What are product marketing specific questions to ask on customer calls?

Three key questions that I would be trying to answer are: What is the core kernel of value of this product/feature? What problem is it and -- equally if not more important -- isn't it solving? For which customers? While these are important questions to answer, they are not questions you'd necessarily ask explicitly. For question 1, many customers won't be able to answer that straight up -- instead you'll glean it from how they answer a lot of the questions from PM and Design. Where there are gap ...Read More

First and foremost, it's fantastic that you've taken the initiative and made this a priority! Being in front of customers has been the single most important thing I've seen to drive a true understanding of our customers, and, perhaps even more important the challenges sales reps face day to day and how to build a better customer centric product with the right message to follow. In my past experiences, product marketing stated their purpose for being there in the introductions; I'm here to listen ...Read More

+1 to Gregg's answer. Not enough people do this.  I think about this in terms of what are you listening for and how will you talk about it afterwards. Product management: Do we need to change the way we do something? Product design: Should it look or flow differently? Product marketing: Why does the customer care? How will it save them time, money, toil, etc. What words do customers use to describe their pain? Is the customer pain an outlier or mainstream? How will they justify an investment to ...Read More

It is critical to include Product Marketing in customer calls to understand customers' pain points, challenges, and the benefits they'd gain if they can remove their pain points. Product Marketing can then identify buyer/user personas, and business needs/challenges/use cases that span across customers across verticals, which can help finetune messaging, positioning, and sales enablement of the product while Product and Product Design teams can get feedback on the specific product features, capab ...Read More