AMA: Postman Head of Marketing, Justine Davis on Product Marketing Skills

I could talk about this all day so I will have to do another AMA to include all the ways but to summarize a few... Please don't use AI to write messaging from scratch. It will be bad. Please DO use AI to write messaging once you give AI the context it needs to write good messaging. Examples: Gong calls, all of your customer stories, messaging research, product specs, etc. and then leverage it to write messaging. I have never once gotten a good first draft from AI without feeding it a lot of cont ...Read More

To move from a Senior PMM or manager to Director, you need to lead beyond your scope, connect your work to business outcomes, and act as a cross-functional force multiplier. Become a strategic advisor to sales by connecting work to company objectives, and investing in their performance. You move from manager to leader when you’re actively shaping how the company sells and building a long term strategy, not just delivering collateral. Listen to sales calls, understand friction, and proactively bu ...Read More

This is a hard one to give a blanket answer to so I'm goign to do what a good PMM should do and segment out the skills by role as a blanket answer won't do this question justice.There are different kinds of PMMs. You can have a Technical PMM, a product PMM, a solution PMM, or if you work for B2B SaaS and have PLG/Enterprise business models then there are 2 more: Growth PMM and Enterprise PMM. All have different skill sets. Technical PMM = This is not developer relations. This is also not a norma ...Read More

I develop PMMs with the same mindset I bring to product marketing itself: clarity of scope, progression through mastery, and deliberate cross-functional exposure. Segmenting PMM roles upfront. PMM isn't one job, I segment PMM roles based on business model and product complexity. I break down PMM into distinct, role-based archetypes: Technical, Product, Growth, Solution, and Enterprise and make sure it is known internally across internal comms, role definitions, and strategy docs.The business mod ...Read More

Hmmmmm this is a hard one. Information fluency and focus? It’s not flashy, but one of the most overlooked skills in product marketing is simply the ability to know where to find what you need, and make time to stay on top of it all. Great PMMs don’t just write messaging. They synthesize inputs across product, sales, customer success, competitors, and the market, and that requires being relentlessly organized, resourceful, and disciplined. If you’re doing product marketing at the feature level, a ...Read More

I have learned that you will not get an idea prioritized, especially if you need resources by just asking for it and waiting. Let me explain further on what I expect from my team when they have a new idea. I am in a lot of meetings and have a large scope. This isn't meant to brag or sound important, it is meant to inform that time and context switching are the kryptonite to my day. Instead of setting up a meeting with me, sharing an idea in that meeting without a pre-read, and then waiting for m ...Read More

The best up-skilling I’ve ever had hasn’t come from courses, it’s come from context, conversations, and real examples. Mentors and more senior PMMs: Hands down the best resource. If you can shadow a great PMM through a launch, board deck prep, or competitive play, you’ll level up faster than any certification. Sharebird: Especially the AMAs and teardown examples. They give you visibility into how top PMMs actually structure messaging, GTM plans, and competitive analysis, etc. PMM Meetups & P ...Read More

Product Marketing is the connective tissue that turns a product into a go-to-market success. Given how deeply collaborative and cross functional this is with so many teams, soft skills are incredibly important. A PMM isn't a good PMM if they just create content or become a launch coordinator. They are a great PMM if they become a strategic facilitator and cross-functional orchestrator for the company to bring a product to life. PMMs don't own product, sales, or success. But they are the one alig ...Read More

Don't come in with pre-conceived notions. When I inherited the Postman team I asked for a deep dive from each team on their function so I could learn where we were at, if there was a strategy, and see what metrics the team tracked. It was awesome for me to get to know the team more, and for me to understand where critical functions were at. In those deep dives, I focused on asking open-ended questions and listening carefully. I wasn’t there to evaluate individuals, I wanted to understand how the ...Read More

If there is someone who is doing product marketing mentorship in the age of AI on how to best speed stuff up, I haven't found them yet. I have been doing AI demo days with my marketing team on how to use AI to speed us all up and made space for the team to brain storm and share them out because it can be hard to understand everything AI can do. For me at least I need to see it in practice, so these have been really helpful as well as general curiosity and staying on top of what the big LLMs are ...Read More

Don’t just hire based on headcount. Hire based on where value will break down if PMM doesn’t step in. At Postman, we built a resourcing model around: The complexity of the product surface (number of products, use cases, teams) The buyer motion (PLG vs Enterprise vs Platform) The GTM phase (Attract → Convert → Expand) For PLG, we assigned PMMs to specific “Land → Expand” responsibilities, and defined ownership of conversion funnels, onboarding, pricing, and platform upsell. For enterprise, we map ...Read More