Where can PMM provide the most lift in the enterprise sales motion?

PMM can influence several touchpoints across the enterprise sales motion. PMM’s biggest impact will likely vary widely depending on the business stage. Identifying and anticipating the needs of each person in the buying group and building appropriate content and messaging and aligning that to the sales process will be key. Adding value through the enterprise sales cycle can be done in a number of different ways including managing standardized Request for Proposal (RFP) responses, building a part ...Read More

In enterprise sales motions, the biggest loss and delay reason is often inaction. That means PMM’s greatest value is helping customers make a decision across the buying journey, whether they engage through sales, partners, or self-serve channels. The challenge is helping a buying committee agree there is a real problem, realize it is critical enough to fix now, see why your approach is different, and feel confident enough to act. The best PMM work makes the sales motion easier to run. It gives r ...Read More

Wherever sales is losing deals they should be winning. That’s the honest answer. If you trace back lost deals you will find same patterns. The message didn’t land, wrong proof points, couldn’t counter the competitor. Those are all PMM problem to solve. The best thing PMM can do is get close enough to the sales motion to see where the friction is. Not just launch assets into a void and hope they get used. Actually, sit in on deals, review losses, talk to SEs. Then build the things that directly a ...Read More

Every enterprise sales rep wants to sell more, faster. The most valuable PMMs I’ve worked with are experts on their product, market, customers, and competition. Individual sales reps don’t have time to track these things at the level of detail PMMs do, but require smart talking points to be successful. On top of expertise, PMMs bring a macro view and can surface best practices from across the sales org. Ideally, you’re joining calls, talking to reps in different regions and segments, and even pa ...Read More

PMMs are the most important when it comes to being able to simplify what the product has built and clearly describe what it does and why it’s important. Sales teams are constantly being bombarded with new features that product teams have built, you can’t feed every single feature separately for sales teams to sell.  PMM should be able to help package up these new features (or existing ones) into a narrative to better help sales go to market with them. We did this at Dropbox by leveraging Sales P ...Read More

Enterprise PMMs can create the most lift by having “Art of the possible” conversations with Enterprise customers, providing custom deal support, and up-leveling messaging for the enterprise (without sacrificing human language and creativity!) ·  Roadmap Presentations:   Enterprise companies make long term purchases and don’t like change, for that reason they don’t just want to buy the product today, they are buying the company, the team and their vision.  The biggest value a PMM can deliver to E ...Read More

Stepping back, let's differentiate the enterprise sales motion from the product-led growth motion: Smaller companies have less employees and, therefore, can often easily buy from you with a credit card. Some SDR in a sales dept. can purchase your self-serve plans with their boss' credit card. Some recruiter coordinator can do the same with their own and maybe expense it. In these situations, it's often less about the PMM trying to train or support the sales team in hand-holding a customer to ent ...Read More

First, positioning, messaging, and storytelling at the core. This is the foundation of everything. If your sales team can't clearly articulate why you, why now, and why not the other guys, nothing else matters. A great sales pitch comes from great positioning work. Thats PMM's job. Second, competitive intel. Enterprise deals almost always have a competitor in the mix. Your sales team needs to know how to handle that in the room and not a 40 page battlecard they'll never read, but sharp talk trac ...Read More

Liz, Jeff, Sarah, and Jeremy have covered the core pillars well. The angle I'd add is what changes when your product involves AI, and the buyer has AI skepticism baked into their procurement cycle. At Tableau and later Salesforce, the enterprise sale was about ROI clarity and champion development. The work was hard but the mental model was stable. At UiPath, and now broadly across the AI space, I've seen a new wrinkle: enterprise buyers are simultaneously excited about AI and deeply uncertain ab ...Read More

Enterprise sales motion is one of the harder ones to pull off because it's usually long and involves large deal sizes. That usually means big buying groups with many detractors (legal, finance..). PMMs can help in many ways: Conduct win/loss analysis regularly--to keep tabs on shifts in market trends (spend, use cases, customer tiers), competitive landscape, product roadmap input. Competitive positioning--to inform messaging and sales training (quick dismisses - how to articulate to ICP prospect ...Read More