AMA: Cisco Meraki Head of Product Marketing, Grant Shirk on Industry Product Marketing

The pressure's on for this one. Feels like this is the kind of topic first chapters in business books are devoted to. A successful GTM is hard to describe in detail. Every business, customer, product, team, and marketplace are different and the right path through can vary widely. And the details shift as the market matures; competitors enter, different problems take priority, macroeconomic uncertainty can loom. But, there are some characteristics of success you can look towards to judge if you're on the right track: * It's predictable. You have a process and plan that you can plan to. Whatever the spreadsheet looks like, you can confidently match the inputs (content, $$, people, activities) into outputs (opportunities, pipeline, bookings, recognition) in a measurable way * It's repeatable. You don't need completely new tactics, markets, products every 6 months to keep it going. You have a relatively steady attainment rate for sales, whether it's 70% or 90% - and adding similar new tactics (add a webinar and an event, for example) adds an incremental amount of output * It's trainable. You can consistently hire new reps, new demand gen pros, new customer success leads, and they quickly and reliably onboard, certify, and get to fully ramped on a predictable timeline. It means you've figured out the customer, process, and value prop. * It's copied. Imitation, flattery, you've heard this one. When you start seeing competitors pop up that look like you, talk like you, act like you, try a lot to be like you.... you've hit the fairway. There, I think I mixed Eminem with a sportsball reference. Business allegory achievement unlocked. Then you get to have some fun. You've got cushion to try new things, push some boundaries, see what else might work. 

This is a really tough one. First and foremost, it's important to separate PM and PMM. They need to be parallel, not dependent, organizations to effectively function. You need them to have the freedom to call BS on each other, work through differing opinions, and emerge with a stronger view of the market. I'd recommend starting with the problem to be solved. Is it improving overall GTM effectiveness (opportunity creation, pipeline, win rates), or accessing a new market or vertical? What are the overall priorities of the business that demand gen or product are unable to address on their own? Once you identify the problem, then the justification for the function (or a hire) flows a little more naturally. You can also quickly draft up objectives and success measures based on the problem you're trying to solve.

Other than everyone? Product and UX - To highlight industry-specific opportunities for roadmap or positoning Sales - To help them drive better discovery, solution positioning, and credibility with a customer PMM - To pressure test messaging and inherit the best, most compelling value props they have Customer Success - drive renewals and critical vertical customer stories to drive growth Execs - You need great storytellers who "love" your vertical, even if they're not deep. Demand Gen - To make sure you're properly targeting and communicating with vertical buyers

Internal evangelism and industry expertise. Yes, you need all the core PMM skills. You might even need to be a stronger writer and positioner than the core PMM. But if your sole goal is to help grow your share in a specific industry or set of industries, you're going to have to: * Sell hard on behalf of your customers. Industry features are niche features. Functionality, file support, integrations, compliance, partnerships. Industries are specialized and niche, and each of these will never be "above the line" when it comes to traditional product prioritization. But you have to fight, find connections, find advocates, and build the case for why "solution X" will accelerate growth, grow pipeline, improve win rates. You're going to have to educate and re-educate people on why FERPA is different than FISMA and no, you can't just cover them with a datasheet during E-Rate. * See acronyms above. You truly have to know what's going on in your industry so you can connect product (and maybe an unloved feature or two) to your customers' needs. And you're probably going to be the first person on stage at the industry conference. So go native. 

This one all depends on the product, market, and customers. If you're an industry-specific solution and just getting started in market, taking an industry bent first will help you differentiate against the horizontal plays. Being able to tell a credible "insider story" and keep the team focused on material problems is a huge advantage. Alternatively, if you have a horizontal play that's starting to get real traction in more than 2-3 industries (and by traction, I'd say if you have 3 industries driving more than 50% of your sales, it's time to focus). You'll need that industry credibility and POV to move beyond the early adopters and start honing the product roadmap. Also, by this time, the complexity of the product and the sales motion will be more than enough to occupy a horizontally-focused PMM team. Diversification can accelerate focus; leverage that.

I'm not certain if you mean category management in the retail/B2C space or the category management specific to sourcing and procurement. Either way, I don't think I'd rule someone out on this alone, but they are very different skillsets. While great PMMs come from all walks of life and all backgrounds (for me that's History major -> UX design -> Planning and Finance -> Vertical Marketing -> PMM), there are a few things that are always critical: - Structured thinking - Deep product and customer curiosity - Strong writing and communication skills If you're coming in from outside of PMM (Industry or Core), I'd recommend really focusing on your messaging and storytelling acumen. What did you bring to the GTM that accelerated growth or credibility with a specific customer type? 

As a PMM, revenue is a trailing metric and the one you have the least control over. If there aren't existing quotas set by industry (and this is rare), this is likely to be unsuccessful. Instead, go back to the core KPIs for PMM: Opportunity creation (count), Qualified pipeline ($), and win rate (or pipe coverage). These are more direct to measure, and if you create opportunity for sales, they'll follow those dollars. Establishing these can flow directly from past results and the next few quarters' plan. If you know, for example, that you tend to deliver 18% of business from a given vertical, start there. How much pipeline do you carry to maintain that 18% as the business grows? What incremental pipeline would create a meaningful lift in bookings? What's the investment required to achieve that (how many new accounts, avg. size of account in that industry, etc), and how much database coverage do you have? This can form the bottoms-up view of what you could shoot for. And if you're truly getting started, set these as vectors or targets, not hard goals. Quotas and sales commits are written in blood; building something new needs a little more flexibliity.

A "head of role" is a very different focus. Before we can talk about standing out in the interview, I think it's important to define what a leader in marketing can and should be. Rule #1.#1. You are no longer a marketer. Not really. Your real focus is twofold: building the team, and strengthening the company. At this point in your career, you already know how to do the job. The pivot now is to build a team that can do the job better than you and at larger scale. And then you have to leverage your expertise to help guide the overall company to a better, more predictable, more exciting outcome. Rule #2.#2. You have to understand other teams' functions almost as well as your own. You have to speak sales, demand gen, finance, talent, product, and CS. And you show that knowledge through the questions you ask. What does this look like? - You are continually recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and leveling up your team. Find their strengths, build their skillsets. You can measure your success when your peers (and your leadership) start talking about your team members more than you - You are leading projects that have little to do with vertical marketing. You're leading a pricing strike team, or building the company's first Sustainability program. You're spending 30% of your timing improving the candidate experience during the hiring process. - You're finding problems and evangelizing their priority to solve, even if they're outside your scope. So, for a standout "Head of" candidate? I'm looking for someone who: - Can clearly define what success / meaningful outcomes might look like given minimal inputs - Brings a clear point of view on how to build, coach, and develop teams (and has the receipts) - Can go deep on a functional topic outside of their core area (like sales process, MOPS, etc.) - Continually returns to the priority of building the team - Has a clear, pragmatic POV of what's working and what's not in their current company

I love these big questions. What strikes me is there seems to be an underlying tension in several of the questions about industry vs. product marketing. Just like any two teams in marketing, there are superpowers of each that when combined together make a much stronger team. Paging Indy Sen - I think there's an Avengers or IMF reference buried in here somewhere. But seriously - when industry and "core" PMM work together with a common purpose, there's very little you can't accomplish. By pairing a deep understanding of products and market, rich insights into industry challenges and opportunities, a shared need for persona empathy, and a knack for messaging and wordplay? That's magic. A basic recipe for this is to divide by persona or audience; it's going to be different based on your product, your customer, and your overall GTM needs, but it's the cleanest way to identify ownership and overlap. When I was at Box, we had a core platform and product team focused on the horizontal CIO and CISO solutions (our economic buyer) and a industry team who knew the line of business (LOB) leader inside and out. "Core" PMM owned the messaging and positioning, core product collateral, competitive, and horizontal use case definition. A lot of the sales enablement content for the broad sales team, as well. Industry PMM owned the vertical messaging, story, specialized use cases, and enablement for the overlay sales teams. It worked pretty well. Conversely at Tellme Networks (post-acquisition) Vertical Marketing took the lead because we had a very services-oriented business. There, core PMM played a more supporting role, driving messaging around the credibility of the solution after we landed the vision.

I recommend holding shared KPIs across PMM - the classics: Qualified Pipeline, Win Rates, Opportunity Velocity/Duration. Looking at how your industry marketing investments are improving your sales effectiveness overall. Secondary metrics could be growth of bookings and sales in a target or priority vertical, but those are sometimes too trailing. Good to look at over multiple quarters. 

Unfortunately, I really haven't. Find people who've worked places where you see great industry expertise. Talk to them. Talk to customers. Read Crossing the Chasm. Again. Ooh, fun one. Alex and the Sharebird team are telling me that there's a 300-character minimum answer. Now we get to pick on them a bit. "Alex, I thought that one of the greatest strenghts of PMM was synthesis and simplification! Why can't I be super concise and pithy here? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?" Okay, let's see if that's 300 chars yet... ...

A shorter answer here, but I think there's a pretty straightforward way to measure sales enablement overall. Ideally, this is driven by the sales enablement team, and you're fueling their succces: Key metrics to measure sales enablement: 1. Rep ramp - How long does it take new reps to onboard and reach full quota? What is the success rate in that period? 2. Annual quota attainment - What % of reps are at or above plan? Does it match the business needs? 3. Win rates - How effective is sales at qualifying, develping, and closing opportunities? Win rates is probaly the most complex to measure. Looking at your current sales process/buying journey, where are there friction points that PMM supports? I like looking at conversion from a Sales Qualified Opp to trial or proof, and then Proof to Close, but YMMV.

This one depends on company stage and maturity of the market. At Cisco, we're incredibly mature, and I'm very fortunate to work alongside Sophia Danvers and her amazing Audience Marketing team. They eat industry intel for breakfast and turn it into not just persona insights, but messaging, content, and campaign ideas that keep our top industries growing, even 15 years later. In earlier stages, this process is a lot more ad hoc, and really depends on how much time you can spend with customers and sales. When you're building, it's less a formal process than it is a habit or a practice. You should continually put yourself in a position where you're talking with customers, handling objections, seeing failures in the sales process. And then in your regular syncs with product (you have, those, right? Right? <Insert Anakin and Padma meme here>), share those insights as you synthesize them with your notes. I'd recommend setting up a quarterly roadmap cadence with your product team. Numbers are sequential, not necessarily calendar: - Q1 - PM-led roadmap sync; what's coming, why, when - Q2 - PMM-led sync; what we're doing to support, what we're hearing, what we need - Q3 - PM-led sync; what we heard from you, what's changing, what we're investing in - Q4 - PMM- led; what's critical for the year ahead, what's changed in the market, etc. It's a good starting cadence, enough for each of you to build a POV and build trust in each other. The name of the game is still execution, but trading off the presenter/inbound role here really helps. 

There are two questions here, and I'll address both. One answer is much shorter than the other. How do we collaborate across industry and core PMM? Constantly. At Meraki, we do have an Audiences team focused on both industry and a few specific LOB personas. The give and take is pretty regular. We collaborate on content, messaging, and thought leadership to make sure we're helping attract and meet customers on their terms. That's the short answer. Your second question about being the first vertical PMM is more nuanced. To start, if your company is successful enough with a horizontal GTM, you've got a huge tailwind pushing you forward. There are probably already a number of high-profile wins you'll be building on. But, that also means you're going to have to be an evangelist, a change agent. I'd argue that the first thing on your agenda will be to understand the business's current understanding of your target industry(s). And then diagnose what poor assumptions they've made. It will feel like you're spinning your wheels, but you really have to dig in. Understand clearly the reality of the situation: * What does product think the problem is in that industry? Do they think it's different, or the same? * Why does exec leadership believe these industries are the right ones to tackle? Is it expansion or growth of existing? * What does sales think? What does the data say? Are these deals larger? Smaller? Harder fought? * What industry-specific niche compeitors exist? Why are they better than you (they're better than you) * And, finally, what do your current customers in that industry really think? What did they compromise to choose you? Why did they make that compromise? Would they make the same decision in hindsight? From there, based on what you learn, you may need to go on a bit of an INTERNAL roadshow to convince everyone of the pragmatic reality of the market. Where are you strong? Weak? What are the actual problems customers care about? Is your problem high-priority enough? And, where are the key product gaps you have to cover to be competitive? Once you have that, and you've given that ptich roughtly 3 dozen times, then you're probably ready to start really going to market with a revised plan of attack. Oh, and make friends with PR early. They'll be a huge asset in winning credibility in your market.

I'm a little biased here, but I don't believe that there are courses or certifications that are a prerequisite or requirement to jumping into product marketing. If you haven't done any marketing before, or worked alongside a good marketing team, Pragmatic Marketing by the Pragmatic Institute is a solid framework for twisting your head around what marketing is really about. But the best way to learn is on the job. If you have a PMM function at your current company, get to know them. Ask about what they're working on, why it's important. What are the biggest challenges they're trying to overcome. In general, we love to talk about what we're really up to - because we still carry a bit of a chip on our shoulder, feeling that most people believe marketing is just pretty decks and presentations. If someone ever asked me to to through the messaging framework, I'd jump at the chance! Why did you talk about the last product launch this way? Prepare for a 30-minute monlogue. But you'll learn a ton. And, I bet they'll be a problem you could help with. It's truly the best way to learn, and to build some faith.