How should PMMs work in collaboration with product managers and the customer success team on product launches?

PMs are like your close family. There are lots of heightened emotions throughout a launch—good and bad. It’s a partnership that must stay rigid because they truly are your partner in crime. Some of the best PMs I’ve worked with have challenged me and honestly, I value that. Making sure that you hear everyone’s perspectives is the only way to be sure that you’re covering all of your bases in a launch. I encourage PMMs and PMs to push each other in the right ways for this exact reason. You’ll ALWAYS come out stronger on the other side. Also, it’s quite rewarding when the customer success team is then able to help you understand how impactful your work is, as well as the story behind it. I love contributing to an impactful storyline that truly influences people to buy our products, and that type of influence isn’t created by just one person—constructive criticism in collaboration is vital.

Wow, great question! Given these departments are measured on very different dimensions, it's important to keep their North Stars in mind and collaborate in a way that supports individual departmental goals. Let's start with collaborating with product. I often think about our orgs as a mouthpiece (PMM) and earpiece (Product). To be good amplifers of product's "market listening", we need to connect early and often throughout the product development lifecycle. To do this, I suggest establishing milestones throughout the development process to collect, validate, and crystallize market positioning and GTM planning as you prep for general availability (launch day). The more your lean in, the more aligned your orgs will be. For customer success, it's also critical to include them throughout the product development stages - but in a different way. I often test messaging with customer success to get their reactions, or ask which customers could benefit from a particular feature to inform proactive beta groups or testimonial gathering. The biggest area of impact you can have with customer success is helping them to close the loop with customers. If you know that product is releasing a feature that has been heavily requested, or solves a big market pain point - make your customer success team the hero. Let them share the message with those customers, delivering on your promise of being pain killer to the customers' area of need. 

• Great question. I’d zoom out and look at this in the context of how PMM should collaborate across the broader cross-functional (XF) team involved in GTM—Product, Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing.

• Each stakeholder plays a critical role in shaping a product launch, contributing insights that inform messaging, positioning, and GTM strategy. While each team views the launch from a different angle, their inputs help refine the overall approach. For example:

  • Sales understands how customers talk about their JTBD and who else they’re evaluating.

  • Customer Success identifies recurring customer questions that should be proactively addressed.

  • Marketing can help provide signal on how product messaging is landing across different channels, and what messages are performing better vs. not performing better

• PMMs can add significant value by establishing strong feedback loops across these teams. Unanticipated questions will inevitably arise post-launch—some may shape future product iterations, while others inform tactical adjustments like new FAQs or sales enablement content.

• By synthesizing insights from all stakeholders and turning them into actionable next steps, PMM ensures a more cohesive and optimized GTM strategy.

Be in the driver's seat. Product marketing managers are the CMO of the product. Launching a product is a campaign ("series of connected activities designed to bring about an accelerated result"). When you think about launch that way it changes your entire perspective. You define launch goals, put metrics in place, develop a campaign strategy, build campaign elements, identify/close readiness gaps, etc. 

Be large and in charge. Take the reigns. Go big or go hom. [Other trite corporate-speak saying goes here]