AMA: Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, Jira and the Jira suite, Claire Drumond on Stakeholder Management

I have a new hack for this: it's called Loom. I swear I'm not trying to promote this product, but marketers gonna market ;) Seriously though, Loom has been a game changer for us to keep tight feedback loops, stakeholders informed, and identifying when there needs to be a deeper dive on an area of disagreement. * Record your presentation on Loom and send it to your stakeholders for feedback. * Ask them to comment on the video directly and then either respond to their comments directly, or use the comments to set the agenda for your alignment meeting. * Never present live in a room full of lots of VPs. First, you'll never get the feedback you want, you'll likely never get consensus, and you'll probably stay in the feedback loop for 3x as long as you'd like. By sending the presentation ahead of a meeting, you'll be able to gather feedback beforehand, and use your meeting time to hash it out. * Another hack, if your stakeholders won't watch the video ahead of a meeting, use the first 15 minutes of the meeting for them to watch & respond to the video while you're all together, then the second half of the meeting can be focused on discussion. I hope this hack saves you lots of time and headaches!

Building a strong relationship with product requires level-setting on your goals first and foremost. Just like any relationship, you need to take the time to really understand each others strengths and look for ways to compliment each other. In my best relationships with Product, our mantra is One team, One dream. And we say this often to remind ourselves that friction is good, and we're all here for the same reasons. I've seen the following anti-patterns often in my career with this very important relationship: 1. Product not understanding marketing's value and how they drive impact. For example, thinking marketing is solely updating websites and sending emails, without fully understanding the deeply research & data-driven aspects that go into a strong GTM strategy, messaging, and understanding of competitors and the market. 2. Product marketing not understanding the technical complexities, dependencies, and flood of internal & external feedback that a product team has to manage in order to simply keep the lights on, let alone innovate. 3. Both parties having an incomplete understanding of how each craft is trying to drive towards your goals. For example, Product may be focused on driving MAU and building features to keep users active, where PMM wants to attract new customers with competitive and differentiated features. Both goals are important, but one drives new growth and one drives expansion. Simply understanding this will help you craft a more balanced roadmap together. I recommend re-setting or kicking off the relationship with a joint exercise where you review each others roadmaps and goals. Do this quarterly, if not weekly, discuss how you're tracking, blockers, wins and losses. This ritual can take place in a weekly squad meeting with the product triad and PMM. And if you don't have a weekly squad meeting... start one! And PMMs -- be noisy about being included in product rituals. Don't give up until you have a strong seat at that table. You can check out my blog for some more ideas on how to build and work on this relationship: https://medium.com/smells-like-team-spirit/why-my-team-is-killing-our-triad-86946b099b

I think the most effective model here is the hub and spoke, (while remembering the wheel is the most important). * PMM is the center of the wheel, setting the strategic direction along with their product counterparts. * PMM should be aligning on business goals, developing competitive and differentiated roadmap & GTM strategy, and ensuring that your messaging and positioning is competitive and compelling. If PMMs are doing their jobs correctly, this direction should help all your general marketing functions build their own plans around the set direction. For example, demand gen should be able to take your set strategy to build and execute on campaigns that drive those goals. * Then each craft should have their own guardrail metrics that show if their work is effective in driving towards the north star. I find this model breaks down when the general marketing functions have their own goals that are disconnected to, or not directly driving towards the PMMs goals. For example, if PMM is trying to land new logos, and your brand team is trying to rebrand the company and using all of their resources to do that, it would be a good time to have a conversation with leadership and ask them to prioritize. If goals are clear and aligned, managing this relationship should be easy. Your marketing counterparts are an extension of your PMM team, bring them along for the ride, involve them in your planning cycles and team meetings, buy them drinks, especially the creative team because lets face it, they're usually the most fun.

I yell at them! Just kidding. Design is a visual representation of your positioning & messaging. If there's a disagreement, I find it often comes from a different understanding of either your positioning, your audience, or how you want to show up against competitors. To solve a disagreement with design, it may require taking a step back to look at those factors together to ensure you have a shared understanding. 1. Look at your competitors and see how they are showing up in the market from a design perspective. Is the design you're working on going stand out and be compelling? 2. Revisit your personas together. For example, we market to developers and when looking at design we think about the other tools that developers use and try to ensure that we're in the same camp. Dark mode everywhere! 3. Write a tone & feel section in your message house if you haven't already. What adjectives do you want your audience to come away with from your designs, and do the designs you're working on align with that? 4. Finally, be kind and respect each others crafts. The above are three ways to make design more objective, but lets face it, good design is art and strong reactions are usually what make it good. If you still can't agree, ask your customers!

Customer feedback and journey mapping. There's always data available, it just may not always be the data your stakeholders want. In those scenarios, I always default to customer feedback. 1. Customer feedback: I find that reviewing messaging & positioning, new webpages, you name it, with customers or potential customers often gives you the vital feedback you need to understand if you're truly solving their problems. There are lots of tools that can give you great customers feedback, like Usertesting.com or Withers. You can also tap into your own most active customer database and informally have them review your work. We have found that some of our biggest fans love to get involved in this way. Use quotes from those sessions to prove or disprove your idea. Make sure you show how competitors are positioning themselves, too! 2. Journey Mapping: You can do the same by showing a customer's experience (screens, content, in product experience) etc. of your current state vs. future state. Then do a secret shopper your top competitors to show what THEY do. Compare the two and use that as proof that your idea is highly competitive. Then see point #1.