AMA: Quickbase former SVP of Product Marketing, Sarah Din on Enterprise Product Marketing

First 30 days...listen. Talk to sales, talk to customers, talk to product. Understand how deals are getting done today without PMM, because something is working or the company wouldnt exist. Figure out where the biggest gaps are. While you may not have a luxury to wait 30 days to do work, try to take in as much as possible. 60 days..pick the ONE thing thats the biggest pain, the thing that is going to make the biggest impact and go do it. Usually thats positioning and a sales pitch because that ...Read More

First, positioning, messaging, and storytelling at the core. This is the foundation of everything. If your sales team can't clearly articulate why you, why now, and why not the other guys, nothing else matters. A great sales pitch comes from great positioning work. Thats PMM's job. Second, competitive intel. Enterprise deals almost always have a competitor in the mix. Your sales team needs to know how to handle that in the room and not a 40 page battlecard they'll never read, but sharp talk trac ...Read More

Absolutely you can make this jump - pmm is pmm at its core. Its about understanding the buyer, understanding the product, and bringing those together in a way that resonates. That skillset transfers regardless of segment. Are there differences? Sure. Enterprise deals are longer, more stakeholders involved, the buying committee is bigger, and the content needs are different (think business cases and ROI justification vs self-serve conversion). But all of that can be learned. Its not a different d ...Read More

to be very honest, if your product is functionally the same as competitors and you're 2x the price, no amount of messaging is going to fix that long term. PMM can buy you time but it cant solve a product problem. I have been there! That said, two paths to think about First, find the niche where you win. You've been around 20+ years which means you probably have deep expertise in specific industries or use cases that competitors don't. Stop trying to be everything to everyone and double down on w ...Read More

it really depends on your company size and resources available. But generally you prioritize localization for your top revenue markets first and work down from there. Don't try to boil the ocean. The one thing I will say is that AI is changing this game fast. Localization used to be incredibly expensive and slow which is why most companies only did it for their top 2-3 markets. Those costs are dropping significantly now so the calculus on when it makes sense to localize is shifting. What used to ...Read More

This is a really nuanced question and honestly could be its own full session. But at a high level, the fundamental difference is that SaaS pricing is pricing a relationship and consumer software is pricing a moment in time. With SaaS you're optimizing for recurring revenue, expansion over time, and tying price to value metrics that scale with the customer (seats, usage, etc). Its never "done"...you're constantly revisiting it as your product evolves and your customers grow and the market shifts, ...Read More

This honestly depends on the type of product and the problem you solve - enterprise or otherwise. But generally, I often see companies lead with ROI calculators, can be a good DG tool but noone believes the math so early.Start with the problem cost instead - help them feel the pain of what they're doing today in real dollars. "You have 4 people spending 10 hrs a week manually doing X, thats $200k+ in labor on something that shouldn't need it." When THEY do that math in their own head its way mor ...Read More

I dont think PMM should own pipeline targets directly, thats demand gen's job. But I also know every company is structured differently and PMM should take OWNERSHIP of the pipleine WITH Demand Gen in certain cases. Where PMM absolutely plays a critical role here is in the stuff that MAKES pipeline happen - the positioning and messaging for these new features, the story your reps are telling, the sales enablement that helps them pitch it effectively. If reps are out there pitching new features wi ...Read More

I am a huge advocate of win-loss programs, i think they are the most underrated and the most valuable programs you can run.the way ive done this is quarterly, you run a win-loss program with qualitative interviews that get you depth, segment that data by your GTM motion (vertical, audiences, what have you) and then take data from your CRM and present the data together to show a full picture. Ideally you also want to get feedback from your sales reps in addition tot he customers, but that can be ...Read More

Start with a locked master narrative...your core positioning, value props, and key proof points. That doesnt change region to region. Thats your foundation. What DOES change is how you express it. The pain points you lead with might be different, the proof points and customer references should be local, and the competitive landscape probably looks different market by market. So the narrative arc stays the same but the details flex. The practical way to do this is build your messaging framework w ...Read More

The shift you need to make is from product narrative to business narrative. A C-suite pitch should start with the market trend or business challenge thats keeping that exec up at night, connect it to the cost of inaction, and THEN show how you help. Your product should show up in the last third of the conversation not the first. Andy Raskin's strategic narrative framework is really good for this if you want a structure to follow.Tactically....fewer slides, way fewer words, more data points that ...Read More