AMA: Zendesk Sr Director of Technology Marketing and Communications, Teresa Haun on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

I often like to ask, “What accomplishment are you most proud of?” as well as, “In your last performance review, what were your opportunities to improve and how have you worked to address them?” I like the question “What accomplishment are you most proud of?” because it often helps me understand what really motivates a candidate and what type of worker they are. The best answer I’ve heard to that question was a candidate who talked about overcoming some very challenging obstacles for a new produc ...Read More

The classic product marketing career path for those who want to stay in product marketing that I usually see in terms of roles and titles is PMM → Senior PMM → Group or Principal PMM → Director → Senior Director → VP → SVP → CMO. From my experience, I’ve seen managing a report or a team typically starts at the Group or Principal level and then expands each time you progress from there, sometimes it also happens at the Senior level. I haven’t seen a path in PMM to remain an individual contributor ...Read More

I’m going to split my answer here because the additional question details suggest you may be feeling frustrated that PMM has become more strategic, but for me, the strategic work in product marketing is a large part of why I love the function so much :). I’m hoping I can still be helpful to you in my response if I just separate those pieces. In my experience, I’ve actually always seen the role of PMM to be quite strategic and I think that’s really driven by the function sitting at such a critica ...Read More

I would try to highlight anything that shows you have the key skills to be an effective product marketer. That definitely includes strong writing samples and case studies like you suggested, but also: Presentations that show you can create a compelling narrative and convince an audience of your point Detailed GTM launch plans with how you will or did measure success Clear, convincing and well-supported messaging and positioning, like through a messaging source document (something we use at Zende ...Read More

You are definitely not alone! I think a lot of new and experienced PMMs struggle with messaging and I absolutely did and still think I have plenty of room to improve. Since I’m unfortunately running out of time in this AMA, I wanted to at least suggest this similar question and thread that has a ton of great responses from highly-respected PMMs sharing the resources that help them create strong messaging: https://sharebird.com/what-are-good-messaging-framework-resources-that-you-use. There are a ...Read More

I personally think Product Marketing should report into Marketing with the head of the whole product marketing function reporting directly to the CMO. This is exactly how we’re organized at Zendesk and I’ve found this reporting structure seems to work well for our team. I believe it’s because even though our work sits in the middle of Marketing, Product and Sales, our greatest number of direct stakeholders and partner teams are in Marketing. At least in my experience, I find there are so many ot ...Read More

This question is very similar to this one someone else asked https://sharebird.com/how-can-a-junior-digital-marketing-generalist-stand-out-as-a-pmm-candidate-in-a-role-that-requires-3-years-of-product-marketing-experience?answer=nOrEYkp4B7 so going to share my answer from there here too:I think it’s all about making it clear that you have relevant skills and experience that will apply. Also, that you have tremendous potential and are so eager to learn! If you really don’t have a lot of experienc ...Read More

I think this blog post https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-succeed-at-asking-for-a-pay-raise-2071868 does a nice job walking through key considerations and things to do when generally asking for a raise, including specifically in the “Research” section highlighting some of the classic sources of data to use for salary comparisons and other elements of total compensation. The article does also give some tips around having the conversation and on those points, I just wanted to add that I defi ...Read More

This is a great question, but unfortunately not one I have much personal experience with as I haven’t made that particular transition and also haven’t hired anyone with a Sales background so far. I would absolutely be open to hiring someone from Sales though if they showed they had the potential to be a great product marketer. I would look for the classic things like the ability to truly understand a customer/buyer, create compelling messaging and positioning, understand our product (this is def ...Read More

If you haven’t already, I would start by making sure your manager actually knows that you aspire to become a Senior PMM and would like to work towards getting promoted. It’s often implied as most people want to continuously work towards the next level, but that’s definitely not always the case and if you’ve never discussed that desire with your manager, then that’s a key first step. If you’re already performing well and it’s clear that you want to and are working towards a promotion, the convers ...Read More

There’s an awesome blog post that I’d highly recommend written by Dave Gerhardt (super impressive marketer who produces a lot of solid, thoughtful content) for your question what does product marketing do and what are we responsible for: https://www.drift.com/blog/what-is-product-marketing/. For your second question on what skills you need to work on, that of course depends on where you’re already strong vs where you have opportunity to improve, but generally I would say a great product marketer ...Read More

In my experience, I’ve never seen Sales → Product Marketing as a direct path, but like someone else asked about here, it’s definitely one you can pursue and I think many product marketing hiring managers would be open to it if you displayed you had the right skill set and potential. Here’s what my answer to that other question ("What is your advice to someone with a background in software sales who wants to move into Product Marketing?") was with advice for how and what to try to demonstrate to ...Read More

I think it’s all about making it clear that you have relevant skills and experience that will apply. Also, that you have tremendous potential and are so eager to learn! If you really don’t have a lot of experience that you can make clear is very relevant for product marketing (although I bet you do coming from digital marketing), I also would suggest just being upfront about how you may not be coming in with as much direct experience as other candidates, but here’s how you’re going to make up fo ...Read More