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Sherry Wu

AMA: Gong Director of Product Marketing, Sherry Wu on Stakeholder Management

March 5, 2024 @ 10:00AM PT

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Sherry Wu

Senior Director, Product Marketing · Gong

👋 Hi, I’m Sherry, based in Seattle, WA

💼 Currently Senior Director, Platform PMM at Gong

👀 I love PMM because we are the ultimate GTM polymaths

🤝 PMM also = enablement at scale, which is why I’m glad Sharebird exists!

🍦 Favorite ice cream flavor: anything with a coffee or tea base.

  1. How do you format and share your messaging with stakeholders?

    Sherry Wu
    Sherry Wu

    Gong Senior Director, Product Marketing | Formerly MaintainX, Samsara, Comfy, Cisco • 2y

    When creating ANY content, think about the needs of your stakeholders. The form and format of messaging needs to suit the audience. The audience for a messaging doc is usually internal - you're serving your marketing partners in Comms, Content, Demand Gen, AR, etc. A good messaging doc should answer these questions: What is the product/feature? How would you describe it in 1 line? Audience: Who is this product/feature for? What's your audience (persona, geo, company size)? Market need: what's ha ...Read More

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  2. What has been the greatest accomplishment made when you’ve had to influence others without authority and did it make things easier for you when you needed buy in on other projects?

    Sherry Wu
    Sherry Wu

    Gong Senior Director, Product Marketing | Formerly MaintainX, Samsara, Comfy, Cisco • 2y

    This question is related to a previous one about navigating politics. At the end of the day, influencing others IS about navigating politics. When trying to figure out how to influence, you need to identify who the decision-maker is and understand their goals. Oftentimes, you'll find that you share goals (but they may not have the same data you do). DO come to the table with a point of view. Do NOT force your point of view on others, especially if you do not own the decision. DO bring others alo ...Read More

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  3. What are some unspoken rules about what to say and what NOT to say when navigating politics?

    Sherry Wu
    Sherry Wu

    Gong Senior Director, Product Marketing | Formerly MaintainX, Samsara, Comfy, Cisco • 2y

    "Politics" often feels like such a dirty word... but ultimately you need to navigate stakeholders to be able to influence without authority. Oftentimes, folks tend to butt heads when they have differences of opinion (whether that's on naming, launch timing, product readiness, etc.). When people have differences of opinion, it might be because they're not seeing the same data you are, or maybe they have other priorities you don't have visibility into. DO come to the table with a point of view. Do ...Read More

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  4. What advice do you have on stakeholder mgmt for small PMM teams (i.e. 1-3 ppl) that are coupled with larger, growing stakeholer teams (i.e. sales =15-25; CS = 20-30; Product = 8-12; marketing = 5-10)?

    Sherry Wu
    Sherry Wu

    Gong Senior Director, Product Marketing | Formerly MaintainX, Samsara, Comfy, Cisco • 2y

    That ratio seems about right for PMM teams in general ;) PMMs are always going to be outnumbered by other teams! Oftentimes, the biggest issue for PMM is needing to navigate stakeholder requests. Why can't we launch this product now? Can you help with this sales deck? We're having trouble getting our customers to adopt this feature; can we run a campaign here? It's hard to manage stakeholders to turn their tactical requests into strategic partnerships. It's really all about providing visibility ...Read More

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