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

Product Marketing is the connective tissue that turns a product into a go-to-market success. Given how deeply collaborative and cross functional this is with so many teams, soft skills are incredibly important. A PMM isn't a good PMM if they just create content or become a launch coordinator. They are a great PMM if they become a strategic facilitator and cross-functional orchestrator for the company to bring a product to life. PMMs don't own product, sales, or success. But they are the one alig ...Read More

The Why: PMM soft skills - communication, empathy, influence, adaptability - are your multiplier skills. Technical PMM knowledge gets you in the door, but soft skills determine whether you can actually drive impact across a complex organization. The good news? These skills are learnable with intentional practice. Strategies that work: Seek stretch assignments: Volunteer for cross-functional projects, customer advisory boards, or executive presentations. Nothing builds confidence like real-world ...Read More

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

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

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