AMA: Twilio Senior Director, Product Marketing, Vanessa Thompson on Sales Enablement

I encourage my team to be the ‘mini CMO’ for the products they cover. That means the single biggest metric to measure is pipeline (with a focus on pipeline generation). Depending on the specific in-quarter activities we have going on around sales enablement, we can see a dedicated focus on sales enablement and education show up in our sales-sourced pipeline in the trailing quarter. My advice here is to track a few things:Attributed pipeline = how are all your content activities showing up in you ...Read More

I encourage my team to be the ‘mini CMO’ for the products they cover. That means the single biggest metric to measure is pipeline (with a focus on pipeline generation). Depending on the specific in-quarter activities we have going on around sales enablement, we can see a dedicated focus on sales enablement and education show up in our sales-sourced pipeline in the trailing quarter. My advice here is to track a few things: Attributed pipeline = how are all your content activities showing up in yo ...Read More

1) A (first call) pitch deck. This is a fantastic unifying asset that will help you hone your narrative and it can also serve as an educational tool for the sales team. You can use the pitch to walk through your logic and approach and then refine it based on specific feedback from your sales team. 2) A mid-funnel eBook. It might sound a little strange that this is on the line up so high, but now that we are all working from home, the selling cycle is a bit different. Leaving a prospect with some ...Read More

This is a great question too. Competitive is one part of the “swiss army knife” of skills a product marketer needs in their skill belt (others being, storytelling/narrative building, relationship building, public speaking, data analysis, etc). My approach is that every product marketer needs to have a pulse on what is happening in their competitive environment. At Twilio, we currently don't have dedicated resources for competitive so we started at the macro-level and worked our way down. 1) Comp ...Read More

There is a bit to unpack in your question here so i'll focus on the product release element. We ‘size’ each release and the associated size determines a list of activities for that release.  We use tee-shirt sizing so as an example, if a release is defined as a Large (where we go from S to XL), then a product release has a big revenue opportunity and we will complete a number of major initiatives:1) Standalone AE enablement. We don't typically do standalone enablement that is outside the regular ...Read More

The ultimate goal of sales enablement is to make sure the sales team is equipped to sell but also, they should “sell what's on the truck.” You can use the same mental model to justify the amount of sales enablement as you do when prioritizing: 1) Where are the biggest areas of opportunity? Are there any specific products or use cases where we are differentiated and we have a clear runway of opportunity? We should prioritize our efforts here. 2) Are there some products that are just ‘easier’ to s ...Read More

This is really dependent on your org, how big you are, and your overall coverage model. In general though, it's a partnership. I view the relationship with my sales enablement partner as one of the two most important relationships I need to build in the company (the other being product). You need to build tight alignment on what each team does and doesn't do. At the highest level, I think about the division of duties as an input and output model. We (PMM) work on all the enablement inputs, conte ...Read More

We are heavily involved in the Sales Kick off so that's where we focused our time and energy. At Twilio, we break out Sales Kick off from the main Company Kick off so I make sure to participate in all the forums where decisions are being made as well as listen to my stakeholders (and listen to the data) about what they want to hear. I then ‘pitch’ the sales leaders creative ideas for how we can enable their teams as part of SKO. Early in 2020, my team worked really hard to produce two hours of p ...Read More

This is a great tactic. Research is a great way to drive energy and excitement around a ‘theme’ you want to focus on. I have done this before and it was the single largest pipeline driver for us. We connected the campaign and promotion with another in-person event so that we were streamlining and capitalizing on the momentum we had around that event.  The role of sales enablement here was that we used the outcomes of the research to enable the field specifically on discovery and objection handli ...Read More

I love this question, <3 Developers! The fundamentals of sales enablement dont change, it's more the way you communicate the needs of your audience to your sales team that changes. If we unpack developers and what they want, then it makes it really easy to figure out how to approach sales enablement. 1) Developers will question to the end. They will question every word on every slide and understand it as a direction or intention. So make sure that any presentation or pitch you build for your ...Read More

I meet with someone in sales, in some capacity, every few days. Before I hopped into this AMA, I was listening in (live) to a roundtable discussion with some key customers hosted by a product leader. Even though I was in “listen” mode, it was great to hear directly from customers about what they are thinking and how we can solve their problems. The key challenges raised by our customers can directly translate into prioritization of where we spend our time enabling the sales team as well as the s ...Read More

Get out in the field as often as you can and meet with customers but also seek out the super star sellers and find out their secrets to success. Your goal should be to become a trusted advisor to the sales team. This means you have the ability to diagnose problems and challenges that the sales team run into and then make the right recommendations to improve their situation. Showing up and being in the trenches alongside them is the single best way to build your partnership with the sales team - ...Read More

Prioritization is always tough. Every stakeholder has a different perspective on what they are looking to achieve. The ultimate goal of sales enablement is to make sure the sales team is equipped to sell and i’d also add they should focus on “selling what is on the truck.” To share a bit more of my mental model about the elements to consider when prioritizing: 1) Where are the biggest areas of opportunity? Are there any specific products or use cases where we are differentiated and we have a cle ...Read More