AMA: Glassdoor Former B2B Product Marketing Lead Gregg Miller on Sales Enablement

This will vary depending on how important a given product is as well as its degree of complexity, but for a decently robust feature/product I think you'd want some of the following as a minimum. [Internal] Product one-pager: Succinct asset that explains what customer pain points we're solving for, what the product does/how it solves them, the value prop and top benefits of the product, how it's different from what competitors have, the pricing and packaging guidelines, and any other product-specific reference information your sales team would find helpful. Proof points and testimonials: Your prospects want to feel confident that this product works and works for people solving the same problem. If you have any data on the efficacy or ROI of the product, make sure your reps know it! Same goes for customer testimonials -- see if you can get some great soundbytes from participants in the pre-launch product beta that can help de-risk this product for an uncertain prospect. Collateral: Your reps need a visual asset that helps them speak to the product and helps the prospect have a reference asset that they can use to refresh their memeory on the value/how it works after the sales conversation is over. This is doubly important if the prospect needs to champion your product to other internal decision-makers. Help them tell the story. Product demo: Either a recorded asset or a talk track. This should really focus on the pain points, value prop, and how the product works to deliver that value prop. It's important to keep the "how this works" part as focused as you can on the value prop and ideally the overall demo on the shorter side so that you don't lose people's attention/they get lost in features instead of what value the solution delivers. FAQ/objection handling: Use a beta to understand what types of questions, concerns, and objections come up from someone being introduced to the product for the first time. Then create a simple reference resource that preemptively addresses them; make sure to continue updating this after the launch as you continue to get more feedback from the market.

The best thing you can do is go out and listen to reps pitch the product and how customers respond. After 12-20 calls or meetings you'll start to get a pretty good idea of what content is getting used most (and what isn't getting used at all). This is where I'd start. If your organization has budget, there are also tech tools that can help give you better visibility. Content Management Systems like Seismic can track rep and client engagement with every piece of content at each step of the sales funnel -- but this only works if everyone in the organization consistently uses the platform. Tools like gong.io can give you transcriptions of customer calls which you can then Ctrl + F to see if key messaging terms or collateral assets are being used. I'm sure there are others as well, but nothing will substitute for actually getting out in the field.

Man, I love this question! As PMMs so much of our work only has impact if it has engagement from others, and the only way to get that engagement is by having credibility in the organization. This won't be a perfect list or exhaustive, but some things that come to mind are: * Take the time to understand their world: Get out in the field with them, get to know them over drinks, learn what customers are saying about how the product is/isn't meeting their needs, see how our assets do in the wild, etc. There's so many steps we can take to demonstrate we care, that we recognize that it's hard, that we empathize with what it takes to chip away at their quota. If we don't understand their world, we risk coming across as tone deaf which will immediately crater trust and credibility. * Seek out their opinion and listen to them: Given where we sit in the organization and the amount of visibility and strategic insight we have across the business and the market, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking we know the answer of what will work and why. It's important to remember, though, that there's so much that happens on the front line that we just aren't the experts on: our sales, client success, and support teams are the masters there. Demonstrate that you recognize they know more than you in certain areas and you value their opinion. Bring them into your process when you're developing pitches, playbooks, collateral, messaging, whatever it may be. Engage them as advocates for the work you're trying to land in the field or in the organization. * Be selfless: Try and maintain a mindset of "my job is about making other people successful." It can be tempting to get caught up in trying to drive a certain impact or agenda and lose sight of how the best impact we can make is when we uplevel the strategic decision-making and in-market execution of the entire organization. When you are really trying hard to engage with people from a place of "how can I help make you and your team successful," people can interpersonally pick up on that and it makes a big difference for earning credibility. * Do high quality work: Be a fantastic project manager (provide lots of visibility and opportunity for others to shar einput at the appropriate times; manage toward timelines; etc.) and hold yourself to a very high standard for your deliverables. * Learn to say no: As a PMM you need to be ruthless in how you prioritize your work. There simply aren't enough PMMs or time under the sun to do all of the things that might be worth doing. Make sure you're focusing on doing a few of the most important things extremely well; avoid at all costs feeling like you have to execute on every ask that comes your way. Credibility is about playing the long-game. Your reputation takes time to build and it won't happen overnight. And you can't take your eye off the ball when you've earned hard won credibility because at the end of the day this is about relationships and consistency is key.

I'll try and answer each of these three questions separately. * My philosophy is short and sweet. If you're making battlecards longer than one page or using size 5 font it's going to be impossible for your sales reps to get the high impact at a glance insight they need. Battle cards work best when they are reference docs a rep can use to find what they're looking for in <30 seconds. If they get lost in the amount of detail you provided, they will not use the battle card after the first attempt. * If you don't know the technical components and there's no way for you to learn them via kicking off a project to do so, the best thing you can do is shift the story. PMM's value to the business is about being able to find the most compelling story possible within the limitations of available information and the market situation. What do I mean by shift the story? Don't compete with your competitor on their terms. Figure out where you do better -- a certain type of customer, a specific use case, a level of service you provide, a brand identity that resonates with the market you're targeting, etc. * You ALWAYS have enough to guide sales in some manner. Per my answer to (2) above, PMMs are masters of the story. Sometimes your story will be stronger than others, but some story is better than no story. Work with sales to set expectations on what is realistic given whatever limitations you're facing and test your early drafts with top reps and managers to get feedback on how to improve.

There's a lot that goes into effectively measuring success. * Defining what success looks like ahead of time (e.g. what KPIs you're trying to influence) * Recognizing that the definition of success will look very different depending on the initiative (e.g. a messaging overhaul of an intro proposal might have % of reps passing certification as a KPI while a product launch might have attach rate as a KPI) * Making sure you have a means of measuring that KPI (e.g. closed/won opportunities in Salesforce; auditing a random sampling of customer calls). Success measurement can frequently break down because the definition of success is determined post hoc rather than before the initiative was developed; there are gaps in data systems; or teams haven't set aside sufficient time and resources to get in the weeds of measurement.

There's a lot of reasons sales playbooks might not get used. When that happens, you need to figure out that reason. Some common reasons are: * It's too detailed or prescriptive: Sales requires a certain degree of improvisation based on customer discovery and what's needed to establish trust with a given customer. When playbooks are too detailed or prescriptive, it gets in the way of reps' ability to customize their approach to meet the needs of the customer. * The story is wrong: Sometimes we deliver a playbook or pitch that just doesn't resonate with customers. Usually it's a result of insufficient testing -- both getting the feedback from your sales team during the development process and piloting it with customers with the help of a small number of customers. * The training/launch was wrong: If sales reps don't (a) understand the value and how to communicate it and (b) have faith that it will WORK as evidenced by successful peers promoting it as part of the launch, you won't see much adoption.