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Jackie Palmer

AMA: Demandbase VP Product and Industry Marketing, Jackie Palmer on Stakeholder Management

August 22 @ 10:00AM PST
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Demandbase VP Product and Industry Marketing, Jackie Palmer on Stakeholder Management
Top Questions
What pointed recommendations do you have on gaining influence as a new member of an organization or as a junior product marketing team member?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
As I've answered on a few other questions, I have a set of things I like to do to build meaningful relationships with key stakeholders. These are key whether you are just getting started in product marketing or if you're the most senior team member. My 7 relationship building "secrets" are: 1......Read More
520 Views
1 request
How can I use external experience (sales for example) to bring different opinions to the table to gain influence and persuade other teams?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
Getting a variety of feedback from a variety of people is the best thing you can do to influence and persuade teams. I always like to poll multiple teams and different levels of people to ensure that I have as many examples as possible. Make sure you ask internal teams - sales (including pre-sale......Read More
690 Views
1 request
If product marketing is a relatively new function at your company (relative to product), what advice do you have on becoming a strategic partner and more involved earlier in the product roadmap development process?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
Whether PMM is new or established, the relationship with Product is key! I'll repeat my response from one of the other questions as I think it applies here as well: The relationship between Product Marketing and Product Management is often the most important relationship you can have as a prod......Read More
468 Views
2 requests
As a product marketer, how do you handle design disagreements on something you're working on with your designer?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
This is a tough situation because if you are at the design phase, you probably already have an idea of how you want something to look. The designer however can bring a different viewpoint to the discussion. They often know how someone will interact with something visually and may end up creating ......Read More
409 Views
1 request
I'm curious about the experience of others, which group has been harder to work with––Product or Sales? And why and how y'all work through issues?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
I always say that Product and Sales should be the two best friends of Product Marketing! And I would say they both have their times when they are hard to work with or need more care. For both groups though, the most important thing is to listen and bring value. Come to them with ideas and ask for......Read More
440 Views
1 request
As a product marketer, what are some examples of the types of insights you used to gain insight from internal stakeholders?
Specifically types of questions that work best to draw out the information you need.
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
Some types of questions I like to ask to gain insight and feedback from internal stakeholders are: * Where would you use something like this? * Who could you see benefitting from this asset/collateral/launch/etc? * Is there anything you've used in the past that is similar to this that re......Read More
663 Views
1 request
Knowing that people in different functions and different levels of leadership often need different approaches to storytelling in decks, docs, and shareouts for key strategic projects, do you have any tricks for thinking through whether it's worth the work to "reskin" docs and decks for these diverse stakeholders?
I suppose with executive level comms, it's more obvious, but how do you manage work that's in-flight that requires as many as 5 PMs, in addition to analysts, designers, marketers, and more? How do you keep people "in the loop" at the right level of fidelity without opening up a can of worms and adding complexity? A DACI model is great, but has its limits.
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
If you're trying to assess whether you need multiple versions of an asset like a first call deck or pitch deck, the best thing to do is to sit with the different groups of people you're trying to build for and see if they actually do present the same content differently. Maybe the CEO uses the mo......Read More
426 Views
1 request
How do you manage up vs. manage down and ensure that as a leader you remain on top of the organization when directs under-perform (so their non-performance is handled as it's own issue and not misconstrued as a management failure)?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
Managing up and managing down require the same key ingredient for success - communication! If your direct reports are under-performing, it is best to alert upper management right away and come with a plan that you will implement to ensure issue doesn't happen again. For the direct report, it is a......Read More
508 Views
1 request
How do you build better relationships with product? I feel like this is the most complicated relationship out of all cross-functional partners. How do you constantly stay aligned?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
The relationship between Product Marketing and Product Management is often the most important relationship you can have as a product marketer. The best thing to do here is build up a buddy system and make sure you are bringing value to the relationship. I like to have my PMMs partner up with PMs ......Read More
446 Views
1 request
How can I make it easier for my team and stakeholders to work with me on the marketing launch timeline when engineering releases are sometimes delayed?
Any tips for setting expectations and not losing team’s trust while ensuring we have a timeline to work towards?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
A delayed product release is sometimes the most difficult thing for a product marketer to deal with as you've likely (ideally) started a product launch process early and a late minute change can throw a wrench into that process! Change is obviously easier if you are not working with a fixed launc......Read More
573 Views
1 request
How to identify stakeholders of a certain product launch? And if the stakeholders change in the process (either some roles become less vital with launch activities pushing forward or vice versa), how to manage that?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
It's important to build up a cross-functional product launch team and follow a consistent launch process as much as possible. While you're right, the stakeholders and process certainly can change slightly depending on the launch, I've found there usually more consistency between launches than not......Read More
473 Views
1 request
Do you have any success/failure story to share around how you managed to influence a difficult stakeholder? Lessons learned?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
A difficult or opinionated stakeholder is sometimes the hardest thing but something you all likely encounter in your product marketing career. If you have the luxury of time to observe their working style you can try to adjust your approach on your own. If you don't have that time, make sure you ......Read More
463 Views
1 request
What has been the greatest accomplishment made when you’ve had to influence others without authority and did it make things easier for you when you needed buy in on other projects?
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
It's never an easy task to get buy in from stakeholders if you are still working on building up authority and respect but what goes a long way is having an open mind and listening to stakeholders' input. I've found that sitting down with people, maybe interviewing them about their opinions and id......Read More
471 Views
1 request
How often and when do you typically get feedback on collateral from the teams that will use it?
I've found that it's valuable to get feedback from 1-3 reps on a high-quality first draft, and sometimes, even the final version to ensure it will work for the team it's using it, but it often takes more time than I'd like
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product Marketing • August 22
Getting feedback on assets and collateral from stakeholders is a key part of Product Marketing's job. What I like to do is create a tiger team of people you can count on. This could differ of course depending on the asset but should likely include a mix of salespeople (pre-sales, AEs/reps, SDRs, ......Read More
708 Views
1 request