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Amanda Groves

AMA: Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing, Amanda Groves on Building a Product Marketing Team

September 7 @ 9:00AM PST
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Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing, Amanda Groves on Building a Product Marketing Team
Top Questions
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?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 is the most tangible means of assessing performance/needs. Beyond data assessment, I have a regular sync with front line teams ......Read More
305 Views
1 request
What key metrics do product marketing managers need to meet in order to get promoted?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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, one-pagers, pitch decks, etc) and in parallel - measuring utilization metrics like: product activation, MAUs, reactivations, ......Read More
374 Views
1 request
With the job market so hot, how do you structure the recruiting process to go slow enough for you and the team to evaluate several people and fast enough not to lose them to another company?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
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 along with the non-negotiables. Do you have a 70-80% of your hit rate on non-negotiables? That's a solid candidate right there, ......Read More
333 Views
4 requests
What have been your biggest learnings on scaling a business globally?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 strategy/execution. listen/learn and adjust to market reactions (in terms of positioning/messaging) and enable team fro......Read More
300 Views
1 request
How do you stay aligned while agile?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 learnigns. I also utilize all hands and MBRs to share what's working, what's not, and plans for executing against goals. Agilit......Read More
288 Views
1 request
How do you roll out new collateral, content, and product training to a remote sales team?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 content into two buckets: technical (CS) and value story (sales). For the value story elements: we create "how to sell" slides a......Read More
374 Views
1 request
What systems have you put in place to ensure your product marketers are kept up to date with changes to product timelines?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 databases that automatically alert us as items move across the product development lifecycle. This triggers cues for PMM when we need......Read More
355 Views
1 request
What are some unexpected challenges when it comes to influencing and creating a product marketing strategy with a global team?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 across the globe makes it hard to stay in touch/row in the same direction. The best way I've found to influence the global product ......Read More
328 Views
1 request
How do you get buy-in from regional teams for a product launch when they don't view the product that you're launching as relevant for their market?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 with asking more questions - then present defensible proof points (from customer's who've adopted/expressed interest in the pro......Read More
267 Views
1 request
How do you ensure that the company voice & tone comes through in other regions?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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. Force Management's Command of the Message framework is a great way to ensure large teams are speaking consistently and presenting v......Read More
236 Views
1 request
How do you prioritize different customer needs across the globe?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 with security and legal to ensure our product is servicable to global solutions before prioritizing market entry/SoW takeover.......Read More
865 Views
1 request
If your product marketing team is only or two people responsible for covering multiple products with complex features, how would you recommend dividing the workload in the short-term so as best to support long-term growth and expansion of the team?
(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!)
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 the two of you, and contract out (via consultants) anything where you need additional coverage for long-term projects i.e., par......Read More
282 Views
1 request
How do you work with the cross functional teams? And what are the key goals and deliverables for each of the below? 1) PMM with Sales 2) PMM with CSM 3) PMM with Marketing 4) PMM with Product
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
1. 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 market fit. I also pitch new concepts/messaging to sales for reaction and ask for on-going market feedback on con......Read More
375 Views
3 requests
When building a team, how would you ideally split responsibilities? By product line? By PMM function (CI, enablement, GTM, etc)?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
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 customer marketing, lifecycle marketing, competitive marketing + analyst relations. With the core discipline + specialization you can ......Read More
370 Views
3 requests
What are the key things (traits, skills, experience) you prioritize / look for when hiring? How can we best assess during the interview process? Are there any specific questions you like to ask or things to look out for?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 7
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 for me are: detail oriented/technical prowess, storytelling/written abilities, empathy, collaborative, curious, systems mindset......Read More
874 Views
5 requests
When building a new PMM organization, what are the most important things to focus on when getting started?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
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, walk, run strategy to cover departmental growth. In parallel to strategic alignment with leadership/executive team - you must, I ......Read More
302 Views
2 requests
Do you consider yourself accountable for pipeline, business performance and how do you keep sales accountable for proposing the pipeline well.
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
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 me: marketing (traditional demand gen/content) builds the pipeline along with an outbound motion from sales. From there, PMM c......Read More
759 Views
1 request
What is your north star metric that you use?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
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 A framework: Awareness - demand gen/PQLs Activation - registered users/engagement Adoption - land and expand/utilization Ad......Read More
964 Views
1 request
How do you break up responsibilities when you're the first and only PMM and now you are hiring a new PMM to work under you? In a fast growing SAAS startup?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
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 you and your PMM. Bucket those product capabilities and divide and conquer (full PMM GTM lifecycle responsibilities). Once you......Read More
578 Views
3 requests
What are the top 5 questions you ask PMM candidates when hiring for a new role?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
How do you define product marketing? How do you measure success? What is your superpower? What do you wish I asked that I didn't? What's a brand you think is marketed poorly. Why? What would you do to improve it? Tell me about your favorite campaign, career win, or highlight. Why does that sp......Read More
907 Views
5 requests
What are your top questions to ensure you are hiring the right PMM candidates and why?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
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 not a good fit. How do you define and measure success of product marketing? - It's important to suss out if your philosoph......Read More
645 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?
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing • September 6
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 dedicated space to GSD and think strategically. Set the expectation that if you accept a meeting, there must be a clear agenda......Read More
536 Views
2 requests