AMA: Lyra Health Group Product Marketing Manager, Arianna Schatzki-McClain on Scaling a Product Marketing Team

As a PMM, Sales is a main stakeholder that we help support. You can think of them as a "buyer" or consumer of your work so many of the same tactics and best practices that you use to roll out communications externally can be used internally. I'll also note that I have worked with many amazing enablement teams that make this part of the PMM job so much easier, but have also been the one and only PMM in an org. that didn't have an enablement team yet so I'll try to share ideas that are helpful for both scenarios. 1. Launch Tiers. Just like when we launch products to buyers, we tier our internal "launches". This helps us rightsize our efforts and ensure the sales team is spending time on what's most critical and valuable. 2. Say it seven times. If you have an important announcement, content update, or training, make sure to over communicate across multiple channels. Here's an example of how I've approached the comms for a large update to a sales team. Email announcement from CRO, webinar update with more details, slack and email follow up, team meeting road show, required online training, office hour Q&A. 3. Keep it engaging. Consider the format and content. Is there an opportunity to make it more of a panel discussion or gamify it? Can you focus on using moving user stories that capture their attention? We often times have a question for the sales team every few slides to keep it engaging and change up speakers so it's not one person talking for an hour. (No one wants that.) I also recommend taking the time to prep for a sales training in the same way you would prepare for a customer webinar. Also, you're never going to cover everything so instead of packing in a million facts no one will remember in a live presentation, focus on the few things that are most important and direct sales where they are learn more in their own time. 4. Calendar it out. Surprises will always pop up now and then, but I would recommend putting a calendar together that outlines when you expect to have new content, training, and announcements. Then you can try to group updates into a monthly cadence or whatever makes sense for you. We have weekly GTM meetings and once a month we use that time to highlight the most important PMM updates. 5. Tooling. We use Sales eLearning tools for onboarding as well as ongoing updates. PMM records videos on a variety of topics or we work with stakeholders throughout the org. to put together presentations that they record. We also use confluence heavily for organizing and sharing out content and updates of all types. With remote teams, all content and comms need to be early searchable anytime. 

It depends on a few different factors: * How big is the PMM team? * How are other teams (sales and product) organized? * What are the most important business needs and priorities? * What are your team members good at (if they have already been hired)? Something else to consider is how you want to balance the type of work individuals on the team are doing. For example, many people enjoy having one or two areas of "expertise" where they are owning a project or program and can demonstrate progress over time. If this is an important element to keep the team engaged, but they are always working on small short term projects, that might be less fulfilling for them. Here was my experience at Lyra Health, where I was the first PMM and helped scale the team to 13+. * 1 PMM - I did everything as well as covered other roles such as event marketing, customer marketing, sales enablement, and corporate marketing :) * Small team - When we first expanded the PMM team, each team member supported particular sales teams (we organized sales by account size), and on top of that, each team member was an expert on certain products. This was manageable with a smaller product suite. * Med team - As our sales team grew and our product team grew, we grew our PMM team as well. This time around, we split the team up. One PMM team (Product PMM) focused on our products and services. Each team member in this group owns certain product categories and strategic product initiatives. Another team called GTM PMM focused on continuing to align on our sales and partnership teams. We also established a market research team within PMM to support across PMM and the broader organization.

Congrats on growing the team! In a two person team, you have to look at the top priorities, where you can have the biggest impact (where you are uniquely needed the most), and where each of you are strong and excited to grow. You are in the fortunate position to consider what elements of PMM you enjoy most and which ones you would be happy to delegate so don't forget it. If you're really not sure, try doing a quick exercise of listing out all the PMM functions you support today, new functions you may need to support in the coming months/year, and rate them by size, impact, priority, and list out internal stakeholders/collaborators. From here you can start to see patterns and how it might make sense to break up work. 

Top questions depend a bit on the role since I always try to make sure each question is evaluating a specific competency tied to that job. (More on this below). That being said - here are a few questions I find useful a lot of time when hiring PMMs. * What can product marketing contribute to an organization? of What's the role of product marketing? Tells me about how they view product marketing's role and value and their general understanding of the role. I'm listening to see if them talk about GTM strategy, roadmap, and storytelling. This is particularly helpful for candidates that might be newer to the PMM role. * If I asked you to put together Messaging and Positioning for a new product today, what would your process look like? Messaging and positioning is a core PMM function. I can generally learn more about their level of experience, how structured or unstructured they are, and how data and research-oriented they tend to be based on their answer. * What kind of teams and managers enable you to do your best work and can you share an example? I want to make sure that the candidate we choose is going to thrive, so understanding what type of teams and managers enable them to be successful is important to me. * I tend to look for candidates that have a learning mindset and can self-reflect. To evaluate this, I might actually ask them to reflect on how the interview went or a how the presentation went towards the end of the interview time block. This way I can see if they are aware of certain gaps and how they "show their cards", which is a company value. In my opinion, the most useful and "top" questions are the ones that not only tell you more about the candidate but also whether or not they have the skills required for the particular role you are hiring. In order to do this, you need to have a clear idea of what the most important competencies are and where there is room for the candidate to learn on the job. I recommend putting together a matrix on what is required or nice to have for the role. Then define what "good" looks like so you are consistent, and identify a question that will help you evaluate that element. It sounds like extra work, but it's pretty quick, will probably save you time later, and will help enable a more consistent candidate experience.

This is a challenge at all size organizations, but certainly hard on small PMM teams. Depending on the larger picture items you are talking about, you may need a lot of time or maybe it requires less. Regardless, this type of work requires focus. Here are some considerations I've found useful: 1. Delegate - I would first take a hard look at what you are delegating. Is there anyone else that can take on that project you've working on? This is definitely something I had to check in with myself on regularly when I first started managing people. Context switching all the time can be hard so even offloading a small project could help make time and headspace for other things. 2. Prioritize - If these strategic initiatives are important for the business, then your manager will probably want you to prioritize them. Consider if there are trade-offs the team could make, while still hitting goals. Work with your manager to make sure you understand priorities clearly and discuss if it makes sense to make some shifts. 3. Set a timeline - Once you chat with your manager, propose a timeline for the strategic project, and stick to it. 4. Organize your time - Consider being more strict and structured with how you spend your time. Here are some ideas, but it really depends on your as an individual. * Time blocks - this is basic, but if you don't already do this, try blocking 2-3 times a week when people can't schedule meetings and decide on one that can be used for more strategic work. * Slack is a time suck - You can create rules of engagement or yourself and let your team know. Maybe you set yourself as away or update your slack status to "Focused work" when you won't be responding. I've seen colleagues do this and always respect it. * Organize your days by focus - If you want to take your calendar to the next level, try organizing your activities and focus areas by day. Monday could be for team meetings and stakeholder check-ins, Tuesday for team 1:1s, Wednesday for strategic planning etc. It won't work out perfectly every week, but you try and organize your meetings that way and then block time when you do your best work for 1-2 hours

If you don't have the opportunity to manage an entire new product launch, you'll have to get creative. See if there is an opportunity to own a specific piece of a launch someone else is managing or even manage a smaller feature launch. I'd also look for opportunities work with the product team, even if it's not on a specific launch. Big bonus points if you work with the product team on research or roadmap prioritization elements. Let's say none of those opportunities are available - you can still focus your time on cultivating the skills that make a great product launch PMM. Beyond the tactics, the skills and experience I look for when hiring product launch PMMs include the following and I think you can work on these in a variety of different projects: * Someone that really knows how to work with product teams and understands how they work * Can manage a broad range of stakeholders * Strong and bold storyteller * Project management skills