Question Page

How can I use external experience (sales for example) to bring different opinions to the table to gain influence and persuade other teams?

3 Answers
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
Pendo.io VP Product MarketingAugust 23

Getting a variety of feedback from a variety of people is the best thing you can do to influence and persuade teams. I always like to poll multiple teams and different levels of people to ensure that I have as many examples as possible. Make sure you ask internal teams - sales (including pre-sales and SDRs if you have them), post-sales like customer success and account management, other marketers even - for their input.

Even better try to gather external feedback too if possible. Reach out to friendly customers, ask some of your friends from other companies, schedule an inquiry with a friendly analyst or influencer, the more the merrier! This is especially important for vetting and getting buy in on things like new pricing, messaging for a new product, or a brand new pitch or first call deck.

Once you have some of the feedback documented, you can bring it to the team you are trying to influence and use it to show that you've done your due diligence and truly have something worth considering!

691 Views
Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso Marketing Leader and Fractional CMOAugust 5

I think you need a mix of experiences AND data to transform what might seem like different opinions into persuasive arguments with impact. 

Experiences provide the context and detail, relatable quotes or example customer pain points, etc., and Data provides the measurement - how big of a problem is this? How easily can we quantify it? What impact might it have? That way it can be prioritized.

In your example, perhaps a sales team says "Customers tell us they want this feature / benefit we don't have." with the data, you're also able to say "And we lost X opportunities this month because we don't have it" and perhaps influence the product roadmap or at least the competitive messaging in the short-term.

719 Views
Ryan Arnett
Ryan Arnett
DocSend Vice President SalesAugust 15

Having worked well with Product Marketing in the past (and as a sales leader) sales can be admittedly tough to generate buy-in. However, sales is needy and tends to make an overwhelming number of asks from marketing. The problem I've seen is that sales is not educated on the role of product marketing and therefore less supportive. I would start with educating sales on their role/responsibilites, goals & how impactful product marketing "is" or "could be" if they have a strong line of communication. Once they understand how aligned their goals are, it becomes more of a partnership. Sales typically can carry a lot of weight because they are customer facing every day; however, if sales doesn't understand how working closely with marketing will help them move and close more deals then they take the "us" vs. "them" approach. Clear understanding of roles/responsibilites, alignment on goals and the Jerry Maguire "help me, help you."

454 Views
Product Launches
Thursday, May 23 • 12PM PT
Product Launches
Virtual Event
Han-Yu Tu
Pelak Desai
JoAnn Courtney
+32
attendees
Top Product Marketing Mentors
Sarah Din
Sarah Din
Quickbase VP of Product Marketing
Mary Sheehan
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing
Jeffrey Vocell
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing
Jenna Crane
Jenna Crane
Klaviyo Head of Product Marketing
Alex Lobert
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & Commerce
Kevin Garcia
Kevin Garcia
Anthropic Product Marketing Leader
Abdul Rastagar
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach
Christine Sotelo-Dag
Christine Sotelo-Dag
ThoughtSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing