AMA: Atlassian Product Marketing, Marina Ben-Zvi on Enterprise Product Marketing

In enterprise sales motions, the biggest loss and delay reason is often inaction. That means PMM’s greatest value is helping customers make a decision across the buying journey, whether they engage through sales, partners, or self-serve channels. The challenge is helping a buying committee agree there is a real problem, realize it is critical enough to fix now, see why your approach is different, and feel confident enough to act. The best PMM work makes the sales motion easier to run. It gives r ...Read More

The surface answer is: longer sales cycles, bigger buying committees, more complexity. That’s all true. But I think the more useful answer is that enterprise PMM is not just a scaled-up version of SMB or mid-market PMM. It’s a different craft for a different motion. In SMB or mid-market, you are often marketing to the person who will actually use the product, or their direct team will. They can try it, see the value, and make a decision relatively quickly. So the messaging can often focus on eas ...Read More

This is one of the more frustrating parts of enterprise PMM. Companies often handle it in one of two bad ways: they either measure almost nothing and operate on instinct, or they only measure lagging indicators and do not learn anything until it is too late to adjust. If your sales cycle is six, nine, or twelve months, you cannot wait for closed revenue to know whether a launch is working. You need to measure in layers. Market engagement. Are the right accounts engaging? Are the right personas s ...Read More

I’ll start by stating the obvious: influence with sales is earned over time, not given. You earn it by being genuinely useful, repeatedly and visibly, in moments that matter to them. Sales teams are under pressure. They do not need more internal narratives, more asset libraries, or more enablement for the sake of enablement. They need help winning. So I think about it a few ways. First, start with their problems, not yours.The fastest way to lose credibility with a sales leader is to show up wit ...Read More

The biggest mistake companies make when moving upmarket is assuming enterprise is just the next segment up. Companies will say, “We’re doing well in mid-market, let’s go upmarket,” and then make a few surface-level changes. But moving upmarket changes almost everything: the buyer, the buying process, the proof required, the product expectations, the implementation needs, the support model, and the value story. Enterprise customers don’t just buy software. They bet on whether your company can be ...Read More

The biggest pitfall is creating a separate story for every stakeholder. That usually creates fragmentation. The business leader hears one thing, the CFO hears another, IT hears yet another, and eventually the deal feels inconsistent. You need one core narrative that everyone can agree on: what is the business problem, why does it matter now, what changes if the company solves it, and why are we the right partner? Then you tailor the emphasis by persona. The business leader may care about speed, ...Read More