AMA: Twilio Sr. Group Manager, Product Marketing, Lindsey Weinig on Stakeholder Management

Each role, level, and business requires a some nuance for product marketing hiring, but I generally focus on a few key characteristics. First, successful PMMs need to be able to prioritize in complex environments. Through ambiguity, constant change, and conflicting stakeholder pressures, effective PMMs have some sort of framework they use to weigh and decide rapidly what they should focus on and what goes in the backlog. Second, PMMs need to be influencial communicators. They need to build stron ...Read More

In my experience, preferences need to be considered here. I personally have found success by adopting a variety of strategies across communication channels and with varied cadence in order to cater to others' varied preferences.  First, we do a lot of writing; sharing plans, strategies, and agendas in advance of meetings allows for deeper engagment vs. a real-time discussion in the moment. Second, we schedule regular check-ins with key stakeholders, both 1:1 and cross-functionally to keep people ...Read More

Marketing your accomplishments is critical! It is epecially important to align leadership expectations with reality since product marketing roles and responsiblities can vary greatly from business to business or even across products/BUs.  My team and I address this in a few ways. First, we share quarterly email updates with a broad distribution list. These emails include our topline priorities, related initiatives, shoutouts to our key stakeholders (since most of what we do is collaborative), le ...Read More

I recommend making the effort and taking time to connect with the people behind the roles. Working so closely with people, but in an all-remote environment can be really challenging. I do this by asking about their weekends/vacations, remembering their family/pets/hobbies and asking about them. I also share snippets from my personal life to build the relationship. I've also found that any opportunity to meet in person (assuming everyone is comfortable with in-person) while in a more casual envir ...Read More

We tend to take a pretty standardized approach for leading launches with my team. First we do a kickoff meeting with key stakeholders/deliverable owners across sales and marketing where we cover the target persona, problem and positioning of the new launch (shared early as a pre-read too) including a proposal of launch deliverables like emails, blog posts and their proposed owners. We then open for discussion on the proposal, requesting suggestions for additional opportunities and feedback.  Sta ...Read More