AMA: Honeycomb.io VP Marketing, Jo Ann Sanders on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

This is one of the trickiest parts of PMM. We generally do not hold a number, but we enable teams that do hold a number (i.e. Demand Gen, SDRs, Sales, etc).  I do ask my PMM Directors and above to own the top-level KPIs for those other teams as part of their OKRs, even though they don't own all of the areas that impact the results. For example, I believe a PMM Director should have our quarterly MQL and SQL goals as part of their OKRs. Why? Because it forces them to deeply understand what impacts ...Read More

Great question. There are 3 ways to get demonstrable management experience outside of having FTEs report to you. #1: Manage interns and contractors. Volunteer to run a message testing project through a research vendor. Volunteer to produce an explainer video series using an animation production company. Volunteer to hire an intern and complete a data analysis project that is valuable to the business. Outside of these project-based examples, identify an area where having an ongoing freelancer on ...Read More

It is really hard to get these types of big deliverables right, as you won’t really have enough information as an interviewee to nail them. Unless I specifically ask for this type of deliverable, it can actually work against you. Instead, I prefer that candidates show how they think throughout the interview process. For example, prior to the hiring manager interview, spend a large chunk of time on the website and come prepared to talk about your observations re: what parts of their messaging you ...Read More

For my #1 tip, see the answer to another question here re: what skills to develop to stand out as a PMM. tl;dr: deeply understand the marketing-SDR-sales funnel (and/or the self-serve funnel if that is important to your company) and tie your work to funnel IMPACT. The full answer unpacks this more eloquently. Beyond that answer, there are a few other areas I’ll go into. I’ll focus mostly on intangibles…most people pick up the tactical skills through on-the-job experience. Negotiating deliverable ...Read More

What PMM leaders are looking for in a candidate really comes down to 3 things. A deep understanding of the target audience. As a generalist marketer, you probably have used a variety of tools - Hubspot/Marketo, analytics tools, virtual event platforms, etc. You are more likely to get a PMM job at one of those companies because you literally are their target audience.  Great messaging/positioning/writing skills. Highlight web pages, blog posts, emails that showcase your skills. Include data to sh ...Read More

I would look at 2 vectors. What products/features are critical in winning deals. At Honeycomb, our Sales Engineering leader looked at all closed/won deals in a given time frame and indicated which products/features were most important in successful POCs. We’re putting PMM ownership on the top products/features from that analysis. We were lucky to get this analysis handed to us. If it is not easy to get this level of information, even just surveying your sales/SE teams and asking them to stack ra ...Read More

I do think having a mix of both startup and large company experience is highly desirable - it shows that you can succeed in a variety of environments. So at some point, you will need to make the jump. I do believe that my mix of both worlds has made me more marketable.Going to a larger company is great for finding mentorship and/or deepening your PMM skills, You will also get a 'halo' effect of learning more about how other functions operate at a mature company - i.e. how large-scale PM teams op ...Read More

In your current company, start building a relationship with the PMM team and PMM leadership. Volunteer to take on a few things that leverage your background and help PMM. One thing that comes to mind is to do an analysis of what is thematically working in social media and influencer marketing, and come to PMM leadership with content recommendations that would have greater impact. "Over the last 2 quarters, the top-performing topic area is x. Customer testimonials / a new demo / a webinar in this ...Read More

The single most important skill is to deeply understand and feel a sense of ownership over how your company makes money and where the problems are in the marketing-SDR-sales funnel. Or in the self-serve funnel, depending upon your business model. PMMs are drawn to the function generally because it is really fun to be an awesome product expert and storyteller. Oftentimes, PMMs will showcase to me the volume and quality of their content work in interviews. What I am looking for, however, is for yo ...Read More