What's your best product marketing 30-60-90 day plan to make a big impact?

I suggest combining pieces from my answers to these questions. 

1. What's your framework to prioritizing needs/deliverables when you're the first Product Marketer at a company establishing the function?  
2. How do you think about your first 30/60/90 day goals when coming in as the Head of Product Marketing in a startup that didn't have product marketing before? 

Whenever you are starting a new role, it's critical to understand what's important to your manager and what the objectives are for your new organization so you can align yourself well to them. Every company has a different onboarding plan, and for PMMs I think it's critical to get the lay of the land through meet and greets with the people you'll work with to hear first hand what is on their mind, so you can start to understand how you will work together. I also work with my manager to define what I can deliver as soon as possible to show impact to the organization. 

This is not PMM specific, but there is an app that I use called the "The First 90 days" which I use to help me think through different elements of my new role. The information is useful enough that you can adapt it to a PMM role. 

First 100 days in a job quite important. The First 100 days are your opportunity to ask questions, make some bold moves, build trusted relationships, and set the tone. I would focus on the following things:

Build a solid understanding of your industry and target market: As a PMM, you need to bring unique perspectives to the table. PMMs are fortunate that they get to interact with customers, sales, analysts, product managers and gain insights about competitors. In the first 30-60 days, I will focus on understanding things like market opportunity, competitive differentiation, why people buy us? or why they don't buy us?, TAM, Your core market, your adjacent markets. Trust me, invest your time in understanding these things better and you will get payoff in the next 12-18 months. So, although this will never be part of your initial projects, make sure you save time to build your own point of view o the market. 

Think of your lack of knowledge for processes/tools more as a "fresh perspective" you can bring to the team: As a PMM leader, it is important that you invest in building scalable processes and you invest in building some foundational templates. So, while it's important to understand current processes/tools/SLAs, don't be afraid to propose new things that could save hours and hours of your team. People who are already following set processes tend to miss out on improvement opportunities. You can add tremendous value here. One of the best pieces of advice I got was from a PMM leader at Salesforce. When I was moving to a new company, she cautioned me to stay away from saying that the things are really broken (in her words - that the kitchen sink is dirty). Be mindful that the team has been using/working/following their own processes that may not be the best, but they got work done.

Focus on building relationships: You have a blank slate. Use it wisely. Build solid relationships with sales, product leaders, CS leaders, your team, your managers, extended marketing org. Try to listen before jumping to conclusions. It's difficult to do it during COVID time but casual coffees and happy hours can forge good relationships with your colleagues. 

Copied over from a similar question:

There are a lot of things you could do - and it's easy to get distracted as a product marketer.

First 30 days - Listen, listen, listen. Ask a TON of questions. Hold back from providing ideas unless you are really sure about it. Help others behind the scenes on ongoing projects with work you are good at - like writing or editing copy, preparing slides, etc. Help them look good and make allies. This is also a great way to learn the business. Talk to customers - jump in on existing calls and ask good questions. Get familiar with basic analytics and KPIs - need to know what needle to move and what drives it.

30-60 days - Make a success plan & set concrete expectations. Create a list of things you are going to focus on to make the most impact on the business. Separate quick wins from strategic work. Have a healthy debate with your boss and cross-functional leaders in sales, product, and customer success. Focus on your first big win that can be accomplished in under 30 days. Get an A in that even if you let everything else fail or push to the next 30 days. Figure out which fires you are going to let burn. Also, do most of your work in the open - it's often not a good idea to wait for the "big reveal". Surprises are not your friends. We tend to miss out on helpful feedback others can provide when we are missing context - this is critical during the early days.

60-90 days - Create momentum. Ask leadership for informal feedback - how you are doing and where you can tweak things. Once aligned, I would focus on the next big win while delivering smaller, tangible outcomes that line up with your success plan. The most important thing a product marketer should be doing through this journey is saying "no" enough. Smaller companies tend to see everything that is not about generating leads to be product marketing's job. While you could make that argument, it is important to say no to those seemingly urgent things and let those fires burn. Jumping on things because the CEO/CMO said so without considering the tradeoffs to your current priorities can be your biggest enemy.

I don't know about you, but I think there's so often a tendency to jump right in and start delivering. I encourage everyone that starts working on my team to spend their first 30 days learning! If you can work with your boss, try to buy yourself some time just to soak up knowledge and develop a point of view. The key things I try to get to know as much as possible when starting a new job are: the product (spend time using it, get certified if that's an option), customers/prospects (listen to Gong calls, shadow sales calls), the business (dig into your dashboards -- what's your average deal size, how long are sales cycles, which segments are performing well or aren't, what's your pricing...), and your colleagues (product managers, sales RVPs, CS, enablement, demand gen...). At the end of 30 days, share a SWOT with your manager, and identify a few quick wins for days 31-90. The quick wins should be tangible deliverables that have some visibility with cross-functional teams. Maybe there's an in-progress launch a colleague is leading that you can contribute to and present deliver part of the enablement. Or maybe there's an under-served area (a persona, a part of the product) where you can collaborate on with a few people to build out the storyline, materials, and training on. 

The first 90 days is such an exciting and sometimes overwhelming time in a person's career. 

The best way to set up for success in 90 days is as follows: 

Day 1 - 30: Learn, learn, learn
The first task I complete (and subsequently ask my newbies to complete) is an end-to-end product audit. The goal of this exercise is for newbies to learn the product and marketing flows inside out, from the perspective of one of our customers (ie. not looking up internal docs of what the flows are meant to be). While on this journey we want our newbies to use their fresh set of eyes to scrutinize the flows for anything which doesn’t make sense, was confusing, is broken or could be optimized. This audit is shared with the product and marketing teams and suggestions are factored into the roadmaps. This task celebrates the person's new and unique perspective on your product and helps them share their ideas with a wide range of stakeholders. 

For the remainder of the 30 days, become a complete sponge and absorb as much context as you possibly can before your workload starts to creep up on you. The key areas to explore to help build context are: 

• Identifying and meeting with all your key stakeholders for a listing tour
• Diving into key dashboards and reporting
• Reviewing the company and your teams' strategic focuses for the year
• Immersing yourself in your audience: reading reports, recorded interviews, 
• user testing, feedback channels, speaking with customers  
• Understanding the ways of operating and processes of the business 
• Reviewing all the sales enablement content, sales goals 
• Reviewing and understand the product roadmap and the current product functionality 
• Understanding the competitive landscape of your company and product offering
  
  

Days 30 - 60: Getting some quick wins

Once you have all this context you’ll be in a much better position to start executing your workload. Work with your manager to identify your key deliverables for the next 60 dates and a prioritization framework. Identify some quick win projects you can quickly execute to help build your confidence in the new role and build rapport with your colleagues. 

In many of the roles I’ve started, I’ve often been brought in to help wrangle a large GTM or group of stakeholders from chaos to clarity. If this is the case, evaluate all angles of the GTM from the perspective of each core stakeholder to help formulate an understanding of the project holistically. Spending a decent chunk of time understanding the blockers, challenges, and misalignment from your key stakeholders will help you build relationships with these folks and ultimately help you develop a GTM strategy that brings clarity to the situation. Helping to bring clarity to any project is a surefire way to have a big impact. 

Days 60 - 90: Executing

Based on your project list, this is the timeframe where you might start to see some of your bigger projects come to life and be executed. Now that you have a better understanding of the company and you’ve got some wins on the board, a great way to make an impact is to seek out new opportunities or problems to solve for your team. Be the person that sees opportunity in a problem and proposes a solution or experiment to try and resolve it.

Here is what has worked for me in the past. This pace below is relevant for smaller teams/orgs. You can pace this out for larger teams/orgs as needed.

30 DAYS

Goal: Establish credibility and define your goal and priorities

Key tasks:

• Build relationships with key stakeholders and understand expectations
• If you are a manager, get to know your team (obviously!)
• Understand the business - products, market opportunity, business metrics
• Define your draft year 1 goal, strategy and priorities and get sign-off from stakeholders 
• Deliver any critical (and time sensitive) initiatives to show an early win (if needed) 

Deliverables:

• Overall goal, strategy and priorities
• Any critical initiative (if needed)

60 DAYS

Goal: Start executing and define the plan

Key tasks:

• Continue building/strengthening relations with stakeholders, extend to co-workers
• Build the plan (initiatives/projects, timelines, metrics, resources) aligned to the priorities
• Understand the market - customer insights and competitive landscape
• Fill any urgent sales content gaps/needs
• Start executing on a few key initiatives aligned to your priorities

Deliverables:

• Customer and market observations
• Critical sales content gaps 
• PMM Plan aligned to priorities
• Put tracking mechanisms in place
• Make resource asks 

90 DAYS

Goal: Validate your strategy/plan and start ramping to your peak efficiency level

Key tasks:

• Based on everything you learned so far (and resources available), iterate on your goal, strategy, priorities and plan
• Get into full execution mode
• Start delivering early results/wins 

Deliverables:

• Any revisions for your strategy and plan 
• Completed initiatives and results

Pro tips for near term impact (depends on your focus)

If the near term focus is internal, then understand your stakeholders biggest pain or need and put a plan in motion to address that (assuming you agree with it of course). But ensure all the key stakeholders agree on the biggest pain to solve first. For example if the biggest problem is the sales enablement mechanisms, then work on that, and do market research and positioning later. 

If your internal stakeholders are not screaming, then you have the luxury to focus on the external market. And you can follow the classic PMM sequence of initiatives (as they tend to be sequential) - understand the business, gather insights (customer, market competitive), craft positioning and messaging, build sales content, drive/support sales enablement, and start evangelizing (social, AR, PR, marketing content). I also liked what Suyog shared during his AMA. 

Time for some radical transparency. 

I'm in the midst of this right now. Tomorrow is my 30-day milestone at Cisco Meraki. It's been an awesome first four weeks, and I'm really looking forward to what's next. (Shameless pitch - we're hiring, too!)

The size of the company and team adds a layer of complexity here, but in general, this is your best chance to really focus on learning your customer, product, and market here. It's hard to go back and do this again, especially in growth mode, so don't throw this away! Also, don't limit yourself to 90 days. I like framing this as a "First 100 Days." It sounds more presidential and breaks you out of the calendar a bit.

First 4 weeks: Product, Team and Market

- Learn everything you can about the product, what's in flight, and what competitors are doing overall

- Read research, talk to sales, get demo-ready if you can

- Exit mindset: "I understand what we do, and for whom, and how we're doing it today."

Mid-term 4-5 weeks: Customers and Message

- Now you're getting into it. Meet with as many customers and prospects as possible

- Build your point of view on the message, the gaps, and what needs fixing

- Data, data, data. Now that you have context on the business, the numbers will make more sense

- Exit mindset: "I believe I know what we should do next, and what the big problems are."

Closing 4 weeks: Start your Execution

- By now, you've got a sense of problems and plan

- Dig in and start doing. Pick priorities carefully, and line them up with near-term company objectives

- Ideally, have 1 early win under your belt, and 2-3 more on the horizon

- Exit mindset: "Follow me - here's where we're going to go, and how we're going to get there. 

Finally, don't lose sight of key wins you can deliver. These are great ways to contribute, build trust, and start working towards that bigger impact. Starting in Month 2, can you:

• Get a "big topic" on the blog
• Contribute an article to PR for publication at a third party
• Speak on a webinar or customer event
• Refresh the EBC/Exec deck
• Fix a broken or inefficient process
• Update an unloved or overlooked part of your site

There is a ramp plan that I like & have used many times, both for myself and members of the team. Like most things that are awesome, it takes the form of a very simple looking table.

3 Columns:

• People: Meet with stakeholders and the team I will be working with, understanding their needs & determine how to best work with each person
• Product: Learn the product, value prop, messaging, pitch and know how to do a killer demo
• Business: Understand the buyer journey, key metrics, market and all the "math camp" things

4 Rows:

• 30 Day: List of activities I will do in my first 30 days for each column
• 60 Day: List of activities I will do in my next 30 days (more advanced)
• 90 Day: List of activities I will do in my next 30 days (even more advanced)
• Deliverables: These are "contained projects" I will take ownership of each month, so that while I'm learning things, I'm also shipping things.

This plan is focused on successfully ramping during the first 90 days, its not focused on making a big impact during th first 90 days. This is because you are only the "newbie" for a limited period of time. The first 90 days are the time to ask all the questions, re-ask the same questions and have people spend hours explaining it all to you. This is not time that will come back, so its important to take advantage of it. TLDR: Don't short circuit your ramp, it will be the investment that will make the big impact possible. If your stakeholders see you asking insightful questions, ramping well on the business and mastering the product in the first 90 days, you're already winning.

Congrats on the new role! Very excited for you. I agree that it is good to have a 30-60-90 day plan and to make sure you can show progress and positive impact early yo make a good impression. That said, I would suggest you give yourself some time during the first 30 days to absorb as much as you can about the company, the interpersonal dynamics, the challenges and opportunities so you can then define and priorities in month 2 and deliver something of value in month 3 on the top 3 opportunities you identified in month 1 and worked on month 2 and 3.

It depends a little on what the situation is with PMM in the company you join (i.e. size and maturity, what the team is currently doing, what your role is going to be, whether you're an IC or a manager), but here's some things to think about:

30 days - this first month is all about getting the lay of the land and meeting everyone you'll be working with, building relationships and establishing your credibility! You won't get all of this done in the first 30 days but it's good to get started on these areas. 

I think it's really important to listen and understand in this early stage, rather than come in and start immediately changing things - every business is different, and what you've done before might not necessarily be right at your new place. So seek to learn and understand first, before making a ton of changes. 

• Build relationships: Meet with stakeholders across the business to understand how they work with PMM, what's working, what's not, and what they think is the highest priority. Ask lots of questions! This is also a great opportunity to start establishing how you'll work together. Identifying some small 'quick wins' can help establish your credibility and build relationships with those stakeholders.
• Get to know your team: If you're starting in a management role, start getting to know your team and building a relationship. Establish with each person how they like to work, what support they need, how they like to be given feedback etc, and set expectations about how you like to work also. Get up to speed on what they're working on, what they think is working in the team, and what could be improved. Also get to know them as people!
• Get to know the product: Understand what it does (actually use it!), what's good and bad, and understand the journey customers go on from prospect>customer 
• Start to learn the business strategy and goals: This will help you know what you're working towards, and then you can prioritise what to focus on. Understand from your manager what the expectations of your role and team are, and start to identify where you can have most impact.
• Get to know your customers and your market: understand your current position in the market, how your product is perceived, how you stack up against competitors, what your customers say about you and so on. Read everything, listen to calls, talk to your sales team, research your competitors etc

60 days - as you begin to understand the current state of things, start to think about what you want prioritise working on and build out a plan. I like to identify some small quick wins and some bigger meatier longer-term projects. If you're a manager, you'll likely be building out a roadmap of sorts on what you want the team to work on, what your goals will be, and then getting buy-in from your team and other stakeholders.

You'll also want to start having more in-depth discussions with your team members about their career growth and ambitions.

90 days - start executing on your plan! It really depends on what you've identified as the highest priority things to work on but hopefully you've got some quick wins under your belt and are starting on some of your meatier initiatives. 

I don't split it out into 30-60-90 day increments, but within that period, these are the things I'd suggest doing:

1. Get to know your product - get demo certified, the same as your AEs
2. Start building key relationships internally - have lots of 1:1s
3. Create battlecards for your top 2-3 competitors
4. Put your positioning on paper
5. Define a product launch process
6. Set up your internal communication channels
7. Perform a content audit and find the gaps that need filling
8. Gather the tools, templates, frameworks that will accelerate your success

Another late edition to this (added after my presentation) is to create your own PMM Charter. This is a foundational document that lays out the goals and objectives for your product daprtment. It helps you create guardrails for your team around the things that are in your wheelhouse, which will come in handy as people start firing projects at you.

I break up my 30-60-90 day plan into 4 phases of success for Product Marketing – it also includes focus for after your first 90 days, all outlined below.  

You may not get to everything in each phase, or you may move through things faster – I use this as a guide and checklist to keep myself accountable. Following this has helped me identify what wins I can crush every 30 days. You can tailor it to your needs at your company and the level you are entering at.

The key is to actively listen in interviews and cross-functional meetings and if anyone is working on something that syncs with your superpowers – speak up, ask questions about what they are doing and trying to achieve, schedule a 1:1 with them and volunteer to collaborate with them or take it off their plate. When you ask lots of questions and get to a point they don’t have an answer – that’s the signal to raise your hand and offer your help. Don’t go in guns blazing, it needs to be natural and collaborative. Show humbleness and mastery. PMMs are the strategic glue between product, marketing and your customers, we are not the main show and final end point.

I also treat all internal stakeholders as one of my personas – get to know their pain points, what brings them value and how to speak to them. Also, during my 1:1 interviews with them, I’ll also ask if they have worked with a PMM before. If yes, I asked what worked well, what could’ve been better and discuss how we can work together to show the value I bring. If they’ve never worked with a PMM, I share with them what value I can bring and discuss how we can collaborate together. Tips here on how to approach all your stakeholders.  

PMM Phases of Success

The first 3 phases include execution (your wins) and they ramp up. See here for examples on quick wins.  

30 DAYS: DISCOVERY

• Listen, Ask Questions
• 1:1 interviews with cross functional partners
• Customer Interviews, ICP, personas, map customer journey
• Product training, roadmap, launches to date
• Analyze existing content, strategy, data
• Research competitors

70% Discovery + 20% Strategy + 10% Execute

60 DAYS: STRATEGY

• Think, Create, Iterate
• Buy off on business plan: vision, headcount and OKRs, and PMM roadmap
• Create PMM playbooks:
• Messaging and positioning framework defined
• GTM and product launch strategy defined
• Pricing and packaging roadmap
• Competitive intelligence framework / Amplification

60% Strategy + 30% Execute + 10% Iterate

90 DAYS: EXECUTION

• Produce, Operationalize
• Roll out PMM playbooks and frameworks
• Have or identify how to get a team in place to fully execute
• Uplevel existing team
• Iterate and create efficiencies
• Cadence established for customer interviews, GTM meetings, PMM standups, Working sessions, 1:1

80% Execute + 10% Strategy + 10% Iterate

91+ DAYS: SCALE

• Refine, Scale, Expand
• Focus on refining and tailoring playbooks and frameworks
• Team in place is able to scale so we gain efficiencies
• Ready to expand scope
• Deep partnerships with cross-functional partners
• Uplevel areas of development

30% Scale + 50% Execute + 10% Strategy + 10% Iterate

Answering this one in the 'product roadmap AMA' because its super relevant in all situations. I prefer 30-60 days, because most SaaS companies, PMMs need to move faster and start demonstrating value a lot faster than 90 days.

30 days

- Find out your stakeholders and meet each one of them. Create a stakeholder map (can be a spreadsheet) that answers the questions: what are your expectations of me, what should I expect from you, what's been going well in the last 2-3 months, what needs improvement immediately?

- Setup recurring meetings with each of them - frequency is based on how critical they are 

- Befriend a sales engineer, customer success technologist, or product manager - someone who can show you your product, show you how to demo it, and where the pitfalls are. Get into the product and learn it fast

- Align with your manager on whats expected of you

60 days

- Figure out one thing you can actually deliver and own it. Dont wait to be asked. E.g. a new pitch deck, a new campaign, a product launch, or something that matters to a key stakeholder (e.g. product messaging, sales play help etc). This last one is important because in some companies, PMM is very much a stakeholder driven function (which is OK).  

This might seem overly reductive, but the key in the beginning is to show you understand how value is created, and show your ability to get in there and get something done.  

Now if you're a manager, there is a whole other step of getting to know your team, understanding their motivations, understanding where they stand with respect to their stakeholders and coming up with a plan to grow each of them. Its probably what you would do in the first 30 days as a manager.

This is a great question, and one I thought deeply about prior to starting at Mode. Thankfully, I had a nice long break between Intercom and Mode which I leveraged for lots of down time 😉 but also as a time to reflect on how I wanted to approach those first 90 days. First, I'd recommend reading 'The First 90 days' by Michael Watkins. There was a lot of great information in here that I definitely borrowed from. Here is a birds eye view of how I applied it: 

First 30 days - Listen!

This can often be the hardest part of starting any new role. The urge to jump in and start proving value is very strong but without context and an understanding of the company, teams, problems, customers etc - this can be a detrimental move. So my goal was to spend the first 30 days building as much context as I possibly could. I met with as many people as I could - with the goal of learning about their roles in the company, asking for as much historical context they could provide, and digging into what challenges they were currently faciing - and how they saw product marketing playing a role in tackling those challenges. The goal was not to commit to anything, it was simply to listen. I listened to customer and prospect calls. I read, and read, and read - blogs, competitor sites and blogs, industry repots, substacks, internal docs, etc. 

I joined right before a big product launch and a rebrand launch, so the urge to jump in was strong - and I did in fact pick up small pieces that I could help with, to start building the cross-functional muscle, but ultimately I measured the success of my first 30 days by how well I was able to start identifying gaps, and what priorities I was able to distill out of those gaps. 

It is very important to align with your manager at this stage (and the rest) on their expectations - to ensure there is alignment - and pull up together at the end of those first 30/60/90 days. 

First 60 days - Longer term goals / early wins

Building context will continue well into the 60 days, but at around the 30 day mark there is a transition into taking action. What small wins have been identified, that you can start taking action against? Smaller wins usually can be accomplished without large x-functional buy in and without heavy internal resourcing. What larger gaps have been identified and how to start building a plan or brief to tackle those gaps? This is the time that it is also important to start setting up your strategic alliance. Who are you x-functional peers - and what standing meetings should you be joining, and reoccuring 1:1s should you be having? This is critical as you start to build out your plans as you'll likely need buy in from these peers, so set up the right working structure ahead of any plan execution. Bring them into your early thinking and ASK FOR FEEDBACK! 

First 90 days - Rhthym and results

By the 60 day mark you should be moving into a rhthym of work. You've established your aliances, you've implemented team rituals, you've identified gaps and problems to be solved and translated those into a plan for the next 1-2 quarters that outlines: 

• top priorities
• goals (success metrics)
• specific milestons to achieving those goals
• what outputs are associated with each priority 
• alignment from manager and cross-functional counterparts 

This is the time to start promoting yourself and your team as well. Build and share your team charter. Share your priorities, and set up the right structure for sharing out results. ASK FOR FEEDBACK and iterate. 

There's a lot packed into each of these 30 day segments - but hopefully this provides a high-level overview of how to start a new role focused on optimizing for long-term success by setting up the right foundation first. Go slow to go fast. 🚀

I answered this question previously, so I won't go into too much detail here. However, I thought this question was interesting because it asked for the Director-level take as well.

A lot of what I do as a Director is not just think about myself as an individual PMM, but think about the function as a whole. As a Director (or, even taking away the title -- just as a leader/people manager), what I'm thinking about is -- how can I set my team up to achieve successful outcomes? So, in addition to understanding the business, customers, product, etc., I'm also thinking about:

• People- who is on the team, what are their strengths and areas for development? What motivates them?

• Processes - one person might run a launch one way, another might run a launch another way. How do we make the quality of our work consistently excellent, delivered predictably and on-time, without having to recreate the wheel every single time? How do I drive alignment on behalf of the team with other stakeholders? This helps remove confusion and frustration when engaging with x-func stakeholders. This also takes away a lot of stress and ensures we can confidently achieve the outcomes we want.

• Purpose - how do I set a vision for the team so that everybody is rowing in the same direction? How do I make sure that everybody knows what good looks like, is bought into that vision, and knows how to get there?

In terms of a 30-60-90, this will totally depend on the state of people management when you come in, but I'd ask to see if there's a team charter (if not, create one!), whether there are career paths, and diagnose the health of current systems for collaborating with stakeholders and prioritizing initiatives.

First 30 days:

• Focus is on getting to know the team (your peers, execs, and those who work for you) and the product -- and starting to build relationships, build trust and respect from others.

• Do a listening tour

  • Talk to sales, product, cs, finance (internal)

  • Talk to customers live and listen to gong calls (customers & prospects), read G2 reviews, customer NPS and product/feature feedback & requests

  • Talk to analysts (gartner, forrester, idc) and read their reports

First 60 Days

• After you've listened and learned (and of course will continue to learn), put together your reflections. What you've heard, what you see as challenges and opportunities, and what you are going to do to help the company, how you'll measure success (share this brief plan with your executive team -- 5-8 slides total).

• Pick 1 big meaty project that you are assigning your name to and can start to work on (this might be parenting with sales to rebuild the sales process, redefine your ICP, revamp messaging & the website, build a competitive program, build customer insights & advocacy programs etc).

• Identify a few quick wins you can take on and deliver in the next 1-2 months before your 90 days.

• Keep focused on the relationship building. It doesn't happen overnight. When thinking about your quick wins, think about how this impacts the business and which of your internal stakeholders care about it the most.

  • Be specific about the quick wins you choose. It should help you build respect and kudos from specific stakeholders and help the business. You want to start to understand what motivates each stakeholders and how you can influence them (give them something to build the relationship -- and then that opens the opportunity for you to ask something of them/their team)

First 90 Days

• Continue executing on the big project

• Showcase the results of the quick wins (if possible)

• Make sure you're building up your team - and getting them wins. Ensure they are creating value for the internal stakeholders they work with

• Imbed yourself in the business at this point - be the glue, be part of the conversations. You might still be listening in some but have valuable inputs to share for others.

Congratulations on your new role! At its core, the 30/60/90 plan is about setting yourself and your team up for sustainable success while building credibility through some quick wins — no matter what level you’re coming in at. However, the more senior you are, the more your manager and leaders will look to you to tell them what the opportunities are and what you’re going to prioritize. 

I shared a more detailed 30-60-90 day plan in one of the answers above. But generally, my top tips for success at the director level are to:

• Think strategically, but act quickly (esp at a smaller company): As a director, your role is to look ahead and drive long-term strategy, but in those first 90 days, showing some quick wins is crucial for building trust and credibility.

• Lead with collaboration: Building strong relationships across departments is key. Product marketing touches so many areas—Product, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success—so being an advocate and aligning everyone is critical.

• Stay customer-focused: Keep your ear close to the ground when it comes to customer needs and pain points. Being customer-centric will help you craft messaging that resonates and delivers real business value.

• Be proactive, not reactive (if possible): Some companies just operate reactively, and that’s going to take time to change. But don’t wait for problems to come to you—take the lead in identifying challenges and offering solutions. As a director, you’re expected to bring leadership and direction.

Years ago, a VP of product management made a joke while asking me about the status of my 30-60-90 Day Plan: "Let me guess, it's 30 days of studying, 30 days of planning, and 30 days of finally shipping something." 

He was right of course!

My 30/60/90 was a collection of activities in which I was listening and studying the company, another 30 days of planning with stakeholders, and another 30 of starting to ship projects. Not just one project, though! 😀

Using this measured approach probably creates the best foundation for success down the line. 

Challenge is, few leadership teams really want you to wait until Day 60 to start shipping. 

They've likely been waiting for you for months and could really use a hand in something only you could help with. Even if you just tap largely into instinct and past experiences to help out. 

This sense of urgency will grow even more, if you're the first product marketer in the company or the new PMM leader. (Joining a larger team? Well, waiting until Day 60 is easier to get by with in many orgs.)

So, in summary, keep your 30/60/90 Day Plan of studying, planning, and shipping. 

But consider shipping something earlier if you can. People will thank you. 

Happy to share my approach when I started at Lattice:

• I had as many 1:1s as possible, meeting the rest of the PMM team as well as folks in product, content marketing, brand, design, sale, support, solutions, support, and customer success. I probably had 30+ 1:1s in my first 30 days. Ask everyone what is going well and what is going not so well. After taking stock of what’s not going so well, come up with some solutions and present them to your manager.

• I went deep on relevant competitors. I did a bunch of 5-6 hour competitive audits on our competition, learning everything I could about their product, pricing, reviews, segmentation, and footprint. I packaged all of these reports up into a summary report.

• I started talking to customers. Get smart about your ideal customer profile so you can start creating the right positioning, messaging, and GTM strategy together.

First 30 days - 

Meet with key staholders across the company - ensure excitement for the mission and what you're about to take on. Ask key questions about their responsibilities, what they are working on, and describe a bit on how you plan on working together with them. Product marketing is all about relationship building, in fact its key to be succesful. Ensure you're speaking with and understanding the pain points of each stakeholder you speak with, and make sure you listen.

Listen in on customer calls and recordings - Its imperative you start familiarizing yourself with the products and customers alike. My best approach is to get a complete recording of customer conversations that your sales team has, and start jotting down pain points you hear and truly understand how the product is being positioned, this will help you connect the dots down the road. 

Acquire quick wins to show your chops - Quick wins are always nice. What is the biggest low hanging fruit you can take on in order to show your chops? Typically I like to work with the sales team early on, identify what they need, and build it. This helps establish relatioships with the team early on, and also helps with familiarizing yourself with the company. 

60 - 90 Days: 

Keep the 30 day momentum going. Continue to listen to calls, fill gaps, and familiarize yourself with the company. I would add a few more to the list now that you further understand whats happening: 

Learn the product - Now that you understand whats happening across the company to a degree, make sure you get a sales engineer to show you details of the product.

Talk to customers - get on a customer call and start surveying. Its important you hear first hand what your customers want and need. 

Take Ownership - WIth whatever you're assigned to do, ensure you are taking ownership and leading the charge on what you're given. 

Here is what mine looked like roughly when I started about 9 months ago:

30 days:

1. Product onboarding and learning
2. Meet key people in PM, Sales, Marketing
3. Get introduced to tools used in the org
4. Understand the current messaging and positioning of the product(s) 
5. Listen for key problems that we solve and internalise the personas and brand-level messaging

60 days:

1. Embed yourself in a customer conversation
2. Ride shotgun on monthly product updates
3. Study competitors and their market positioning
4. Review the state of sales enablement and plan for updates
5. Plan messaging updates if and as necessary

90 days:

1. Form opinions on current strategy and present an updated GTM back to the stakeholders
2. Create a GTM plan for any upcoming product changes in your portfolio

This was how it went down for me and I think it covered off almost important bits of getting introduced to a new product, new target personas, and a new market. 

30 days - Learn the market and competitive landscape. Visit as many customers and non-customers as possible. Read every Win/Loss report you can get your hands on. Talk to as many sales reps as possible. Use the Steve Jobs line of questioning: "What's working here?" "What's not working here?" Warning: don't assume you're the smartest person in the room. Network and leverage as many brains in the organization as you can. 

60 days - Formulate a GTM strategy. Be prepared for a lot of "We don't do it that way here". Be persistent and focused. Use facts to inform your decisions not fantasies. 

90 days - Execute, execute, execute. 

I like to think about goals when talking about plans. You want clarity in your priorities, particularly because it’s difficult to know what to say yes and no to when you’re new. (Your manager should help with this as well.)

30 Days

• Get to know who your closest colleagues are. Bonus: learn how they operate and how best to work with them.

• Get a feel for the quarterly rhythm of your company. Is this a reggae-beat company with a regular clockwork of quarterly business reviews, product releases, and all-hands meetings, or are you playing free jazz and improvising along the way? Bonus: start adding your riffs on what the rhythm should be.

• Internalize what your company’s biggest goals are and create your own goals that align. Bonus: what are marketing and product goals, and how can you contribute to achieving them?

• Meet with as many people at your new company as possible, act like a Hoover, and vacuum up as much information as possible. Start creating a mental model of where the traditional functions of a company sit, like different marketing and product functions.

• Start deep diving into the product. You want to be able to do a credible demo at the end of 90 days.

60 Days

• You should be meeting with customers regularly at the end of 60 days. At a minimum, this could be reviewing Gong calls to understand what customers are asking about and responding to. Ideally, it is with live customers and prospects so you can internalize their requirements and the language they use.

• You should be in most regular meetings and starting to contribute.

• You should be at an intermediate level on your product. What’s your elevator pitch? How does the pricing work? What does the marketing and sales funnel look like, and where are the gaps? Start asking deeper “why” questions.

• You should have a plan for what you will accomplish for the rest of the quarter. Are there product or feature launches that you can take over? Get into the weeds and drive something on your own. Now is the time to get your hands dirty and get something done.

90 Days

• You should know your product well at the end of 90 days. This could include giving a sales pitch to a prospect plus a short demo. (You've been practicing, right?)

• You should have a plan for your next 3-6 months. For example, what’s coming down the pike from the product team, and what do you need to do to prepare? What will marketing need to hit their goals, and is that in your plan?

• What’s the one major goal you need to accomplish over the next 3 months to be successful? Do your colleagues know and agree on what this is?

Even with all of this in mind, please don’t feel like you’ll have it all covered at the end of 90 days. Use your newbie status to continually uncover internal insights and approach problems with a beginner’s mindset. The Curse of Knowledge is real; your new company should and will appreciate asking fundamental questions about why they do things. If the answer is just because they’ve always done it that, that’s a huge opportunity to ensure it’s the right or best way.

One thing I'd add that's very tactical to the great stuff that David has already laid out: Find your allies. 

Talk to everyone within the org that you can and assemble a shortlist of people who have good understandings of things like the customers, the tech etc...

Befriend a good sales rep, the best sales reps in complex sales cycles are often product marketers in disguise. If they've been there for a bit they have a ton of knowledge that has never ever been documented or made sense of and they can accelerate your understanding immensely. 

Before the demands of others overwhelm you, you need to prepare yourself to be the business and market liaison to the product team. Your role as a product manager or product owner is to make the best business decisions for the product, working from the best available information. 

Refresh your domain expertise

If you’ve been in your industry for years, you probably have strong domain expertise but you may not be up-to-date on the latest information. 

Review the corporate pitch. Perhaps the fastest way to get up to speed on your company and its role in the industry is to review the product and corporate slide decks. Whether your company is a bellwether in the industry or on the periphery, what’s been said in the past will help you understand how your company and its products are perceived, at least from the perspective of your new organization. 

Catch up on the latest blogs and articles. Take time to review the latest thinking in your industry. And even if you’ve been in the domain for years, it’s always helpful to take a new look from your new perspective as a product leader. Reports from industry analysts may reveal new industry trends, and perhaps show how your company and products are influencing them. 

Fill out your technical expertise

You may have some familiarity with the product from your past research. Now it’s time to get into the raw details. 

Know your new product. What documentation exists for your product? You can probably find some customer documentation and help screens, release notes, product plans, sales and conference presentations, white papers and ebooks, and sales enablement tools. Review them all. Learn the key capabilities, particularly those that are competitive differentiators. 

Review the product roadmap. And where is the product headed? Has anyone developed a roadmap for the next few releases? How does what you’re seeing align with what you know about the domain and industry? 

Understand the architectural themes and challenges. Talk to the developers about the technical challenges for the product. What percentage of development effort is spent on architecture and defects versus new functionality? And while you’re at it, interview the developers about their perspective on your role in moving the product forward. 

Update your market expertise

You likely have some market expertise but it never hurts to give yourself a refresh. 

Sit in on some customer support calls. Want to know what’s going on with your product in the field? Ask customer support. They know about technical problems with the product as well as customer implementation problems. Sit in on some support calls and listen to customers directly. 

Go on some sales calls. It’s fascinating to examine the contrast between the product as perceived by the product team and by the people in the field. When you’re on a customer visit with your sales team, you’ll hear how the product is being sold—right or wrong. You’ll also hear unfiltered customers’ problems in their own voices. Listen to the language they use; listen to the problems they’re trying to solve. You’ll get plenty of ideas for how to improve the selling and promotion of your products. And you’ll get to know some sales people in a more social setting; they’ll be your contacts in the future when you need advice on sales enablement and product improvements. 

Do some installation/implementation visits. For enterprise products, implementation is where all your sales and marketing promises meet the real world. Watch (or help) the implementation teams install the product; sit in on any customer training; examine closely the areas where the product must be configured or customized to work in the customer environment. You’ll definitely get some great ideas on improving the product. 

Eventually, you’ll want to start visiting customers without a selling or support objective but get these initial customer touchpoints under your belt first. 

Leverage your process expertise

Now that you have a strong understanding of the technology, industry, and domain, take a look at your internal product processes. What methods are used in your organization? Where are the company templates stored? And which of your favorite processes apply to your new situation? 

Evaluate existing processes and systems. If you’re stepping into an existing job, you’ll likely find a set of methods that are already in place, formally or not. If you’re part of a new product management team, you’ll want to be a driver in defining your product processes. 

What artifacts are necessary? What minimal set ensures success? Is your organization clear on what constitutes a requirement and what’s actually a specification? Which positioning technique is used, if any? 

Start your own product playbook. Take all your methods and the company’s methods and put together a set of living documents. You’ll want your product plan and financials, buyer and user profiles, positioning, requirements, maybe a price list or pricing model, and any other documents that you reference often. Print them or store them in your dropbox so you’ll have them handy. 

What should product managers do in their first days?

Look for high-impact deliverables that don’t require much up-front effort. Train the sales engineers and product implementation team. Develop informal product champions. Refresh or refine your product positioning, taglines, and blurbs so you can do “copy-and-paste marketing.” 

Then focus on the methods to make sure you have a minimal set of effective processes that ensure product success. 

This definitely varies on the type of role, stage of company, and most pressing needs of the organization. In general, here is my 30/60/90 day plan:

First 30 days:

1. Build relationships

2. Understand needs

3. Keep the lights on 

First 60 days:

1. Make a plan

2. Develop/enhance processes

3. Define metrics/OKRs

First 90 days

1. Prove you can deliver on plan

2. Align with leadership that you are meeting expectations

3. Look ahead for the next 6 months - what should your big bet be?

I have a 100 day discovery questionnaire to help level set and make sure I understand the context and short-term and long-term expectations.

100 day discovery questions

I came across these assessment questions early on in my career and this has helped me in understanding the company dynamics and landscape. This is a good litmus test to understand cross-functional alignment across key stakeholders.

100 day discovery: Product marketing assessment

Read more

https://divmanickam.substack.com/p/customer-differentiation-for-messaging