AMA: Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing, Amanda Groves on Building a Product Marketing Team
September 7 @ 9:00AM PT
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👋 Amanda Groves
👋 Hi I'm Amanda Groves.. Philly native (Go Flyers!), Pittsburgh transplant (Go Panthers!)
💼 I currently am the VP of Product Marketing at Enable, a fin tech startup within the Supply Chaqin.
👀 Topics of interest for me are managing M&A and integrating offerings... AI product innovation/roll out and building high-performance PMM teams.
🤝 Topics I am help with... adopting agile marketing, core PMM/Solution PMM, new product introduction process/tiering and pricing and packaging.
🍦 Favorite ice cream flavor.. mochi!
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
I tend to coalesce early-ish stage PMM teams by product pillar/functionality. For example, if you group certain features into capabilities, split roadmap ownership betwee...
1074 Views
3 requests
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
It depends on seniority level of hire, but typically I look for experience in a customer-centric role: marketing or customer success in SaaS (B2B a plus). Key attributes ...
1529 Views
5 requests
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
The biggest challege (for me) is certainly managing alignment across product and product marketing. As teams grow and scale broadens, working in a distributed manner acro...
401 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
I stay aligned with my leadership by building in public. I share our on-going updates on Slack to ensure teams know what's on our plate, along with performance stats and ...
327 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Biggest learnings on scaling a business globally: etablish product market fit in core market first. beta/pilot core PMF offering in new markets before going big on stra...
344 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
We have an established cadence of enablement with our internal teams where we bundle features/collateral into market themes. When rolling out a new feature, we organize c...
443 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Create and distribute a brand style guide and strategic narrative. Make sure your team is able to give a short pitch, long pitch, demo and is certified on all three. Forc...
274 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
A bit of both. My ideal PMM sqad has a set of core product marketing folks that are organized by product line. In addition to core product marketing, my team owns custome...
519 Views
3 requests
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Notion. Notion. Notion. We use Notion for everything and build product and product marketing operating systems on Notion. My VP of Product and myself have built database...
405 Views
1 request
How do you proactively identify areas of the business where PMM can add the most value and make the biggest impact?
i.e. do you have a few questions you keep in your back pocket or assumptions that you always test when assessing the business and choosing which things to pursue?
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Great question, I look at the data to identify areas of red and strategize against those ebbs and flows overtime. It's easy to get excited by ideas, but the data we have ...
352 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
It definitely depends on the company stage/goals. So I start there - get alignment from exec leadership on what the company North Stars are and begin building a crawl, wa...
347 Views
2 requests
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
I always start with Why. Why don't the regional teams find that product valuable? Who exactly and what data (quant/qual) do they have to support it isn't valuable? Start ...
293 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
PMM with Sales: I ask for links to chorus/gong calls to listen to customer's positioning. We tackle enterprise needs on-going and jam on enablement materials + content m...
529 Views
3 requests
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Great question. TL;DR: Put in the time up front to know what you want in the role, set your expectations for the hiring team, and establish what you could compromise on a...
352 Views
4 requests
How do you divide the workload between two product marketers covering multiple products?
(context: small company, still establishing product marketing function, no senior marketing leader to guide, lots of room to carve own path, looking for best ways to support success!)
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Firstly, I'm always happy to be a resource on this subject - just ping me on LinkedIn, this is quite a meaty ask/task. I would suggest splitting product coverage between ...
303 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
PMMs often are measured by output, since most of what we provide are tied to other metrics. I would focus on delivering tangible assets on a regular cadence (case studies...
596 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
I do not consider PMM accountable for pipeline, no. We certainly influence overarching business performance (everyone on staff does whether directly or indirectly) but to...
1233 Views
1 request
How can you allot more time to strategy and larger picture items when you're leading a smaller PMM team (less than 3 total ppl)?
Leading a smaller PMM team means you're still in the weeds many times and it can get difficult to make time for strategical thinking—topics that need to be discussed and brought up with leadership. Any tips on how to balance that?
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Protect your calendar! Set aside Do Not Disturb (DND) time for strategic thinking and honor that time. Try to establish a "no meeting" day at your business where you have...
1002 Views
2 requests
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Since rev gen/attainment is our north star, we prioritize efforts based on TAM per region. There are also localization dependencies for a global SaaS strategy, so we work...
1354 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Revenue is the tippy top north star metric. But you can slice and dice how PMM influences revenue based on revenue stage. I like to think about measuring PMM using the 4 ...
1512 Views
1 request
Enable VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y
Why product marketing?- Tells me their motivations. If they have a drive to serve customers and a discipline for storytelling, it'll shine through. If not, I'll know it's...
1310 Views
6 requests