AMA: Gong Director of Product Marketing, Sherry Wu on Product Marketing 30/60/90 Day Plan

When starting out, I always try to understand: 1. What are my company's business priorities? (This is internal) 2. What market does my company play in? Who else competes in that space? 3. Who are our customers? What are their jobs to be done? 4. What does our product do? How does it work? Why does it matter for our customers (i.e. what value does it deliver)? Any research and alliances you engage in should help you get directional answers to #2 & #3. I'm assuming this question is asking specifically about external research resources and alliances, not internal things like NPS surveys, VOC research, customer interviews, etc. To understand the market, I'll look for some generic market research guides on the category. Review sites like G2, Capterra, PeerInsights, and TrustRadius are great (and free) sites that publish market guides so you understand your market space. If you're starting at a firm with access to analyst resources or have a subscription to CBInsights, those are also great! Consultancies like McKinsey, Deloitte, BCG, etc. often also publish their point of view on market trends, so I try to browse their content as well (do a Google search for "McKinsey" + "name of your product category"). Those market guides will also point you in the direction of who your competition is. The great thing about sites like G2 etc. is that you can read real user reviews to understand what the challenges that customers in your industry are facing as well as how your product has delivered value for them. Beyond review sites, the publications and alliances that you want to read are likely hyper-specific to your customers and industry. To get an idea of where to start, talk to internal folks -- your marketing and sales friends will have some good pointers on which publications are popular with their customers. One of my personal hacks to getting started is to set up Google alerts for key terms (my company name, my competitor's name, my product category), and see which publications pop up. Then I'll subscribe to those newsletters. Those newsletters often have links to OTHER newsletters and studies. Once you've exhausted that Google rabbit hole and all these secondary sources, ask your customers directly -- what do they read? Where do they get their information? What alliances do they find valuable?

It totally depends on what's already there when you've arrived ;) What's easier to answer is what is OFF the table -- pricing refreshes, website overhauls, launching a strategic narrative. Those are big, time-consuming initiatives that shouldn't be undertaken without a foundational understanding of customer, market, product (and that takes time to develop). Some examples of quick wins I've delivered include: * Creating a single resource for product releases -- this made our CS org insanely happy, because nobody could keep up with all the changes in the product. * Setting up a monthly blog to share with customers -- this made our sales and customers happy, because the company wasn't publishing ANY external collateral on what was new. * A readout of any customer interviews you've done. It's likely that the leadership team hasn't done extensive customer research for some time. As a PMM, you're able to offer fresh perspective on customers' careabouts, reasons for buying, challenges, etc. * Setting up a launch calendar to help product and marketing teams get visibility into key themes and major launches.

An effective 30-60-90 will help you make progress across 3 pillars: * What is your point of view on the company's current market standing? Where are there future opportunities? * How do you define and establish the PMM function? * How do you create scalable, repeatable processes for GTM success? The first 30 days are all about discovery. It's about deeply understanding the business, marketing fundamentals, and product. 1. What are my company's business priorities? Why? What are some of the KPIs that our company cares about? 2. What market does my company play in? Who else competes in that space? 3. Who are our customers? What are their jobs to be done? Not only should you be reading up on market reports, you should take the time to set up interviews (with both existing customers as well as churned). 4. What does our product do? How does it work? Why does it matter for our customers (i.e. what value does it deliver)? 5. What is our current GTM motion? What has worked well to date? What hasn't worked as well? Take the time to meet with your cross-functional stakeholders in sales, sales enablement, product, and the extended marketing team to understand their challenges and priorities. By the end of the first 60 days, you can use all of that investigative work to codify your roles & responsibilities, cross-functional processes, and methods for communicating with stakeholders. You can draft up a roadmap for key initiatives (launches, campaigns, collateral refreshes, etc.) to address gaps in your GTM, and get started on some of the urgent and important ones. At the end of the first quarter, you should have a comfortable grasp on what you need to do to take your product to market, who you should work with, and how to execute on your key initiatives. You'll also have some learnings from the initiatives you've embarked on in month 2 (for example, let's say you wanted to start the company's first-ever product release blog -- what did you learn from that, how would you do it better for the future?). The exact initiatives that you choose to undertake will totally depend on the priorities of the business and stakeholder input. While I've given some general advice above, the most important thing is to be adaptable! Check in at the end of the month (with yourself and your stakeholders) -- ask if anything should be adjusted, and re/de-prioritized based on what you've learned.

Come with data and frame your initiatives for your leaders. Part of your first 30-60-90 days will involve understanding what's working well and not-as-well in the GTM. Talk to sales, CS, and RevOps to get a picture. Are you seeing steep discount rates in a certain segment? Are reps complaining that it takes too much time to find collateral? Is your win rate against a certain competitor low? Is your churn rate high? Look at the data, dig in to understand the why behind the trends you're seeing, then make the case for some PMM and team investment with senior leaders. And if you don't have the data at the ready, find a way to get it (without boiling the ocean). "Hey, VP Sales, you mentioned that rep productivity is a top priority for you this quarter. As I was meeting folks in my first week, I noticed a lot of AEs complained that material is super hard to find. I ran a 5-minute survey with the team and it turns out that 70% of reps spend over 2 hours each week just searching for product collateral. If you could get your reps back on the phone for those 2 hours this week, would that be a worthwhile initiative for you this quarter? If so, I can lead the charge with support from your sales enablement team." Why something like this works: * Clearly articulates the business problem in a way that's aligned with your stakeholder's priorities * Backed by data - it's irrefutable * Shows collaboration and leadership -- you're proposing to lead the initiative, while bringing along your leader's teammates for the ride * Make change less frightening -- show that you've got a plan and an idea. Even if you don't get buy-in on the idea right that second, it will help illuminate that you're thinking about the business and know your stakeholder's careabouts. It's also a great way to check in (again) on whether your initiatives are aligned with those of the business; it might turn out that the VP Sales (in this example) is worried more about competitive pressures rather than rep productivity, which helps guide you to work on something that is urgent and important to the business (which will definitely be appreciated by leadership).

I answered this question previously, so I won't go into too much detail here. However, I thought this question was interesting because it asked for the Director-level take as well. A lot of what I do as a Director is not just think about myself as an individual PMM, but think about the function as a whole. As a Director (or, even taking away the title -- just as a leader/people manager), what I'm thinking about is -- how can I set my team up to achieve successful outcomes? So, in addition to understanding the business, customers, product, etc., I'm also thinking about: * People- who is on the team, what are their strengths and areas for development? What motivates them? * Processes - one person might run a launch one way, another might run a launch another way. How do we make the quality of our work consistently excellent, delivered predictably and on-time, without having to recreate the wheel every single time? How do I drive alignment on behalf of the team with other stakeholders? This helps remove confusion and frustration when engaging with x-func stakeholders. This also takes away a lot of stress and ensures we can confidently achieve the outcomes we want. * Purpose - how do I set a vision for the team so that everybody is rowing in the same direction? How do I make sure that everybody knows what good looks like, is bought into that vision, and knows how to get there? In terms of a 30-60-90, this will totally depend on the state of people management when you come in, but I'd ask to see if there's a team charter (if not, create one!), whether there are career paths, and diagnose the health of current systems for collaborating with stakeholders and prioritizing initiatives.