AMA: Retool Head of Product Marketing, Kevin Garcia on Stakeholder Management

Excellent. Let's respond to this from the channel owners perspective (I promise it's to build empathy, not to be annoying). If I'm the channel owner, there are a few reasons why I might not want to do what you're asking me to do. Let's break them down: I don't think it will work I don't think this is a priority/ I'm really busy I don't think you understand your audience I don't think you understand the channel I don't think you have reasonable expectations (of me or the goal) What you'll notice ...Read More

This will vary depending on how large or small your company and PMM team are, but let me share a few frameworks to keep in mind for different scenarios. Early-stage startup (0-50 people): It is likely you are the only PMM and one of few marketers. In this case, I think showing the value of product marketing comes through aligning with the company's top priorities (in what you do) and being results-oriented (in what you measure). If the company is looking to grow new self-serve users, use product ...Read More

Totally empathize with this! When projects start to creep into the "dozens of stakeholders" size, you end up with a lot of work just keeping people updated. Some golden rules that I use: Create durable documents that outline the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, why) for the project. Having robust documentation means everyone reads the same thing—and you don't have to have the same meeting with tons of people! Create milestone moments. I addressed this in another question but I create 20% and 80% re ...Read More

EVERY company I've ever worked for, the engineering releases were mostly... not on time. And before you think that's a dig, let's levelset. Product development is hard. You are bringing an idea to life and testing it in the wild. You make decisions that work or don't, and then have to clean up later. You get pulled by customers to do things you didn't originally scope, and sometimes have to pivot (a lot). Product development done right is iterative, messy, and non-linear. The best products are n ...Read More

Oh, geez, I have a LOT of failures to learn from! One of my biggest failures to date was during my time at AdRoll. I was leading PMM and we had a product launching in the attribution space that was having a pretty major identity crisis. Some of the biggest questions at hand: How do we do attribution/incrementality testing better than what exists in the market today? (differentiation) How does a vendor like us, who helps companies run ads, also provide trusted attribution insights across the enti ...Read More

I've seen this play out a few different ways: PMM owns content, Design owns design/dev, Marketing ops owns analytics/reporting PMM owns content, Web team owns design/dev/project management/analytics/reporting Brand owns content, PMM assists, and other teams own other things I'll start off with a few lessons learned: If you try to be the gatekeeper of the website, you will eventually become the bottleneck of the website Not all web pages are the same, and some are just not worth your time and ene ...Read More

I find that trustworthy relationships with Sales leadership and Sales teams require a few key ingredients: The Sales team believe that you will be honest The Sales team believes that you will be empathetic (which requires research) The Sales team believes that you will be part of the solution for projects/problems Honesty At the core of trust is honesty—that your actions match your words, that you only promise what you'll deliver, and that you will raise your hand when you don't have the answer. ...Read More

Product marketers have to work with a lot of stakeholders! I always recommend two strategies for keeping internal stakeholders aligned—and they both require consistent work. I recommend rigorous documentation and ongoing updates to get stakeholders aligned. Why? Because alignment is a process, not an outcome. Put another way, you can be totally aligned at the beginning of a project and completely misaligned the next week! Rigorous documentation helps develop early alignment. By documenting your ...Read More