Influencing the C-Suite

Great question! I think about this one a lot...First off, it’s important to callout that there is no perfect org structure :)  In general, you have to identify what you’re optimizing towards and what

This all comes down to how is the rest of the business organized. If you're organizing in a way that's incongrous to everyone else in the org, you will not be setup for success. With smaller nimble te

In general, PMM roles at Intercom are more of the 'full stack' variety - i.e we cover the whole journey from feeding into the roadmap to launch, including competitive research, buyer/persona/market re

The structure of the PMM team is usually a function of the size of the company and it’s GTM model. The “typical” SaaS PMM team has a set of Core PMMs that are focused on product, and usually a sister

The PMM team structure depends on the size of the company, how technical the product is, and the GTM model. Company Size: As the company grows and scales, PMM tends to fall under the Marketing org an

Our team is structured by audience type and discipline. We have one part of the team focused on our end users and prospects, another part of the team is focused on our partners, and a third on market

At DocuSign, there are product marketers across our main product categories, as well as industry and audience teams. Every company I've ever worked at has grouped their teams differently, so I tend to

I've done it in so many different ways! Few quick pointers:  The most important thing is to ensure every team member has a good swim lane and growth path.  Take your revenue goal and slice that evenl

Sendbird is an in-app conversations platform, where we help improve customer retention and conversion through chat, voice, video, and livestream APIs. Our team is structured as follows: GTM excellenc

It depends on multiple factors, as others have pointed out, including company size, number of markets served, number of products/solutions, GTM model, and alignment with the rest of the organization (

It starts with making sure the c-suite knows where you fit in to business outcomes. What are your OKR’s for the quarter, for the year? Is there a straight line between your priorities and the key oppo

See my other answer on frameworks for building intluence with stakeholders. Influencing the c-suite to get resources is about influencing the c-suite, which is really about influence, period.  Think

Influencing any stakeholder (whether internal or external) comes down to two factors. Think of any stakeholder as a customer you'd like to market to. You need to know 3 things: What does your stakeho

Startups are unique because (virtually) every employee is also a shareholder. Which means that every internal meeting is also a shareholders' meeting. Now, unlike companies where you are a passive sha

This is a tough one! It can be really difficult when you have exec stakeholders who aren't aligned. Ultimately, it's on them to get aligned and provide clear direction 'down the chain' but a few thing

This is where DACIs (or RACIs) decision-making frameworks are critical. At a projects inception, it’s important to agree with senior executives on who the single final approver should be. Who is accou

Goes back to the shared goals - which at a high level, are hard to argue with - revenue, cost savings, customer success, etc. Once you get that common agreement, then it's about the strategy / the "h

Getting senior alignment is a key strategic role for PMM - we can be powerful bridges and connectors. Whenever there is a clear difference of opinion the best thing I’ve found is to bring the customer

This is definitely a challenge most PMMs see themselves in. I typically find success when I work the challenge from both ends. If the executives cannot disagree and committ while in the same room, spe

Oftentimes, disagreements are simply differences of opinion, which exist because there is a lack of data. In this case, PMMs are great neutral third-parties who are well-positioned to close that data

There are 3 main ways I interact with the C-suite: Regular leadership meetings where we discuss product roadmap and GTM Project-specific interactions Regular 1:1s (this will depend on the size of you

We match internal promotion based on the level of the product announcement. Small updates are little features that mostly existing customers are excited about. Medium updates are larger changes that p

Internal comms is sometimes undervalued, but in my opinion, it is one of the most important parts of a PMM's role, especially because product marketing is one of the very few roles that are extremely

Internal newsletters, revenue org all-hands, relevant slack channels, and team-specific meetings. Of course, not every activity is shared through every channel. Depending on the "size" of the project

I think this depends largely on the size of an update - and the audience.  For our largest releases, they are communicated early and often - to drum up excitement. Through company all hands, sales tra

We are a slack heavy company. So we have our own announcement channel for all things Marketing that I actually started so that we could share our updates!  We also do quarterly roadmaps and retros wh

Why do you want to communicate updates and activities? If the goal is to communicate just the work the team has been doing, then I don't think that you should be communicating this to a large audienc

The key here is consistency. Find a channel that works and stick to it. Else it becomes to fractured and fragmented. You can use a slack channel, you can have a dedicated section in your sales enablem

It depends on the size of your company. This will become more challenging as the size of the company scales. At a company with less than 200 employees it is pretty easy to maintain relationships with

I'm a huge fan of slack messages. I usually create a public slack channel and add key stakeholders to it. I'll bookmark resources to the top for easy self-serve access. Then, I'll post an update once

Oh boy, this is a great question.  In my experience in working with various different startups in the valley, I've seen this dynamic in many places. Sales and marketing tensions are not a 'thing' for

As I wrote in another answer, the market will reward some kinds of tension, especially if there is substantive disagreement between leaders or functions on a critical topic (e.g. pricing and packaging

As I said in another answer, being a successful PMM relies heavily on being able to build relationships and trust with your cross-functional stakeholders. The tips in that answer about building relati

Product Marketing is one of those roles that can be very different from each organization. I find the most successful way to develop a strong relationship is to show value from the start and align on

We're all human after all so taking the time to understand the baggage but also find a path forward. Find a champion on both sides willing to go on the journey with you and who is as vested as you ar

First of all: patience. Lots of it. :) As you start to unravel the history of the relationship, you’re likely to find norms that were established so long ago that no one knows why they’re there. And w

Oh man, this is a tricky one!  It's important to start by first identifying the source of tension. Is it due to leaders of those teams (or the leaders of those leaders) not seeing eye to eye and their

It’s always difficult to navigate tense relationships. It’s important not to take this all upon yourself. If you are looking to help, I think the first step is to assess the situation and try to under

At the core, these situations are about finding the product-market fit for the product marketing function in your organization. You are trying to establish a conversion thesis that will make them a fu

What a great question!  Sometimes the smartest people on the planet can not figure out how to work together. It's challenging and, at the same time, it's rewarding to nurture the culture of cross-fun

Your founders will have a stronger org when they eventually trust product marketing with more control over messaging. If you can, start with research. Talk to prospects and customers and show how they

Don't frame it as a way for "product marketing to get more control over the messaging". Frame it as a way to bring the voice of the customer into your messaging. Product Marketing should be the voice

Product marketing is so often misunderstood, and a lot of CMO’s didn’t grow up with it so they don’t particularly understand it. Still other CMO’s struggle with the PMM orgs that seem to spend more ti

Your executive team and CMO should be looking to you to prioritize your workload.If you wait for someone to prioritize your workload for you, you'll end up working on things that skew completely in th

It's hard. Real hard.  Many PMMs make the mistake of starting with messaging. This is a no-no. Messaging comes last and just puts words behind what was already decided. You have to nail this in sequ

It's key to align around a high-level story that powers success—in sales, marketing, fundraising, product development and recruiting—by getting everyone on the same page about strategy and differentia

I see three parts to driving alignment, both with execs and among all other stakeholders: First, bring them along for the journey. Messaging cannot be done in a silo, and it’s difficult to properly

To drive alignment, make something that execs can respond to. Recently, I created an example “future state” pitch deck to articulate a future narrative for Glassdoor. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped

I feel fortunate that I’ve led positioning/messaging workshops since I graduated college because I worked for an agency that mandated them for every project we worked on for tech clients.  Getting an

At the end of the day, Product Marketing owns messaging, and there should be general alignment around that. I think that's a really important place to start because literally everyone has an opinion o

This is an iterative process, and always better to over-communicate than under-communicate, so we can get everyone's feedback and input and people feel they have been heard and their input taken into

I start with personas. I develop a thesis about core personas based on sales and customer success feedback, and then conduct user interviews to validate or invalidate those ideas. That's probably the

Start with data. Ground your messaging in first and third party data that illuminates what is important to your target customers, key pain points, aspirations, how they like to be messaged to, languag

Ha! this skill is probably the hardest. When it comes to messaging, everyone will have an opinion. Before you drive alignment on the messaging, align on the problem and solution. That is 50% - 60% of

Here's my process, I Conduct customer and prospect research (exec team will be more likely to be bought in with data - especially from your key personas and customers)  Consolidate findings and prepa

We typically prepare and validate a strong Messaging and Positioning Framework (MPF) document first. Our template typically includes things like the market context, objectives of our messaging (i.e. w

First, start with data-driven positioning. Who are you in the marketplace? Where are you heading or trying to become? How do you think your competitors are moving in the space? If you skip this step,

Every executive team is different, so I would encourage you to think through the culture (and sometimes - quirks!) of the members of that team as you craft your own approach. That said, I've found a c

This is so important, and not focused on enough so I'm glad you asked! A few thoughts around this: Get your CEO and CMO involved early. Ideally you can get early drafts to them, and also get them bou

This requires having a strong relationship built on trust with your executive team and, depending on the size of your company, the CEO. Get the executive team involved early and often, and be willing