AMA: Okta Director, Product Marketing, Mallory Sword Glenn on Stakeholder Management

The fastest way to build trust is to make people's jobs easier and show you know your stuff. Stakeholders don't care about what you did in the past; they care about whether you can help them be more successful. Do a listening tour - Spend the first few weeks in listening mode. Set up 1:1s with key stakeholders to understand their goals, pain points, and what success looks like for them. I ask: What's working? What's frustrating? What can I do to make your life easier? This does two things: it bu ...Read More

To me, this is all about making sure your stakeholders and teams capture the right feedback, that you have a high-trust group who feels they can share that feedback, and that you get very specific about which feedback is worth actioning and who owns it.  Capture friction in real time, not after the fact - When you start a process, tell people to start a running note on their phone or laptop where they can quickly jot down pain points during the process. Any time our team starts writing a keynote ...Read More

Don't live in an ivory tower. Sales leaders care about one thing: are you making their teams more successful? If you show up with that mindset and prove it with real impact, partnership becomes way easier. Get in the trenches with them - In my current role, I partner directly with account teams on initial pitches, technical discovery, and executive briefings. I'm not just creating content, shipping it to the field, and saying "good luck!" I'm in the room testing it live. I pitch to customers, (t ...Read More

We're dealing with this right now, and it's tough. With AI, many of us are moving at a speed we don't get to choose; it's set by whatever news or release the big AI companies decide to amp up that week. And it's moving so fast that we can't see very far ahead, so it's hard to predict where this space is going. Here are some things that are working for us: Be customer-facing yourself and test messaging before rolling it to the field - This is where knowing your product and being customer-facing i ...Read More

In my career, I've been on a Deal Desk team dealing with the front lines of discounting and deal structuring, I've been on the pricing team, actually setting the price, and I've been in PMM, responsible for messaging it correctly to customers and the field. Every perspective is important but I'll focus primarily on internal stakeholders here. Lean on the data, but balance it with qualitative feedback - Pricing is emotional. Everyone has thoughts and opinions on it. Lean on your pricing experts ( ...Read More