What are the assets that product marketing owns? And the best way to vet the assets with key stakeholders?

This is a great question and very much depends on the functions that exist in your company. A PMM should be prepared to create any asset that a marketing or sales department might require, particularly for smaller companies with limited marketing resources. Still, there are a few assets that are squarely PMM’s responsibility:

• Positioning documentation

• Demo script

• First call sales deck

• Sales 1-pager

• Competitor battle cards

The positioning doc is the foundation for everything that a PMM does. It is the boiled-down story of your product or company messaging to the market. Without one, everyone in the company will create their version of the product story, which leads to market confusion.

PMM is also responsible for how to demo the product. If the PMM can’t demo the product, it’s unlikely they know it well enough to create the correct positioning.

Vetting positioning requires gathering feedback and input from your stakeholders while driving the process forward. There are two suggestions for this: 1) timebox the creation of positioning with a sprint model. For example, say you will run a two-week sprint to create or update your positioning. This gives your stakeholders a deadline to work against. 2) Create a draft for your stakeholders to react to. It is unlikely that your stakeholders will know how to create positioning on their own, so you will need to guide them with a draft.

The best way to vet your sales assets is to use them yourself in front of customers. Presenting your materials and getting first-hand customer reactions will give you the evidence and data to 1) create the best assets possible and 2) give your stakeholders confidence that your assets are right.

Once you have some data from customer interactions, you should present your sales assets with your stakeholders in a few live meetings, share your findings and data, and get their feedback.

I generally think of PMM owning areas of responsibilities, a subset of which is key assets. I point this out because assets are tactical elements and may change depending on need. 

That being said, generally, I've seen PMM owning the following assets:

1. First Call Deck

2. Demos and Demo Scripts

3. Packaging Decks/Spreadsheets

4. Competitive Analysis Cheat Sheets/Battlecards

5. One-Pagers

6. Whitepapers

7. Product Videos

8. Feature Decks

9. Pricing Calculator

10. All Product Page Content on Website

There is no single best way to vet assets with stakeholders, but here is one thing I generally keep in mind: 

I try to conduct general stakeholder interviews where they can express any frustrations or issues with an existing asset or process before putting pen to paper. 

Often the folks who feel more strongly about a certain asset will end up objecting if they perceive you've created what seems like a final product without getting their inputs - even if your intent is to create a v1 before getting feedback. 

As a general principle, I have evolved my approach to spending much more time on discovery than in the development of an asset. 

Of course, the approach will change depending on personalities. Some stakeholders take precedence over others. One has to adapt completely to a CEO's style, so if they prefer things to be more fully baked, then that's the way to approach it.