AMA: Twilio Senior Director, Product Marketing, David Esber on Sales Enablement

One of the most important skills for an PMM is to tailor our content to the audience. Working with technical products like APIs, and recognizing that our buyers and users are often different people with different technical levels means our product launch training also has to address those differences. Like most teams, we use sizing to dictate the level of effort of each launch and release by stage. Ideally, ahead of any significant launches we host live trainings at globally-friendly times for a ...Read More

I'm fortunate to work with a great team of Enablement partners who are responsible for building our regular weekly sales updates. We all are inundated with regular newsletters, emails and slacks, assigned trainings, and vendor promotions – it's hard to cut through that noise. Thanks to these partners, we're continuously improving the ways we get important information in front of teams, while also focusing on highest impact/most scaled activities. The team has landed on a highly-scannable, predic ...Read More

One of the best things we can do as PMMs is talk to customers; joining sales conversations is a great way to gain a better understanding of ICP, customer pain points, and market trends – but it's also only scalable when it's focused on high-value engagements, used to test new narratives or positioning, or conduct research that's used to improve foundational assets like positioning frameworks and canonical pitch decks. Our team focuses our energy on producing and refining those foundational asset ...Read More

Enablement partners, like PMM, are balancing the needs and asks of multiple stakeholders. They sit in the middle of lots of initiatives and priorities, just like we do. And, we both benefit from close partnership to deliver the best possible enablement, keep a pulse on the needs of sales teams and leaders, and ensure consistency of message. For major initiatives, we've found it's best to engage Sales Enablement as early as possible in a workstream, soliciting input on best enablement modalities ...Read More

Guaranteeing every person the sales team uses "official" messages is a sisyphean task; when you step back to look at benefit vs. effort, it's probably not worth the effort. Instead, here's where I'd focus my time: Tier new messaging/resource rollouts like you would any launch – focus time, training, and effort on the most critical resources. For that content, gain buy-in from sales leadership to enable every team, including pitch certifications, on-demand resources including videos of salespeopl ...Read More