How do you fix your relationship with Sales to where you're not an order taker for collateral and requests for new content?

The best sales relationships come from the top. Where the PMM leadership, or marketing/product leadership is aligned with sales leadership on key OKRs and where and how product marketing can come in.

If you are truly not getting that support from your leadership, or you are in charge of building a relationship - there’s a few ways you can gradually build a relationship with sales

First - if you don't want to be known as the "collateral team" , then stop talking about collateral in your interactions with them, and start using the language they use everyday. Talk about sales stages. About discovery or solutioning. About contracting and negotiation. About demos or discounting. About competition and next meetings. About buying committee and champions. Collateral is simply an enabler for helping the right kind of deals move faster. Focus on the underlying struggles, and you will invariably get a seat at the table

Second - Understand the sales agenda and problems. Do they have a pipeline problem or a conversion problem ? Break it down even further….are they having trouble facing access issues to the buyer? Is the 1st meeting to demo conversion rate poor ? Are the demos not working ? Are they getting stuck in competitive comparisons ? Are they struggling to tell a value story ? If you want to help them at a strategic level, you almost have to diagnose their problem for them, or have them share their diagnoses with you. Then solve it for them. And measure and prove that solution. If you are building a demo narrative, then measure how that has improved conversion and win rates. Bring back that measurement to everyone in the company. And develop a virtuous cycle where you go from being 'content creators' to 'strategic partners in my sales process'. This will help you develop credibility both with sales leadership as well as frontline sales reps

Finally - There’s no shame in being an order taker, especially if you are just beginning to form a relationship. Particularly in very enterprise sales heavy cultures , sales reps are the frontline teams that bring in revenue. My mantra in such cultures is that Product marketing, but even Product, or rest of marketing, is there to help sales win. Our work on messaging, or launches, or enablement, or campaigns, is only as relevant as its applicability and use by sales teams in growing revenue. Frontline reps know what they want - particularly if the need is coming from multiple frontline team and their leaders. If there are obvious content gaps, you can develop credibility by filling them and that helps you develop the relationship and the trust to have a deeper partnership conversation

This answer might come across as tough love, but you need to establish credibility with sales teams and prove your value by demonstrating a deep understanding of 1) the market in which you play, 2) the ideal customer profiles and personas who care about your stuff, 3) their needs, and 4) the competitive landscape, and 5) your differentiation. If you can consistently show up in internal meetings, sales training sessions and sales kickoffs with a mastery of your market, your buyers and how your products fit, you will earn credibility and your sales teams will see you as a strategic partner vs. a tactical data sheet monkey.

Too many PMMs focus on becoming an expert on their product – learning all of the speeds and feeds, geeking out on features. But from my experience, what separates good product marketers from great ones and commands greater credibility with sellers is becoming an expert on the market and your buyers. This allows you to put your product in context for your sales team, which in turn enables them to do the same in conversations with prospects.

Next, I think it's important for PMMs to remember that part of why we exist is to serve the needs of our sales teams. Sales enablement is one of the key pillars of the job. Bi-directional feedback loops are critical, and your sales team needs to be able to share how your messaging is resonating, where they are running into friction in customer conversations or sales cycles, and what they need to move prospects through buying cycles efficiently. If you're not testing/validating messaging with sellers before you roll it out at scale or sharing drafts of sales playbooks and enablement content with sales folks for feedback, how can you be certain that what you're producing will hit the mark?

I'll close here by saying that a good product marketer can be a sales team's secret weapon. At times, I've spent as much as 20% of my time as a PMM on the road actively participating in customer meetings, sales calls, and speaking at workshops and regional field events. Spending time in the field is also the best way to conduct primary research on the market, customer needs, and to test and validate messaging.

One great way to do this is to build an annual/quarterly/monthly plan on what you plan to deliver and get buy-in from sales leadership upfront on the deliverables. If you've got this alignment upfront, it becomes much easier to avoid side quests to support specific asks on an ad hoc basis. Engaging with reps during the planning cycle for feedback and input will also give them a voice early on in the process and build longer term followership for the plan.

Have regular sync. Make the information they have available to them a priority to you. Let them know that you need to learn from them in order to provide them the services they need - and demonstrate that need regularly and clearly. Make sure to bring new information to them as well whenever possible, so they can see your value beyond collateral creation. Collaborate with them on feature needs, prioritize requests together with him, and be as transparent as you can with them.