtable Head of Product and Solutions Marketing, Claudia Michon on Stakeholder Management

This sounds like a situation where the product and sales organizations are working in silos and not collaborating. There should be conversations from early days to review product offerings so sales can validate the commercial viability of a new product. If sales doesn't think it will sell, you should re-evaluate the product. Is there a key feature missing? Create messaging for objection handling and work with sales to provide new feature timeline. Is the pricing model wrong? Recommend changes. I ...Read More

There are a few reasons for launching new product: Create new revenue stream Build a competitive moat and increase retention Deliver innovation to make noise and capture mindshare Fix things that don't work well or create patches for potential breakpoints For #1, you should start with a brief that includes monetization rationale and opportunities. Include competitive data to get a sense of what the market has validated already. Get your finance teams involved early so they can help model out sce ...Read More

In general, it's good to have a high level of visibility for cross-functional initiatives so that success or failure is shared across teams. This creates a joint sense of ownership and incentivizes on time delivery. I'm new in my current role and am working with other dept leaders to establish a cross-functional launch process that cuts across every DRI that contributes to a launch - from engineers and product designers to content marketers. We will have multiple workstreams across different alt ...Read More

Being a newcomer is a great opportunity to ask questions and understand how things work or have worked in the past. Start with a series of 1:1s with key stakeholders across product, marketing and sales functions. Approach each one with a sense of friendly curiosity and openness so you can both build good rapport as well as understand with whom and how to engage. Map out key stakeholders across product, marketing and sales that are key to successful product marketing Set up a series of 1:1s to in ...Read More

Feedback is a gift....that you can always return for store credit. There is a difference between taking feedback and applying it and taking feedback and finding that it's not going to serve you. I have rarely said "no thank you" to anyone with feedback, but it doesn't mean I have to value it. I think this is just part of being a PMM and the center of so many initiatives. Everyone can see them and have an opinion. Feedback becomes an issue when boundaries aren't set around applying it. I have bee ...Read More

There is no universally most difficult team. It changes from company to company. Generally, it's the teams that have the most power. In sales-led organizations, it's sales. In Product-led, it's product or eng. In some companies, it's rigid finance functions. To overcome the challenge, relationship building is very important. Connect with that team's leaders or most influential members. Set up 1:1s and understand what their challenges are and find ways you can help them solve those challenges. Sa ...Read More

Misalignment is usually when you have competing objectives. To prevent this from happening, I like to have an early "briefing" process with cross-functional leaders to ensure we are all in agreement on what the objectives are and are supportive of the investments and resources required to accomplish them. Having this in writing is key for when disagreements arise - you can always go back to the brief. Of course, things change often, so revisiting commitments and negotiating adjustments along the ...Read More