AMA: Unity Vice President Product Marketing, Jon Rooney on Influencing the C-Suite

The best way to drive alignment on messaging across the exec team is to be super clear about the process and milestones without going into too much detail (which a great rule of thumb for all things working with execs). The process needs to build off a set of hypotheses about messaging (basically a reasonable draft as a starting place), then offer opportunities to provide feedback, and solicit ideas at regular intervals leading to a refined version that you and your team is driving. That's key - ...Read More

Rather than by product line or aligned to how the product team is organized, I structure product marketing teams by customer groupings (or buying centers). So if your company has distinct customer groups (either by vertical industry, like Financial Services or Gaming, or horizontal role type, like CIO/IT, CISO/Security or CTO/Development), I set up teams that closely align with each group that pull through relevant products and services, irrespective of how the product team is organized. A few t ...Read More

In order to narrow down what PMM works on as to not be pulled in a million directions and get stuck being short order cooks for every random initiative, you need to invest heavily in understanding and internalizing the company's priorities and goals, as communicated via OKRs, KPIs or however your company manages these things. Chances are there's a list of things, in priority order, that sit at the CEO level that your work needs to ladder up to. Once you REALLY understand where the company is try ...Read More

Product marketers most often come up short in influencing the C-Suite by showing up at the wrong altitude, with the wrong information and the wrong disposition. The most common mistake I've seen is a PMM showing up with far too much detail and data without a clear "here's the goal, here's what we know/learned, and here's the 'so what' of if all." No one in e-staff is going to read your 15 page messaging brief or detailed launch plan or expansive customer usage report. You have to synthesize all ...Read More

The best way a junior or newer PMM can get exposure to the C-suite is through their work on a specific project or initiative that rises to their attention. A lot of the work we do as PMMs doesn't (and generally shouldn't) get C-suite attention unless things aren't working. Sales enablement decks, launch BoMs, event booth staffing schedules and copy on product web pages generally doesn't warrant C-suite attention, but some things do. Notably, if you're a PMM working with a customer on an awesome ...Read More

Getting the C-suite to buy into a new pitch deck depends on whether or not execs feel like a new pitch deck is needed. If Execs feel like the company needs a new pitch and puts you/PMM in charge of that project, you're in good shape because you'll get the attention and cooperation you need to gather requirements, talk with customers, test with account teams and all the other cross-functional work needed to get to an excellent, brief (think the 10-12 slides that Salesforce trains everyone at the ...Read More

The best way to influence the c-suite to get more resources is to quantify the impact of your current resources and identify areas of the business that could benefit from similar impact with more investment. For PMM this can be tough, as we're at the hub of most GTM activities but hard measurement can be diffuse and vague if we're not careful. When pursuing more resources, pick one or two major business objectives (like increasing marketing-driven pipeline coverage or driving up product usage/ac ...Read More