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Raman Sharma

AMA: DigitalOcean Vice President Product Marketing, Raman Sharma on Building a Product Marketing Team

August 17 @ 9:00AM PST
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DigitalOcean Vice President Product Marketing, Raman Sharma on Building a Product Marketing Team
Top Questions
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?
Raman Sharma
Raman Sharma
Sourcegraph Chief Marketing Officer • August 18
It is important to have a good idea of what you are looking for. We ask the hiring manager to have a good enough conversation with the candidate before bringing them in for a full round of interviews. This initial validation gives us confidence that it is valuable for 3-4 other people in the comp......Read More
296 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?
Raman Sharma
Raman Sharma
Sourcegraph Chief Marketing Officer • August 18
My philosophy on this is that PMMs should almost be embedded into their counterpart Product/Engineering teams. Schedule or scope changes shouldn't come to them as a surprise. We have utilized multiple tools like shared calendars, regular update meetings, dependency tracking tools, etc. Those a......Read More
1044 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!)
Raman Sharma
Raman Sharma
Sourcegraph Chief Marketing Officer • August 18
I would recommend ruthless prioritization.  * Work with your product counterparts to figure out the most important products from a business/strategy standpoint. Then make sure you are giving these products the lion's share of your time and energy.  * Work with your business leaders to un......Read More
314 Views
1 request
In hiring additional Product Marketing Managers, is it more important that they have Product Marketing experience, or that they're a well-rounded marketer/communicator?
Raman Sharma
Raman Sharma
Sourcegraph Chief Marketing Officer • August 18
Product Marketing means different things in different companies. So, asking for "prior PMM experience" may not always be as helpful as you think since this experience could mean something completely different from what you are looking for. While relevant PMM experience is a plus, I have also hire......Read More
315 Views
2 requests
for Dev software, how do you go about building a PMM team when you are the first hire for the function and that's the first measure of your success?
early-stage, post-PMF, series A funded company. devs and data teams core audience. head of Marketing already aboard who's also been a PMM all their life. by-stage advice for hiring team members over, say, eighteen months, will be helpful.
Raman Sharma
Raman Sharma
Sourcegraph Chief Marketing Officer • August 18
I might have a slightly controversial take on this one.  * I think if you are in the business of marketing products to developers, you have to learn the trade a little bit. You must understand developers, developer tools, preferences, contemporary development trends, etc. * If you are be......Read More
858 Views
1 request