AMA: You.com VP of Marketing, Justin Fink on Stakeholder Management

In the enterprise, misalignment usually stems from activity-based OKRs (counting tasks) rather than outcome-based OKRs (measuring impact). For example, PR may be incentivized by media mentions, while Product is judged on shipment velocity. If your GTM strategy is to, for example, "dominate the ITSM sector," but PR is chasing broad headlines for reach, the teams are effectively working against each other. To handle this, you should map every department’s KPIs to a single Objective Hierarchy, wher ...Read More

I think about meeting with practitioners in concentric circles: Who are my core stakeholders? Who are one-degree away helping drive much of the work? Who are two-degrees away that are typically consulted and informed? From here, I will schedule meetings with #1 and #2 buckets in my first 30 days to learn as much as I can about: Their role & responsibility How they work with myself / my team(s) Where their largest challenges are How I can help Who else do they think I should meet with? Hearin ...Read More

To turn friction into progress, the pre-mortem uses "prospective hindsight." Gather your leads and say: "It’s six months from now and this launch failed. What went wrong?" In large teams, this gives people permission to flag risks, like a lack of customer proof points or a delayed product beta, without sounding like "naysayers." These risks are then, ideally, converted into specific tasks in the project plan, solving problems before they exist. Post-mortems must be strictly blameless to avoid de ...Read More

To partner effectively with sales leadership I use a framework called "co-pilot method." We establish a message council, which is a small group of exceptional sales leaders and AEs who pressure-test narratives during the early draft phase. This ensures the "marketing story" survives a real-world discovery call. By giving sales leadership a seat at the drafting table, you transform new messaging from a marketing mandate into a shared strategy, which should reduce friction during the rollout. To c ...Read More

In large enterprises, narrative alignment usually breaks because of silos, not a lack of talent. True alignment requires a "Single Source of Truth" (SSOT) doc, which is typically a messaging house that acts as the go-to source of messaging across PR, AR, and Product. For big marketing teams, this is best managed through a narrative council, or cross-functional group that meets consistently (monthly / quarterly) to audit all external communications against this framework. To avoid diluting the me ...Read More

You need to first bucket individuals into groups and understand their motivations. Below is typically how I group practitioners: 1. The Climbers The Vibe: They mention their role, seniority, or senior leader consistently. The "Win" for them: You aren't giving them work; you’re giving them support. 2. The Efficiency Practitioners The Vibe: Their calendar makes it difficult to schedule. The "Win" for them: You’re their to help serve a broader set of metrics; find which they care about. 3. The Rela ...Read More