Sharebird
MentorsAbout Us
Sign Up / Sign In
Ask me anything
AMA Page
Eric Petitt

AMA: Glassdoor Vice President, Marketing, Eric Petitt on Influencing the C-Suite

March 17 @ 10:00AM PST
View AMA Answers
Glassdoor Vice President, Marketing, Eric Petitt on Influencing the C-Suite
Top Questions
Why do product marketing jobs have high turnover?
Most of my marketing colleagues have either gotten fired, laid off, or found a new job within the past 18 months. I've personally have been laid off 5 times and left on my own 5 times in the past 10 years. Why such high churn in marketing?
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
It is interesting you say that, because my colleague Sophia and I were talking about it and have felt like there’s been a bit of a renaissance in PMM hiring right now. Organizations seem to get the value of PMM more than ever. Maybe tech companies are getting some marketing religion - they can’t ......Read More
1888 Views
1 request
How do product marketing key stakeholders from other departments change as your company grows?
Ex) <10 employees you meet with CEO and Head of Product—how does this change when you're 100, 500, 1000 employees?
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
I’m not certain the stakeholders and leverage have changed much in my experience with different company sizes, although resources clearly do. As you grow from startup to tween/teen and mature, the stakeholders diversify with the added resources that come from business growth. Sophia and I have ge......Read More
434 Views
1 request
How do you ensure alignment when you have two senior executive stakeholders who disagree with each other on the proposed strategy and you are stuck in the middle?
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
Getting senior alignment is a key strategic role for PMM - we can be powerful bridges and connectors. Whenever there is a clear difference of opinion the best thing I’ve found is to bring the customer more fully into the room. Bring research to bear on the problem. You can be a powerful tiebreake......Read More
562 Views
2 requests
How do you drive alignment across the exec team on messaging
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
To drive alignment, make something that execs can respond to. Recently, I created an example “future state” pitch deck to articulate a future narrative for Glassdoor. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped drive discussion and alignment on overall company positioning and direction. But in general, mak......Read More
1966 Views
2 requests
How do you influence the c-suite to get more resources?
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
It starts with making sure the c-suite knows where you fit in to business outcomes. What are your OKR’s for the quarter, for the year? Is there a straight line between your priorities and the key opportunities for the company? Have you shared them? The second is making sure you are being heard. ......Read More
929 Views
5 requests
In what ways to you see (or recommend) product marketers build trust with their XFN partners?
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
First, this is so hard! I have been through a few turns of this and candidly I’d say not every company is ready. There are companies that are just not ready to have a strategic pmm org. Maybe their product org is still maturing, or not on secure footing for some reason. It is especially hard to h......Read More
636 Views
5 requests
How do you get the Csuite team to buy into a new pitch deck?
I just joined a new company, and their pitch decks are AWFUL and the sales teams are losing deals because of poor pitches. I'm working with a few key stakeholders to create better pitch decks, but several CSuite team members are apprehensive about trying something new because we'll be filing for IPO soon. They'd rather be consistently bad, then differently good.
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
If I was an exec at your company, I’d want to understand what is awful about this pitch (share research, client feedback?), what evidence you can provide that it is hurting my business (do an a/b pilot?), and what you think good looks like (comparative/competitive examples?). If you brought that ......Read More
1014 Views
3 requests
Our founders have created our product messaging based on their ideas. How do we get them to give product marketing more control over messaging?
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
Your founders will have a stronger org when they eventually trust product marketing with more control over messaging. If you can, start with research. Talk to prospects and customers and show how they respond to different approaches. And test and learn. If you have an existing audience base, you ......Read More
1208 Views
2 requests
Product Marketers often get pulled in several directions and everything feels urgent. How do we work with our CMO and Exec team to help narrow down what we focus on?
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
Product marketing is so often misunderstood, and a lot of CMO’s didn’t grow up with it so they don’t particularly understand it. Still other CMO’s struggle with the PMM orgs that seem to spend more time on things they can’t see or aren’t held accountable for inside their own marketing org. And, l......Read More
1225 Views
5 requests
What are some ways that junior and newer pmms can get greater exposure to the c-suite?
Eric Petitt
Eric Petitt
Glassdoor Senior Vice President Marketing • March 17
(This answer from my fearless colleague Sophia Fox) As a junior pmm, recommend being strategic about the types of projects you work on, and in what capacity. Cannot emphasize enough taking the initiative to seek out and work with your manager and cross-functional partners to identify where pmm ca......Read More
1176 Views
2 requests