AMA: Splunk Director, Product Marketing, Rinita Datta on Building a Product Marketing Team

In my mind, the top 3 qualities of a star PMM are a self-starter mindset, creativity, and cross-functional leadership. A self-starter mindset means you should have a knack for identifying opportunities, the things that matter most, and the willingness to figure it out - maybe fail and learn along the way! Creativity is essential as there isn’t always a gold standard playbook for every problem and task. It's vital to be open to new ways of doing things, show quick wins to build influence, and use ...Read More

In addition to the goal-setting process I outlined in another question, we use company-provided resources to facilitate development conversations and roadmaps. These resources include a career progression chart with expected scope and impact at every job level and access to curated online courses for developing specific skills. In the past, I have used the Pragmatic Framework to help team members self-assess skills they’d like to build and work on a path to get there. At senior levels, I look to ...Read More

The biggest challenge I’ve faced and continue to navigate as a marketing leader is growing, supporting, and leading my team through uncertainty and change. Over the past year, we’ve experienced several organizational shifts, including layoffs and departures, impacting project timelines, team bandwidth, and morale. In that time, my scope and responsibilities expanded as I inherited functions outside my original remit. I must balance strategic leadership with rolling my sleeves as a hands-on contr ...Read More

We typically share the following KPIs cross-functionally to drive alignment between PM, PMM, Sales, and CS. While this may seem like a long list with high-level metrics, we pick the most important ones depending on the audience, the goal, and the user journey. Revenue and growth:  Pipeline contributed by marketing  Pipeline engaged by marketing touchpoints Revenue growth in the highest priority/strategic accounts Adoption and retention: Dollar-based net retention rate among accounts engaged by m ...Read More

Start by understanding the north star metrics and business priorities for your leadership and aligning your goals and roadmap with them. Over time, show quick wins, ways to scale what works well, and long-term initiatives that help position you as an impactful cross-functional leader. Additionally, you can proactively attend team planning, customer-facing, and QBR calls in product, engineering, sales, and CS to align roadmaps and maintain bi-directional communication. As you join these forums, s ...Read More

The team sets up long-term priorities at the start of the year, and each member sets their objectives and goals every quarter. These are mapped to the objectives set by sales, marketing, product, and customer success leadership. Everyone is encouraged to consider stretch projects to develop new skills, get a mentor, and invest in education and certifications outside work. We strongly focus on making the goals ‘SMART’, with key results being a mix of KPIs I mentioned in an earlier question. Thus, ...Read More

Here are some strategies to try out: Connect regularly with regional sales and marketing leadership to understand competition, buyer needs, and opportunities for revenue growth and to identify areas with the best potential ROI. Share a global roadmap for GTM activities but allow regional variations of content and events with translations and friendly time zones, with support from global employees and customers. Encourage and incentivize user-led community meetups and customer advisory boards wor ...Read More

I identify my 3-4 top must-have skills for the role and assign situational questions for each of them to my interview panel. The questions usually follow the format “Tell me about a time when you did XYZ” with additional follow-ups. I want to see if the candidate can handle ambiguity, identify the problem or opportunity, prioritize, dig deep, and ultimately communicate and collaborate cross-functionally. I prefer live case studies over take-home assignments because I want to test for adaptabilit ...Read More