AMA: Uber Former Product Marketing Lead, Nikhil Balaraman on Sales Enablement

At a high-level the goal is likely to make sellers more productive in some sense. Probably by making them more effective or more efficient. Let’s just call this “go-to-market readiness” as this is typically a key pillar of any sales enablement team. GTM readiness is likely the success metric that is going to be most inspected/cared about. So you’ll want to be tracking things like time to close, deal velocity, deal size, churn (if trial to close), or any other metrics that are standardized and ea ...Read More

By understanding how deals work from beginning to end. Get to know the SDRs. What research do they do before starting a sequence? How does a meeting get set? Sit in on first calls. Is a first call all discovery or all demo? What follow ups get sent? And so on and so forth including understanding how a customer implements/on-boards. Once you see enough of these, you will likely start to see a pattern emerge. Within this pattern is where the plays can emerge. Ok, so for this vertical, this is typi ...Read More

There are 2 main ways of tracking for success: Consumption Metrics and Outcome Metrics Consumption metrics -- these metrics should be shared/co-owned amongst Enablement, PMM, and Content teams  Content views Collateral usage Quiz scores (used as an Enablement metric when rolling out new messaging) Outcome metrics -- these are more Enablement specific metrics, but PMM should definitely be attuned to how new launches and especially new product positioning affects these metrics Win rate Deal size D ...Read More

Depending on where the business is, sales should be either consulted or informed on almost every launch. Unless there is a tight liaison and voice of the sales team (ie Sales Enablement), it will primarily be consulted. In order to best understand the market, industry, personas, and segmentation, your sales team will be the best data point (one caveat is to keep in mind “recency bias”--aka, “if we build this one feature a prospect just asked me for, we could win 10 more deals”...maybe, but let’s ...Read More

Simply put, I think focusing on the outputs (e.g., collateral/content creation) instead of understanding the problem and building a solution for that problem. But in order to understand the problem, you have to understand how your sales team operates...you need to be on calls across the entire funnel and especially post-close.  Instead of focusing on outputs, focus on how to achieve outcomes. If you’re standing up a sales enablement team, then the business is probably needs enablement as a strat ...Read More

Generally, product marketers and sales enablement should work hand-in-hand as they are some of the most cross-functional roles in any organization. Because of their cross-functional nature, these roles need to be closely connected in order to coordinate messaging, launches, new asset distribution, new campaigns and more across multiple functions and departments.  Organizationally, it’s not uncommon to have sales enablement and product marketing sit in the same org, with some of the roles of sale ...Read More

Short answer: build the framework, but allow people to be creative. Don’t micro-manage every single email. But maybe run some audits and always be close with the SDR leaders, and get a good understanding for why they are getting rejected/hearing no. Long answer:  PMM, and especially Brand marketing, are going to be helping in setting the tone and narrative of how we talk to prospects. For many of these prospects, the outreach from SDRs will likely be the first time they have direct contact with ...Read More

Instead of focusing on the features, start with the use case -- why are we launching this we sub-product? What problem does it solve for our key personas or existing customers? Do we have examples of users adopting this product? Once you have an understanding for how/why people are actually using this, then move a step up in the pitch to the messaging. How do we frame the problem that our prospects or current customers are actually having that this new product/enhancement addresses? Ideally, the ...Read More

There are no shortcuts to getting buy in from a sales team; and, every product marketer needs to know how their product gets to market. To get buy-in from a large sales team you need to demonstrate empathy with the sales process, and be useful in accelerating pipeline. If you’re selling a B2B product, then you also need to know your sales team well. This means understanding how they’re organized (by region, by segment, by vertical), understanding what the pipeline looks like at a given point (ma ...Read More

It's going to be hard in the early days becuase you'll have a lot to do, and the partner channel probably is non-existant until ~20m or so in ARR. If you're selling into regulated industries this might vary/be sooner, but your main focus should be on enabling your internal teams. Good news is that once an official partner person is hired, you should already have some assets ready to go! Most of your existing assets can probably be lightly customized so that your messaging and positioning stay co ...Read More

I actually came to PMM from an SE role/background and would highly recommend people who are in technical roles consider PMM! The best part about this transition is that you're already trained on how to be an expert on the product, and how to best address and identify customer pain points, and craft solutions for those paint points.  Specific to making the transition from an SE or technical account manager role, I think the easiest step is to get involved with PMM is to provide feedback on pitch ...Read More

The chasm framework makes it seem like there's just one magic gap that needs to be jumped across, and then you can just set your sales and marketing efforts to autopilot and go on an indefinite vacation. For some companies that may be true...Zoom definitely had an exogenous force push them across the chasm. For most, I think you're always going to be feeling like you're on the early side of the chasm staring across the strait at the promised land. As it relates to B2B, I think the best thing to ...Read More

Having been through several of these at a few different companies, the advice I would offer is that for joint-sessions focus on the biggest impact announcements (e.g., new product demos, fireside chat with a major customer w/ Q&A, new company vision/mission, etc.), and make sure to put the time, effort, and energy into producing the content for these sessions--these assets can all be reused, and it’s an easy way to get the team excited. Have these sessions be less about Q&A and more of a ...Read More