AMA: Zendesk Director of Product Marketing, Liz Gonzalez on Enterprise Product Marketing

One of the key areas of differentiation is the buying group involved with a larger organization which typically lengthens the sales cycle. It’s critical to understand who are the key players in your buying group at an enterprise level organization. You’ll likely need to build business impact messaging and content for executives/c-suite in addition to the economic buyer and end user as enterprise sales motions typically require senior leadership review and input. Enterprises also usually require more steps during the sales process, for example sometimes they require a Proof of Concept (PoC) or they cannot move forward with a vendor unless there is a Master Services Agreement (MSA) in place. Oftentimes, they have some type of legal or procurement step that requires additional time and process. Larger enterprises also must adhere to compliance standards and regulations. Most likely it will involve folks from the IT organization, therefore it’s best to have an understanding on how your product manages data security and privacy, integrates with their existing tech stack, administration, etc.

When it comes to hiring a segment PMM like an Enterprise Product Marketer, one key trait I look for is someone who is problem-solver. As an enterprise PMM, you’ll need to identify and investigate business issues, read through the data, and solve challenges or make appropriate suggestions and be able to pivot when needed to get the desired results. I would also prioritize communication and story-telling abilities. From internal enablement to GTM functions-– a PMM needs to tell a compelling story with a POV to spur action.

PMM can influence several touchpoints across the enterprise sales motion. PMM’s biggest impact will likely vary widely depending on the business stage. Identifying and anticipating the needs of each person in the buying group and building appropriate content and messaging and aligning that to the sales process will be key. Adding value through the enterprise sales cycle can be done in a number of different ways including managing standardized Request for Proposal (RFP) responses, building a partnership with analyst relations team to help drive analyst outlook, and enabling the sales team with a differentiated story that speaks to large business impacts with solid proof points. I’d recommend analyzing your current sales motion today, what’s the biggest area of impact you find? Is there enough pipeline coverage? What are your conversion and win rates, can they be improved? What objections do your sales teams need to overcome? Is your message resonating in the market?

It can be hard to measure effectiveness of an asset, launch or campaign in longer sales cycles because attribution is tricky in a 6+ month sales cycle. Measuring the number of touchpoints that influences customer behavior spanning a quarter or two will show you the bigger picture of the pipeline you have influenced. Expect to see bookings more than a quarter out during the enterprise sales cycle, but you can still measure “created pipeline” and “influenced pipeline'' in quarter. Additionally, you can also report on cumulative bookings at the close each quarter or report a 6-9 month roll-up report to see how a campaign is performing and contributing to the bottom line.

Ideal customer profile (ICP) is a great way to focus on the most valuable prospects likely to purchase your product and align all areas of the Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy on targeting those accounts. I recommend taking a three-pronged approach when it comes to collecting data for ICP. 1) Do the quantitative analysis 2) Conduct internal interviews from sales and account managers 3) Talk to customers. You’ll then start to see some trends across several attributes like industry; use case; tech stack; regions, growth rate; etc. It’s always good to think about your future ICP as well when designing and implementing and ICP so you’ll have some room for growth. Ask yourself what your most valuable prospects will look like in 6 - 9 months? Is your product changing? Is your company entering a new region? Launching a new product line? All these will have an impact on your future ICP. And always, always, always identify key stakeholders early on in the process as implementing ICPs is a cross-functional project and requires collaboration to get an ICP successfully implemented across many GTM teams.