What are the top three skills you would focus on for development as a PMM?

Since we're focusing on market research in this AMA, here are the three skills related to that topic that I believe will be most valuable for PMMs right now: 1. Strategic Collaboration with AI The ability to leverage AI as both an analytical tool and a strategic thought partner is becoming essential. This goes beyond using AI to process data — it's about engaging with AI to challenge assumptions, explore alternative research approaches, and identify insights you might miss.  2. Critical Thinking ...Read More

I'm going to cheat a bit on my answer to this great question. Let me break this down into two parts that I've found crucial for PMM success - foundational capabilities and core skills that power them. First, the three essential PMM capabilities: Positioning, messaging, and strategic narrative development: This is where you shape how your product lives in the market and in customers' minds. It's both art and science. It requires deep understanding of your market and competitive landscape, your cu ...Read More

As I’ve grown in my career, I’ve realized that the hardest, and most important skill in product marketing is truly understanding market context and using that to shape positioning. It’s easy to state the obvious about your market. The real challenge is seeing what others missed—framing the problem in a way that unlocks the right strategy. Take Yahoo in its early days. It framed its market as competing with traditional media companies. But in hindsight, the real market context was the consumeriza ...Read More

There are four areas of competencies as a PMM / PMM leader. It is usually good to focus on one of these as your unique "strength" and keep the rest going so that you are functional. As you advance into a management position, you can hire those strong in areas where you're weak. Strategic Thinking - the ability to break down complex problems into achievable questions / topics. The ability to identify opportunities that result in significant growth for the company, and well-structured communicatio ...Read More

Product Positioning - This is the most important skill you can possess/understand as a PMM. It drives everything else, and nothing else works when this is wrong. Messaging Development & Storytelling - I don't think you can be a great PMM without being a good storyteller. You need to learn a repeatable process for arriving at good messaging, and understand basic storytelling strategies/skills in order to create results as a PMM. This skill can carry you into any area of Marketing. Go-to-marke ...Read More

Having spent the last several years in enterprise AI product marketing, I think about this question a lot. The PMM role is shifting fast, and the skills that mattered five years ago are table stakes now. Here are the three I would double down on today: 1. Technical fluency without becoming an engineer. In enterprise AI and B2B SaaS, buyers are increasingly technical. They can smell surface-level positioning from a mile away. You do not need to write code, but you need to understand architectures ...Read More