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AMA: G2 Former VP Product Marketing, Alina Fu on Stakeholder Management

November 30 @ 10:00AM PT

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What are some tried and true strategies to drive alignment cross-functionally for a remote team?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

To be successful in a remote working environment, leaders and employees must be willing to think and work differently. Shared context: The most critical component to driv...

1164 Views

4 requests

What is the best cadence for gathering stakeholder feedback in preparation for a launch?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

Because a launch has so many different moving parts across very distinct disciplines, it is always handy to be agile as pivots may occur. The best cadence for gathering s...

431 Views

3 requests

Do you approach stakeholder management differently based on the team you're talking to? (Product, Marketing, Sales, Growth, Customer Success). And if so, how?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

I take a relationship-based approach when I think about stakeholder management. I prefer to tailor my style to the individual, so it doesn’t matter as much which departm...

915 Views

2 requests

What soft skills are must-haves for product marketers in your experience apart from diplomacy, curiosity, and empathy?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

Because Product Marketing is at the cross-section between Marketing, Product and Sales, there are times when they are barely treading water to keep up with all the produc...

689 Views

1 request

What's the best, most turnkey framework to use for building Go-To-Market presentations for multiple stakeholder groups?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

I don’t know if there is a turnkey framework but there are definitely lots of framework options available. You can find one that fits your needs or make your own (like I ...

1694 Views

1 request

When coming up with positioning and messaging as part of GTM plan, which key stakeholders/teams (in addition to product and sales) should weigh in?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

Customer Success or Customer Marketing teams are your secret weapon when thinking about Positioning & Messaging frameworks and GTM strategy. Retention is a key metric...

893 Views

2 requests

With respect to mergers and acquisitions, what are the steps and priorities you take to integrate the newly acquired product into your overall product marketing strategy?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

This one is challenging because I’ve witnessed year long integrations from newly acquired products into the overall strategy, and even then, it wasn’t “fully” absorbed in...

1976 Views

2 requests

What are the SaaS you think is doing product marketing exceptionally well globally and it's competitors and also please explain how is the one able to stay ahead than the rest?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

Salesforce immediately comes to mind. When you think of CRM, what other solutions do you think of? They do a great job explaining the product in digestible sound bites, b...

1124 Views

1 request

What is the best partnership process between product marketing and marketing when it comes to a product launch?

We have these as two distinct teams in our organization and we're seeing some confusion when we do product launches. Any documentation or words of wisdom would be helpful.

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

I would recommend first uncovering the root cause of the confusion. Is the confusion causing redundancy, disagreements over roles & responsibilities, are mismatched e...

802 Views

1 request

What does your product marketing team do differently when executing on an account based marketing strategy compared to traditional marketing?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

ABM is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, as we just announced 7 new ABM integrations and hosted a webinar about ABM strategies. Data-driven marketing has extende...

1807 Views

1 request

How does product marketing own more of the funnel strategy (acquisition, conversion, retention) rather than just support revenue growth reactively?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

I partner very closely with the VP of Rev Marketing to make sure we have a coordinated funnel strategy. We are in constant communication and alignment for acquisition, co...

1012 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?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

I am a big believer that mismatched expectations are most often the root cause of complicated relationships. Some companies delineate Product Marketing as Inbound and Out...

548 Views

1 request

What are some strategies that you've used to share messaging guides internally and ensure commercial team alignment?

Alina Fu•

Microsoft Director, M365 Copilot for storytelling and narratives, sales enablement, and compete • 4y

What I’ve learned from great leaders who are able to inspire and motivate is to gain consensus before you walk into the room. This is pretty much how I have shared messag...

751 Views

1 request