AMA: Salesforce Senior Director of Product Marketing, Sales Cloud, Chandra Patel on Stakeholder Management

I am very directive in clearly setting a deliverable date. This is because there are often clear expectations that has been set with management or are part of the broader business goals. Once that is clearly established, I ask teams to come up with their work back plan on how they're going to deliver their part of the overall program. In fact, it's a bit of an inside joke that I'm always asking, what's your work back plan? A work back plan, in my mind, is really important because it's the planni ...Read More

Historically, yes, Customer Success is often overlooked in the Product Marketing motion. But before we go too far down that path, I want to be very clear that this is a very fine line that needs to be tread appropriately. Customer Success's primary goal is to ensure your customers are effectively onboarded and successfully using your product. Happy customers typically means more revenue, and repeat business. So, in terms of what Customer Success should get, and also knowing that Product Marketin ...Read More

Great question, and yes, prioritization is a challenge no matter where you work! I'm assuming that this question is about prioritizing PMM efforts across different products in the organization - so my answer is geared that way. I always start with what is the expected value or impact of the effort. So it could be a business case or ROI. It could simply be how it's relative "attractiveness" to the business, e.g., opening up new markets. Be very clear on the business value that your effort drives. ...Read More

You can begin with quick wins to influence the different teams you work with by having a clear set of annual goals, and then breaking down that plan by quarterly actions that align to those goals. In sharing that broadly across your stakeholders, providing an update on a weekly basis allows each of those teams to understand your priorities and what you're working on. So visibility and transparency in your work and how it maps to the overall goal is a great way to start building relationships and ...Read More

This is a great question, and definitely one that anyone new to an organization should consider. But first of all, your stakeholders are busy. When you join an organization, you have a short period of time to get to know everybody and hit the ground running. You can connect with stakeholders by going on a listening tour, asking for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes of their time to essentially interview them. Your goal should be to understand what is their perspective on business, the top opportuni ...Read More