AMA: Amperity Vice President, Product Marketing, Jason Perocho on Stakeholder Management

Let's pull back from this question because it does not provide a great premise to build on. Every for-profit business has the same objective of making money profitably. Making money profitable can be further subdivided into business metrics around acquisition, which can be further subdivided into business metrics around marketing and sales, which can be further subdivided into metrics around each stage of the funnel. Successfully influencing stakeholders requires finding the lowest subdivision f ...Read More

That's great that you have not dealt with office politics! Those who navigate office relationships the best are empathetic, authentically themselves, and have a vision of what they want to do. Be Empathetic - Everyone has their challenges inside the office and at home. Successful people take the time to understand what's driving their colleagues and show genuine compassion and kindness, even when their colleagues are not at their best. People are drawn to those who try to understand or manage th ...Read More

I measure my success in two ways equally: Company/Business Unit KPIs: Product marketing is a tough job because so much of our success depends on another team applying our messaging successfully in their work. If my team were doing its job correctly, we would have enabled our product, marketing, sales, and customer success to hit their pipeline, sales, and adoption numbers. My area of responsibility has grown over time by taking on more products and/or regions to grow the aforementioned KPIs. Dir ...Read More

Below are the key stakeholders and goals I have during my stakeholder interviews for positioning and messaging: Focus Groups [Prospective Buyer Focus Group] Dive down deep into pains, problems, and expected benefits [Customer Advisory Board] Dive down deep into pains, problems, and expected benefits Product Managers: Identify what pains the new features/products is designed to solve Understand how this provides a differentiated experience Understand the value we want to deliver BDR/SDR Understan ...Read More

There is no checklist but a routine I do every week to ensure I progress toward my goals and feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of each week. Every Monday, I write out my top priority and the three things I will accomplish this week. I share those with my team, my boss, and my stakeholders to get alignment and set expectations of where my time will be focused this week. Occasionally, my boss, team, or stakeholders will ask to adjust based on their view of the business. I weigh the options ...Read More

I have never considered making an empathy map. Empathy mapping is a time-consuming task that often doesn't produce actionable insights. Empathy maps are also limited in scope and only help visualize a specific problem. Instead, I recommend focusing on how you show up at work. This is a repost from another question, but thought it was still relevant here: Be Empathetic - Everyone has their challenges inside the office and at home. Successful people take the time to understand what's driving their ...Read More

I like to keep my approach consistent across stakeholders, but I do alter what I focus on to ensure that each team cares about what I have to say. My approach: Objective: Summarize your objective in a sentence. Overview Goal: Succinct description of the business goal of the pillar Strategy: Succinct statement of your strategy Problem Statement: Clearly state the relevant challenges and the impact on the stakeholder you are talking to. Don't dive into all the details that are not pertinent to the ...Read More

Great stakeholder management begins before a project like sales enablement even begins. Vision: I quickly establish my vision for Product Marketing at the company. In the vision I define our guiding light, what we do, and how we do it. The vision is co-created with the rest of my product marketing team so that every feels a sense of ownership and will evangelize the vision. I get the vision blessed by my CMO, CPO, and CRO, then begin each meeting with it. See below for an example Guiding light: ...Read More

The best advice for managing stakeholder input is to give them a read-ahead before major milestones and to set firm deadlines. Strategy / Proposal State audience and purpose of strategy document. Challenges Clearly state your point of view of this project faces. Mission Statement Take ownership and let the organization know what Customer Marketing stands for. The mission statement is an enduring guiding light that Customer Marketing will follow for the next few years. Use the following structure ...Read More

I use the following template to align internal stakeholders around a project: PMM Strategy Brief Goal:  What impact are we trying to achieve on our business?(i.e. Awareness, PipeGen, Pipe Acceleration, Pipe Close, Adoption, Cross-Sell, Up-Sell, Increase Competitive Win Rates, Revewals etc.) Be Concise. Projected Impact [S/M/L]: Business Insight:  Why are we doing this? Why Now? What trends are we seeing with prospects or in our customer base that led to us wanting to do this initiative? Program ...Read More

Great question! My stakeholders are generally extremely busy, so I try to limit the times I go to them for feedback. What I found worked the best was going to them when there was still a lot of wiggle room to adjust the asset. Concept: I bring the concept to the stakeholders to ensure it's an asset they would use. I also have the stakeholder review messaging and takeaways to ensure the asset is valuable. Second Draft: I bring them a draft to get feedback and ensure they have a say of what should ...Read More

The best way is to help the product and engineering teams bucket and articulate their work and goals. Bucket [or Theme] Product Development - Help your product managers and engineers create distinct buckets for their work. I have been a part of organizations with 40 features under development, but no one has gone through and asked how these are related to each other. Take what's being worked on and arrange them into 3-5 themes. Partner with PM/Eng to Craft Vision for Each Bucket - Once bucketed, ...Read More