AMA: New Relic Vice President of Product Marketing, Pallavi Vanacharla on Product Marketing Org and KPI's

The short answer is 'it depends'.....let me explain...  A product marketer, in my opinion, is like the CEO of a product. And just like a CEO, has to do whatever it takes to make the company (in this case product) successful. Hence, she/he should be measured on what is relevant for that specific year.  PMM OKRs depend on your answer to questions such as - what is the stage of the product lifecycle? Do you own all of product marketing or a specific PMM function? What are the business goals and obj ...Read More

Here is what has worked for me in the past. This pace below is relevant for smaller teams/orgs. You can pace this out for larger teams/orgs as needed. 30 DAYS Goal: Establish credibility and define your goal and priorities Key tasks: Build relationships with key stakeholders and understand expectations If you are a manager, get to know your team (obviously!) Understand the business - products, market opportunity, business metrics Define your draft year 1 goal, strategy and priorities and get sig ...Read More

Promotions! A topic that's on everyone's mind. 😄 If you are just interested in the title, you can move to a smaller company and get the title today. Nothing wrong with it, go for it! And in fact, it may help you gain more experience/skills as well. If you are interested in moving up the ladder within your current company, then you may need to work on your skills a bit more. My answer below is for this second path. Let's first understand the difference between a Sr. Manager and a Director. Regard ...Read More

Let me answer a slightly different question, the one that does not get asked often - what are the biggest mistakes you have made and what did you learn from them? I have seen many successes in my career, but they were made stronger from the lessons I learnt (from my mistakes). Here are 3 mistakes that come to my mind right now. Idealistic PMM - When I was younger, I used to think that for a product to be truly successful you need great positioning. Not true at all. One of my competitor’s CEO was ...Read More

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... Company (culture, potential, growth) Job (fit, growth potential and salary) Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are limited in what you can control on the second. This leaves you with the third, which is frankly the only thing you can control in its entirety. So my advice for you is to focus on what you can control and don’t worry a ...Read More

Not everything we do is measurable and this is especially true for PMMs.  Unless there is a compelling reason to measure every aspect of sales enablement, I would not suggest you do so.   But if you must, then for most things, a simple survey to the sales org is best. Ask them how useful a specific task was in their sales cycle? And if you should stop, continue or improve that specific task? Remember to give them an incentive to complete the survey.  You can also try other indirect means, like m ...Read More

Good question. I am sure you have heard this statement many times - “PM and PMMs are like two sides of the same coin”. It’s absolutely true, and work wise I see the roles to have a Venn diagram. There are things each team leads and drives by themselves and then there are overlap areas. The overlap areas usually are: Product strategy Product roadmap Target markets Positioning and messaging Sales enablement (includes launches) The first step to building joint KPIs is building a trusted, valued and ...Read More

Love it! Excellent question. Here is the team culture I like to create, which frankly is applicable to any function. But, at the end, I will provide some cultural traits that are specific to product marketing. General cultural traits: Happy Trusting  Collaborative Caring Humble  How do you do the above? Remember the saying "be the change you want to see"? Well do that and everyone else will follow. 😃 This works at scale too, you will often find that some of the largest companies exhibit the cult ...Read More