What hard skills are must haves vs nice to have, to be a Product Marketing leader?

I approach competenices in 2 areas: Functional and Core. Functional competenices are specific to the role, so for PMM these would include messaging, pricing, content etc. I actually did a session on these last year Core competenices are applicable across roles and are usually defined at the company level, like collaboation, managing ambiguity, decision making etc. For PMM, there are a handful of competenices I think are "foundational" in nature across both areas: Functional: Target Market & ...Read More

I think to be a great PMM leader, it's really important to have done the work. So to have owned massive product lauches, designed narratives, led sales trainings, etc. PMM can be an ambigous job so a leader that hasn't been there done that usually isn't succesful.  The hard skill then left to learn is management. Coaching, support, leadership, alignment. That's a hard skill that you can't overlook. Just becuase someone is a great PMM doesn't mean they will become a great PMM leader. It takes kno ...Read More

I’d say that a great product marketing leader needs to be great at the basics: research, positioning, messaging, enablement. They also need to be able to lead strategy for both marketing and product, clearly talk about their space, the competitive landscape and communicate with Executives and customers. A great product marketing leader is someone others follow. They are influencer and a thought leader. They push their teams, companies and products forward. They are exceptionally proactive and en ...Read More

Ah, I am assuming you mean PMM ‘hard skills’ like positioning, launches, enablement etc. and not soft skills/leadership skills like communication, goal setting, team building etc. There are three hard skills I expect every PMM leader to have Ability to answer three questions well "What, Why, How" for any product , for any audience (Positioning and messaging) Ability to train an internal team (ideally sales or CS) on that narrative. (Enablement) Ability to storytell the product to a customer (Dem ...Read More

I would highlight two Data Analysis and business acumen - be proficient enough to dive into the data and understand how the business performs in several contexts - marketing, product, sales, CS,...You depend on receiving others' conclusions and directions if you don't have this. As a leader, you need to get input and form your opinion with access to the raw information/data. Usually overlooked by some, PMMs can't be only in the "messaging" corner, doing pretty words. PMMs must understand the bus ...Read More

These are the skills I screen for in PMM interviews: Cross-functional teamwork: especially experience working with product and bringing together teams from various parts of the org (marketing, creative, sales, etc.) Go-to-market experience: demonstrates successful track record of executing successful launches and hitting goals Insights + strategy: user and competitive insights development. Familiarity with executing various qual + quant research methods.  Positioning: can develop clear and compe ...Read More