When your sales team are already having daily 1on1 conversations with clients, what is the best approach in engaging with these clients for market research without being interruptive?

If your sales reps are already having daily conversations, you’re in luck! It means they aren’t short on time with their customers and giving you 20-30 minutes shouldn't be a big deal.  You might have the best chance positioning the market research ask as something that can strengthen the relationship with the customer. If they’re already taking the time to meet with your company often, they likely are heavy users of your product and would value the opportunity to provide input into your strateg ...Read More

I am hoping that some of my other answers have made this clear, but in case they haven't - market research, just like everything else in Product Marketing, is a team sport. The more you can show the value of this kind of research (i.e. how it will help sales win more deals), the easier it will be to recruit sales to join that team. From there, you can find a process or cadence that works for everyone to ensure that you are getting the engagement you need without stepping on any toes. But there i ...Read More

It's always a balancing act, isn't it? I've also had trouble overburdening customers in the past. Here are some things that have worked for me: Get market research into regular convos: If your sales and customer success teams are having daily conversations with clients, arm them with questions so they can naturally get it into their existing convos. e.g. they can ask clients about their experiences with competitors or what additional features they'd find valuable. Frame your ask to appeal to the ...Read More

Join the conversation. As a PMM, you should have a seat at the table in any customer conversation. You bring a different perspective to the discussion and can often ask different questions than your account exec can.  One thing that's important is to separate these customer conversations from "market research." Due to their in-depth nature, sales and customer conversations are more qualitative than quantitative. Listen, ask questions, understand their existing conditions and frustrations, and le ...Read More

If your company uses a tool like Gong.io that is the most non-intrusive way to glean insights from sales conversations. It's a great tool that lets you search key topics in an easy way.  If Gong isn't an option to you, then work through your sales team. Be intentional about which customers you’d like to speak to and be clear about why you want to speak to them. Always get permission from your sellers to reach out to their customers. Depending on the stage of the deal cycle the sellers may or may ...Read More

Honestly, with the rise of tools like Gong you don't even need to necessarily ask your reps to join in on customer calls. If there are specific questions you want to ask you can always ask your rep to weave it into the call, or ask your AM or CS rep to schedule a call with an existing customer to aid with the market research. As long as customer calls are recorded in Gong you can always use that as a vehicle to go back and listen (and take advantage of some of the cool analytical features that G ...Read More

Good question. As with everything, a lot of the answer is it depends. If you have a customer marketing team, I hope they're doing some level of "air traffic control" and have a sense of which customers are being reached out to with specific asks (i.e. beta requests, market research, company speaking opportunity, etc). If not, I'd work with Sales and CS to ensure you're talking to the right customers, and on the right cadence. Come-up with a list of customers you're going to reach out to and coll ...Read More

I love this question, partly because it allows me to address what I consider to be one of the great misconceptions of product marketing-related research. In my opinion, and experience, your engagements need not be with existing customers and, in fact, sometimes it's better if they're not. When I was consulting, rarely would I talk to my clients' actual customers when helping them build personas. Why? Two reasons: 1. The questions I had applied equally to customers/non-customers. 2. No existing b ...Read More