What stakeholders do you typically involve in messaging?

Crafting effective messaging requires input and alignment from various stakeholders. Here's who I typically involve:

• Customers: Ultimately, our customers are the most important stakeholders. Their feedback is invaluable in ensuring our messaging resonates and addresses their needs. I actively seek opportunities to engage with customers through events, focus groups, surveys, and direct conversations. I also attend a lot of events or even our sales meetings to test messaging out.

• Sales Teams: Our sales teams are on the front lines, interacting with customers daily. They have firsthand knowledge of customer pain points, objections, and what resonates most effectively. I collaborate closely with sales to gather their insights, test messaging, and ensure it equips them for success. They are also the first to tell you why the messaging won't work - they have heard a lot of feedback or pushback from customers. They can also give you insight to what other competitive products they might be using too and the gaps they might have.

• Product Leadership: Alignment with product leadership is crucial to ensure messaging accurately reflects the product vision, roadmap, and value proposition. I work closely with product managers and executives to gain their input and ensure a cohesive narrative. We also spend a lot of time with the product leader who built the product/feature since they also get feedback from customers as well.

Our stakeholders typically involve the big 3 which include Sales, Product and Marketing. Each product PMM works with their counterpart Product Manager to learn about the latest product developments, what's coming ahead and how it's differentiated from the competitor landscape. Our sales folks are involved for stress testing what this looks and feels like in real-world conversations, as well as getting insight into what is resonating with prospects -- we're looking for the 'ah-ha' moment when it clicks for them. And last but not least, we're plugging into our overall market narrative and vision of our brand at the highest level from the marketing team to ensure consistency and keeping that drumbeat going in a crowded market landscape.

Messaging development is highly cross-functional—while product marketing is the driver, success depends on strategic input, customer insights, validation, and cross-team adoption from stakeholders. Bringing in the right stakeholders from the start ensures that messaging isn’t just well-crafted—it’s well-adopted. The right stakeholders to involve depend on the altitude of the message (i.e portfolio vs product level), audience, and go-to-market motion, but typically it includes:

• Product leadership to ensure messaging aligns with the product’s capabilities and roadmap and highlights differentiation.

• Sales leadership to capture insights into customer/prospect needs and pain points, objections, and what resonates in the field. Solution engineers/consultants provide added depth of insight into customer needs and use cases.

• Customer success and support have direct access to customers and are a wealth of knowledge into customer pain points and common friction points post-sale. They also shed light on the degree to which your product is delivering on its promises.

• Marketing teams to highlight what’s performing well in the market and then ensure messaging consistency across channels.

• Execs depending on the scale of the initiative will be the approver and will ultimately activate the story externally.

• Analysts for the voice of the market, buyer needs, and validation.

One of the biggest mistakes in messaging development is designing it by committee. Remember, the key to success is ensuring the customer remains at the center of the messaging—not internal opinions. While feedback is critical, the role of product marketing is to synthesize—not simply aggregate—inputs around what matters to customers and iterate to make the messaging clear, concise, compelling, and effective.

To drive alignment while avoiding consensus-driven messaging, the key isn’t just bringing these stakeholders into the process but also structuring their involvement effectively. Begin with a clear project plan that sets project stages, timelines, expectations on roles and responsibilities across stages upfront. I often use a DACI framework to make it clear product marketing is the Driver, the marketing leader (or other exec) is the Approver, key stakeholders (product, sales, customer support, and marketing) are Contributors, and others marketing functions are Informed. 

Then break down messaging development in phases: first, conducting discovery through research, competitive analysis, and internal stakeholder interviews. The discovery process is key for building early buy-in, making it easier to align teams down the line. Then, limit drafting and iterating with a small core team before socializing the messaging more broadly with the wider set of stakeholders through structured reviews. Finally, let stakeholders know upfront how the messaging framework is intended to be used and what’s needed from them to effectively activate it across the organization. Their role doesn’t end with providing input and feedback. This also help with buy-in and to motivate them to be invested throughout the process.