How do you get alignment across the org in the story and messaging?

If your executives and cross-functional stakeholders can see their fingerprints on the narrative and messaging as it develops, they will be more likely to endorse and adopt your final product.

The knock on Marketing, PMM or otherwise, is that they are in a silo and disconnected from the realities of the rest of the business.  Product feels you don’t understand “product truth,” Sales feels the messaging is unrealistic to use with customers, and the C-Suite feels it’s not in touch with what they hear from Investors and Analysts. They feel like PMM writes what they think sounds good and are frustrated when the org doesn't use their messaging.

I'm sure every PMM’s eyes just rolled into the back of their heads as they read this! That's because every PMM knows their messaging is typically based on extensive discussion with users, the spec that the Product themselves wrote, and exhaustive market research.

PMMs get a lot of feedback about "messaging" because it's a foundational aspect of marketing and feels approachable to a non-marketer. Everyone has written a term paper and seen a commercial, so they feel like they know what is/isn't effective messaging, no matter what job function or training they have or don't have.

I don't have to convince this audience that messaging is a technical skill or that "messaging" is a catch-all term used by laypeople who actually have issues with other written words, like positioning, copy, or sales enablement. But as the saying goes, "Everyone's a marketer. " If you are a PMM who wants to land messaging, you'll have to navigate this kind of feedback from executives, your product team, and cross-functional partners like sales and CS.

So, how do you overcome the feedback? You don't overcome it; you incorporate it! Your executive team, product team, and go-to-market teams have feedback that's just as valuable as customer interviews and market research. Talking with them is a necessary step of the process, and it will yield insights that improve your messaging.

This doesn't mean you should accept every suggestion they make; that's a recipe for lousy messaging, full stop. What it does mean is that you should include them in the process, get their feedback on drafts, and give them credit for ideas that inform the final product (even if they were something you came up with or uncovered through your research). Feature their quote in your messaging guide, shout them out in the enablement kick-off, or tag them in a comment to show them you used their idea. These things are small, but they will go a long way.

At the end of the day, executives, product managers, and salespeople are humans with human egos. They like to be included and feel like they are contributing to the company's success. Once they feel like they are a part of your messaging, they'll stop detracting and start advocating.