AMA: Salesforce Director, Product Marketing (Brand | Portfolio), Nicole Smayling on Product Marketing Career Path

There are 3 AI skills that stand out to me right now, prompt engineering skills, AI quality detection and staying ahead on governance and market perception. Build your own prompt engineering library. This is an evolving space and there are a ton of creators with interesting ideas. My advice? Explore what works for you and continue iterating. Save your favorite prompts and document what you like about them. Areas where I've found this useful…  Writing improvement / message clarity Market research ...Read More

Good question! Three skills that will make you more valuable are proving business impact, building cross-functional fluency and earning allies. Business value - In my experience, the teams that grow the fastest connect their work directly to revenue even when it's not their official directive. You don't need to wait for a new project, find what's already working and amplify it. For example, if free trials consistently generate leads, then show how your messaging is driving the signups. It doesn' ...Read More

Career blockers are tricky and some are more in your control than others. Focus on what you can control, and for the rest do your best but have a backup plan.  What you CAN control:  Tie your work to revenue and share your impact. When the company budget shrinks, teams closest to measurable revenue survive. Frame your work in terms of business value like pipeline and closed deals, not marketing activities. Highlight impact through measurable value statements like "My whitepaper achieved X form f ...Read More

I think the most in-demand PMM skills right now are communication and technical fluency, especially in AI. And as the market shifts, another critical skill that's emerging is intuition. Communication is everything - You're writing and speaking constantly. Engineering wants technical accuracy. Sales wants competitive differentiation. Execs want business impact. Your job is to reimagine the story for each audience, cutting through the noise to answer the one question they all have; "What's in it f ...Read More

Having worked on both sides of the Sales-PMM fence, I've watched alignment die between good intent and Sales readiness. Most sellers won't read a full research report. They will, however, get what they need if you condense that same report into a 1-page cheatsheet focused on current pain points, needs and competitive objection handling. Once it's easy to consume you need to put it right in your seller's flow of work. Whether it's pinned in Slack or surfaced via an AI assistant, the goal is to ma ...Read More