AMA: Asana Head of Global Product Marketing, Eric Bensley on Sales Kickoffs

This may sound simple but: create the enablement with them, not for them. When sales reps, and especially sales leaders, are invested in the content they will use it. You know you have a winning enablement when sellers are organically using it in customer conversations. So, here's a checklist to make sure your next enablement lands: * Identify your core objectives for the enablement: pipeline, product participation, win rate, etc. * Run a kickoff with key sales leaders and stakeholders. Show them your objectives and let them speak free form on how they would look at hitting the objectives. * Share 2-3 drafts with them of the enablement and iterate based on their feedback. * Ask them to represent some or all of the content. If it's on a zoom, ask them to co-present with you. If it's async, ask them to send the email or the slack. * Enablements that fall flat are ones that are created and shipped from the marketing department. Enablements that land are ones that are co-created by all functions touching GTM.

There's a lot of ways to do this but the one you MUST do is win loss interviews. Focus group testing and stage presentations do not validate you have a differentiated value prop compared to competitors. If you're strapped for people resources, there are many companies out there that can do win loss interviews for you. These interviews do a few things that you can't get elsewhere: -Raw answers and insights, not influenced by any agenda other than being honest. -They are timely and change based on the given quarter's macro environment. -They're hard to argue with and stand out from the various opinions we take internally.

This is a tricky one. There are tangible and intangible metrics for every SKO. And to honest, depending on the stage of your company, leadership disposition, and company objectives...you'll lean harder into tangible or intangible. Let me list out a few in each category I've seen success with in my career: Tangible: * Product participation - what percentage of ramped AEs sold a given product/sku/license/ etc in a given quarter. * Pipe generation - pipe associated with a particular area of focus. * Pipe maturation - pipe progressed in quarter with a particular area of focus. * Session scores or NPS - basic satisfaction scores on content, done for each SKO session. Some use NPS but I prefer a simple 0-5 scoring system for simplicity. Intangible: * Sales leadership sentiment before, during, after * Quality of content and audience participation * C-suite sentiment during and after A good SKO should have a balance of tangible and intangible. This certainly isn't a scientific answer but the SKOs I've been most proud of leave you and your stakeholders with a feeling of confidence and pride. I can feel the successful ones right now as I write this.

Slight nuance here but I don't think sales teams feel motivated and inspired by "product updates." In my career, I've seen many PMM teams that push product updates to sales teams and consider it their job to make sure sales always has the latest features in their toolkit. You may reading this and thinking the same thing. But what I hear from Sales around product updates is they're noisy. PMMs need to start with more empathy for what it means to be a seller. They have to hit quota (which is hard) and they don't have time for any distractions. How do you move product updates out of the "distraction" category? You have to nest the features in the problems they're trying to solve today. What are the key sales conversations happening every day? Where are they losing deals and why? Create a framework for these updates that nests the innnovation under key buyer themes. Maybe even change the name "product updates" to "product innovation for your next customer call." And the last thing I'd recommend is packaging updates and doing them less often. If the sales team understands when to expect this and how often, they're more likely to make it part of a habit. If updates are done adhoc or too often, they feel like noise.

I love your use of "continuously" here, I think that's the key. Here are some things that have worked for my teams: * Weekly sales leadership check-ins to get raw, unfiltered direction * Customer advisory boards/councils that bring product, sales, marketing together to hear first hand how things resonate. * Executive briefings with product, PMM, and sales all in the room with the customer. * Direct outreach to AEs who have attached your plays/decks to their deals. * Win loss interviews

This is the job of sales plays. Sales plays in their simpleist form should be repeatable conversations and deal programs that lead to successful customer ROI and company revenue. Start with the sales team when you ideate here, what are the most successful conversations your top sellers are having? Heres an example of a generic play name: Faster [business outcome] for [persona] Here's what a play should have: * Pitch deck * Out of the box demo * Demo video * Play overview: problem, value prop, use cases, customer ROI, differentiation * AE and sales leader support/endorsements Make sure to spend enough time with your sales partners while you create a play. They will use it if they have a hand in it.

Don't lead with the product vision. Lead with the customer vision: * where the market is going * what buyers are struggling with * what competitors are doing * where we're winning and where we're losing Once you've couched the vision in a way that sales can see how it helps them win, then share the vision. Remember to start with empathy for the seller. They have to kit their quota, a story for their buyer will do that in a way that a product vision will not.

Sellers are coin operated by nature. They have to deliver $$$ to the business to be successful. I'm hesitant to say you want to change their behavior. I think a better way to say this is you need to align product knowledge and sales technique to their objective: hitting quota. How do you do that? * Showcase account teams that are seeing success with deep product knowledge or a specific sales technique. I like videos most for these to really communicate the process and impact. * Make it easier to use your materials. Shorter, more compelling content. Always ask how an asset could be shorter. * Bring in outside experts from the sales community who can do coaching from a sellers perspective. Sellers sometimes struggle with taking selling advice from people that haven't sold before.

Product marketing should own the story of SKO and it's activation throughout content. If I look back at my most recent company SKO, here's what my team owned: * All keynote content and demos * Enablement objectives and curriculum, in partnership with our field readiness team * Demo activations in common areas * Signage and messaging * Rev/sales leadership alignment * Stakeholder in look and feel of the event In enterprise B2B PMM, there are 2 tentpole moments every year: 1) SKO, 2) Your annual customer event.