AMA: Zuora Former Product Marketing Senior Director, Natalie Louie on Stakeholder Management

Here are 4 ways this can be mitigated:  There’s always a reason why you don’t agree -- when you can get to the data and root cause driving the disagreement -- then you start to build bridges to get back on the same page. Instead of disagreeing, a good response is to keep asking “why”?... “Why don’t you agree?”...”Why will that be an issue?”...”Why do you think this won’t work”...”Why, what does that mean?”. Keep asking “why” and digging until you unlock the root cause. People often have access t ...Read More

At two previous companies I worked at (Zuora and Hired) we have OKRs and each group creates their own and works with each other to define theirs. We can also view everyone's OKRs in our Workboard tool. Alignment begins before any project begins. Each quarter we all get better at aligning our OKRs. And, with each project we improve on how we report back on how we acheived our OKRs together. We also focus on shared frameworks and process we all agree and align on. During and after each project we ...Read More

As a PMM I’ve always had a close relationship with demand gen, from startups to public companies.Here’s what we do together and what we each own separately:Together we discuss themes and ideas but demand gen owns the tactics and PMM owns the strategy. We both own the results. Demand Gen: focuses on launching and driving campaigns, optimizing them to drive pipeline, working with SDRs and AE’s, managing large budgets for paid media, seo, organic. They own the tactics.   Product Marketing: we are t ...Read More

I mentioned this in a prior question - treat each stakeholder like one of your “personas”. Understand their role, what their pain points are, what their goals are, what words they use and what’s important to them. Do a 1:1 with them, get to know them, their OKRs, interview them and find out how you can help them and work with them. Once you have a clear idea on how to deliver value to them, incorporate that into how you work with them, message them and position your work to them. You already do ...Read More

The more technical your product and complex your use cases, i.e. selling to enterprise customers, then PMM can report into Product. This is what we do at Zuora and other companies I’ve worked at. The less technical the product and the less complex your use cases, i.e. selling to SMB/MM customers, then PMM can report into Marketing. This is what we did at my prior companies too.When PMMs need to understand complex use cases and technical products they have more air to cover and it’s better to hav ...Read More

Yes, I always do.   Treat each stakeholder like one of your “personas”. Understand their role, what their pain points are, what their goals are, what words they use and what’s important to them. Do a 1:1 with them, get to know them, their OKRs, interview them and find out how you can help them and work with them. Once you have a clear idea on how to deliver value to them, incorporate that into how you work with them, message them and position your work to them. You already do this as a PMM for c ...Read More

With traditional marketing we have a wider audience and are doing a marketing volume play and casting a wider net. With an ABM strategy we know exactly who we want to go after and it’s a targeted, smaller audience. More time is spent sizing the accounts, looking at the data and deciding which to go after. It’s also a larger cross-functional lift. I have to include more cross-functional stakeholders to understand the account and map out our touch points so they are personalized or targeted for th ...Read More

PMMs can be more proactive to own more of the funnel and customer journey when they expand their expertise to have a say in or own the pricing and packaging strategy. PMMs already connect the dots between customers and products and know how to deliver value across the entire customer journey. We deliver value through our positioning, messaging, story telling, content creation (pitch-decks, case studies, webinars, campaigns, white papers, website, etc..), product launches, competitive intelligenc ...Read More

Product Market yourself. Start by thinking about why you want to move to PMM and how you would position and message yourself -- and write it down. Be clear in why you want to move to PMM. Then reach out to your internal PMM leader and ask for a skip-level 1:1 and conduct an informational interview -- if your interest is still piqued then ask to work on some projects and collaborate with them, also let them know you plan to talk your manager to get their approval too. Then, talk to your existing ...Read More

To get people excited about a new deck, make sure the message and content is solid by getting feedback from sales, subject matter experts, product managers, executives, sales engineers, solution consultants, analysts, consultants, customers -- as many stakeholders as possible. The magic is in the iteration and fine tuning. Put it in the hands of a target group of highly engaged and successful sales folks and battle test it in the field with these “beta” users, even offer to join their calls and ...Read More

This is a similar answer to a prior question. There are two parts to your question that I’ll address separately.  Get stakeholders aligned on a decision making framework: treat each stakeholders like one of your “personas”. Understand their role, what their pain points are and what their goals are. Do a 1:1 with them, interview them and find out how you can help them and work with them. Once you have a clear idea on how to deliver value to them, incorporate that into how you work with them, mess ...Read More