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Virtual Event
Improving Product Marketing Skills

Improving Product Marketing Skills

Thursday, July 24th, 2025 • 12pm–1pm PT ·

Are you looking to improve your product marketing skills? Join over 300 product marketers to learn from product marketing leaders at the world's fastest growing companies on how to master your skillsets and unlock your impact. You will walk away with actionable ideas and tactical guidance on how to become a more effective, credible product marketer.

  • Date: Thursday, July 24th, 12 - 1pm PT (3 - 4pm ET)

  • Location: Online (link will be sent to registrants prior to the event)

  • Cost: This event is free. However there are limited seats.

Top Questions

  • For the soft skills required in PMM, what's the best way to develop those and get feedback?

    Harish Peri
    Harish Peri

    Okta SVP Product Marketing • 10mo

    Two critical soft skills for product marketers are building followership and always selling, both of which will help you transcend the PMM function to become an enterprise leader. Building followership doesn't depend on your title - it comes from showing up with clear vision, great articulation, passion, drive, and dynamism. When you demonstrate that you're willing to break through rocks to move in a direction, you create followership. This skill will serve you throughout your career, even if yo ...Read More

    687 Views
    Sean Regan
    Sean Regan

    ServiceNow SVP Product and Solutions Marketing • 10mo

    Spending time in sales, even briefly, is a huge advantage for developing product marketing soft skills. I'd encourage everybody to do it for a little while, even if you just sit in inside sales for a week and make phone calls with people. It's incredible - you can test messaging a hundred times in a day if you do that. At trade shows, I personally choose to work the booth, not because I was assigned to it, but because I can get a hundred customer conversations in a morning. The more you do this, ...Read More

    694 Views
    Diana Smith
    Diana Smith

    Anthropic Product Marketing - Research • 10mo

    Influence is a critical skill for product marketers since we're at the center of everything and need to impact messaging, leadership decisions, and product roadmaps. There are several ways to develop influence. One powerful approach is bringing customer examples, as Harish mentioned. Data is also critical - at HashiCorp, I was advocating for a pricing change that was challenging to implement because it could impact many different things. I gathered churn data showing the impact of our current pr ...Read More

    672 Views

  • In the age of AI what activities will get automated and skills should we focus on??

    Harish Peri
    Harish Peri

    Okta SVP Product Marketing • 10mo

    Beyond using AI tools, product marketers should learn the underlying AI technology itself to stay relevant and valuable. While using AI for content generation and speeding up work is important, my push to every product marketer would be to learn the technology itself. Before you know it, every one of your customers will need to front their company with an MCP (Multimodal Conversational Platform), otherwise they'll go out of business. Every customer will look for domain-specific agents to deploy ...Read More

    674 Views
    Sean Regan
    Sean Regan

    ServiceNow SVP Product and Solutions Marketing • 10mo

    Face your fear of AI and embrace these tools, as they won't replace the strategic and customer-facing aspects of product marketing. If you're afraid of AI, you will be replaced by it. Go out and wrap yourself in these tools and learn everything you can, because the people using them are 10x more productive than those who aren't. Make it safe in your organization to show that you use AI - I'll share the prompts or how I used AI with my team so they know I'm not hiding it. AI might help you run pr ...Read More

    680 Views
    Diana Smith
    Diana Smith

    Anthropic Product Marketing - Research • 10mo

    AI will accelerate the pace of work and expand your scope, but won't replace the core product marketing skills of curiosity and point of view. The PMM skill set will change in that your iteration and pace will be faster, and your scope will be wider because core activities like building and testing messaging or synthesizing data from sales calls and emails will be much faster with AI. You'll need to adapt to this rapid pace and broader coverage. However, you can't automate curiosity or delegate ...Read More

    696 Views

  • What skills do product marketing leaders look for in potential candidates, especially at mid to senior levels?

    Sean Regan
    Sean Regan

    ServiceNow SVP Product and Solutions Marketing • 10mo

    I test candidates on whether they can understand their audience and tailor their message accordingly, starting with the very first interview question. One simple test I use is how candidates handle the first question almost everybody gets in an interview: "Tell me about yourself." I'm buying something, and you are selling something, and 9 times out of 10 people answer with a harbor cruise of irrelevant information. The people who crush it often stop me and ask a few questions first: "I just have ...Read More

    768 Views
    Brianne Shally
    Brianne Shally

    Rippling Marketing Lead • 10mo

    I look for candidates who can form a clear point of view, communicate it effectively, and influence others with it. I look for someone who can have a point of view, clearly communicate that point of view, and influence others with that point of view - that's what will set them up for success as a product marketer. In interviews, I assess whether they can do this by asking about challenging projects. I'll ask "Tell me your most challenging project" to understand what made it difficult, then follo ...Read More

    733 Views
    Harish Peri
    Harish Peri

    Okta SVP Product Marketing • 10mo

    For leadership roles, I look for people who have made tough decisions and can build high-performing teams. When hiring for a leadership role with people reporting to them, I'm looking for folks who have done the hard thing in teams - either turned someone around or showed them a different way. The market is getting harder, the bar is being raised every day, and we're all being pushed to perform at higher levels in competitive companies and tough industries. I want to know: are you someone who ca ...Read More

    735 Views
    Diana Smith
    Diana Smith

    Anthropic Product Marketing - Research • 10mo

    I look for structured thinkers who have an approach to solving problems while maintaining flexibility to adapt when needed. When hiring mid to senior level people, I look for structured thinkers who have a clear approach to solving problems. Do you have a way you think about things? It doesn't mean you're rigid - but when faced with a positioning or messaging problem, can you diagnose what the issues are and have an approach for solving them? I also look for balance - knowing when to change what ...Read More

    733 Views

  • For PMMs looking to step into leadership, what skills and perspectives are most important?

    Harish Peri
    Harish Peri

    Okta SVP Product Marketing • 10mo

    Develop your executive presence and carefully consider whether people management is the right path for you. There are two important considerations for PMMs looking to advance. First, work on your executive presence - whether you're in a startup or large company, can you walk into a meeting with six people, own that space for half an hour, and get the outcome you wanted? When you demonstrate that you're crisp, value time, and have confidence, leaders will trust you with bigger problems. The secon ...Read More

    713 Views
    Sean Regan
    Sean Regan

    ServiceNow SVP Product and Solutions Marketing • 10mo

    Communicate in business outcomes, not tactics, to be viewed differently by leadership. One of the biggest small things that can change how you're viewed by leadership is communicating in business outcomes rather than tactics. Many product marketers come to me with their tactics - "we did the presentation at the company event" - but leaders want to know the impact: "172 people attended the presentation at the event, and 52 skipped a step in the pipeline within 30 days, which is faster than it wou ...Read More

    707 Views
    Diana Smith
    Diana Smith

    Anthropic Product Marketing - Research • 10mo

    Being clear and concise in your communications is essential for developing executive presence as a leader. To me, executive presence means being clearer and being more concise. Leaders don't have a lot of time. Usually PMMs know all of the details, but leaders don't want to hear everything. The people on my team who I've seen grow the quickest are the ones who put away the details and say, "This is the most important thing" calmly and clearly. If they're asked more questions, they can back it up ...Read More

    702 Views

  • How should product marketers approach the 'fake it till you make it' mentality?

    Sean Regan
    Sean Regan

    ServiceNow SVP Product and Solutions Marketing • 10mo

    Recognize that everyone has doubts - even executives - and don't let imposter syndrome erode your confidence. Everybody's fake, and the minute you learn that, the better off you'll be. Steve Jobs said something like "the world around you was created by people no smarter than you - you can literally design and create the future if you will it." I don't know any executive who, below the water, isn't paddling like that duck analogy. If you looked at their inbox and chat messages, it's 10x yours, ye ...Read More

    720 Views
    Harish Peri
    Harish Peri

    Okta SVP Product Marketing • 10mo

    It's less about faking it and more about intellectual agility and preparation. In technical industries like cybersecurity, if you're dealing with R&D folks, they will see right through you. During our keynote preparation season, I'm locked in a room with our CEO who will stare into your soul, get to the product truth, and ask the five whys - it's very scary. What I've learned is that instead of being scared, you have to prep a lot and know what you know. It's less about faking it and more ab ...Read More

    689 Views

  • What is executive presence and how can product marketers develop it?

    Diana Smith
    Diana Smith

    Anthropic Product Marketing - Research • 10mo

    Executive presence means being clearer and more concise in your communications.

    Leaders don't have a lot of time. Usually product marketers know all the details, but executives don't want to hear everything. The people on my team who I've seen grow the quickest are the ones who put away the details and calmly, clearly state the most important thing. If they're asked more questions, they can back it up with a wealth of information, but they lead with clarity and conciseness.
    698 Views
    Sean Regan
    Sean Regan

    ServiceNow SVP Product and Solutions Marketing • 10mo

    Practice the 10-word rule to develop executive presence - if you can't say it in 10 words, sit back down. I had a professor in college who would stop you mid-sentence and say "10-word rule is in effect - if you can't say that in 10 words, sit back down." It was very aggressive, but if you've ever been with an executive who has the power to use as few words as possible as clearly as possible, it's impressive. It's almost hard to work in a company that doesn't have that clarity - you start to tune ...Read More

    700 Views
    Harish Peri
    Harish Peri

    Okta SVP Product Marketing • 10mo

    Command of the message and conviction are key elements of executive presence. Command of the message means that whatever situation you're walking into, even if you're a jovial person who likes to wing it, you know your talking points so well that you don't even need the deck. You're commanding the message and the outcome: "We're here to do this, this is what we know, this is what we don't know, here's what we get to." Everyone displays this in their own authentic way - you don't need to copy som ...Read More

    691 Views

  • How do you make time for curiosity and customer research in a busy schedule?

    Diana Smith
    Diana Smith

    Anthropic Product Marketing - Research • 10mo

    Build customer research into your day-to-day workflow and specific projects rather than treating it as a separate chore. It's very easy to skip talking to the sales team or not going to customer calls. The most effective approach is integrating research into your regular schedule - have a weekly block dedicated to it or build it into specific projects you're responsible for. If you have a new feature launch or are updating messaging, include customer research components in your project plan. Thi ...Read More

    660 Views
    Harish Peri
    Harish Peri

    Okta SVP Product Marketing • 10mo

    Control your calendar, create learning blocks, and leverage AI to accelerate your learning process. If you're more senior in an organization, you have flexibility to create your own schedule and control your calendar. Get very intentional about that and create dedicated learning blocks. With AI tools, the barrier to learning has gone down significantly because these models have pre-synthesized information for you. There are really no more excuses, even for complex topics. If you're working on so ...Read More

    669 Views
    Sean Regan
    Sean Regan

    ServiceNow SVP Product and Solutions Marketing • 10mo

    Don't accept excuses - find ways to talk to customers regardless of barriers.

    I've heard people say "I can't talk to customers because sales won't let me" or "I don't have a Salesforce login" - that's not true. You probably have a customer community, Hacker News, or Twitter where you can engage. Occasionally someone will just go and get what others believed wasn't gettable in an hour or two. The curiosity is also a bias toward action - you've got to do it.
    673 Views

  • What's the difference between a good PMM vs. a great PMM?

    Diana Smith
    Diana Smith

    Anthropic Product Marketing - Research • 10mo

    The key difference between a good and great product marketer is curiosity. Great product marketers are never satisfied with their current knowledge and constantly dig deeper to understand customers, products, and markets. Curiosity is the building block for all product marketing skills like messaging and positioning. The best product marketers apply this curiosity to understanding personas (what problems customers are having and why), product truths (especially for technical products), and marke ...Read More

    683 Views
    Harish Peri
    Harish Peri

    Okta SVP Product Marketing • 10mo

    The ability to differentiate is what separates good from great product marketers, especially in today's AI era when everyone is rebooting. Great product marketers can get to the core of why, at this exact moment, their product is fundamentally different and better than anything else. This skill forces you to go back to product truth, think through all the connections between pieces, understand the systems design of how everything works together, and then pull apart the one thing that sets you ap ...Read More

    710 Views
    Sean Regan
    Sean Regan

    ServiceNow SVP Product and Solutions Marketing • 10mo

    Great product marketers focus on "big hits, not big lists," which is an organizational skill rather than a talent skill. We're in the noisiest market the world has probably ever seen, and product marketers often get trapped doing a bunch of things - a big list. But a Forrester white paper isn't going to change the market. The best product marketers figure out how to both show up (nail the fundamentals) and stand out. They do this by focusing their remaining energy on big hits rather than big lis ...Read More

    720 Views

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Speakers (3)

  • Sean Regan

    Sean Regan

    SVP Product and Solutions Marketing · ServiceNow

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  • Harish Peri

    Harish Peri

    SVP Product Marketing · Okta

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  • Diana Smith

    Diana Smith

    Product Marketing - Research · Anthropic

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