Jeff Beckham

Head of Marketing, Gem

About

I lead product marketing at Gem, which makes a SaaS product that can help you hire 5x faster. Previously at Mixpanel, Slack, BlueJeans, and Cisco Systems.

Content

How do you see ownership of sales enablement between product marketing and marketing?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • December 18

At every company I’ve been a part of, product marketing has always been the driver of any sales enablement done by the marketing team. I’m sure that’s not the case everywhere, but I believe it’s the norm. The main reason is PMMs are hired for a specific skill set that fits enablement – storytelli......Read More

2098 Views

What's the best, most turnkey framework to use for building Go-To-Market presentations for multiple stakeholder groups?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • May 7

I’m glad you asked, because I love building presentations! I realize I’m a total slide nerd, but here’s my process: 1. Align on the outcome you want from the presentation. Who are you trying to convince, and about what? Whether the audience is the sales team at SKO or execs at a busines......Read More

1785 Views

How far in advance do you perform sales training so that the sales force is competent by the launch date? We have a sales team of 12. How do you validate sales competency?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • December 18

The more time in advance you can provide the sales team, the better. But you also don’t want to sit on new products / features that are ready to go, especially when you’re at a small and nimble company like yours. The key question is, when is the product far enough along that you know the final f......Read More

1628 Views

What should product marketing's role be in your company's sales kickoff?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • December 18

This is a fun question because I’ve seen this vary so broadly across the places I’ve worked. Step one is to make sure product marketing gets invited :) At Mixpanel, all of the go-to-market teams go to SKO, and it has really helped to create a sense of shared purpose across sales, marketing and cu......Read More

1607 Views

What are some ways product marketing can prove their value to product management?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • May 7

It’s a good question, but also a loaded one! Product management needs to prove their value to the company too, right? The dynamic you’re describing is common though, unfortunately. I’ve lived it many times. The best working relationship comes when both sides have shared goals. If that’s not rea......Read More

1453 Views

What are the common mistakes you see product marketers making when they launch new sales enablement programs?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • December 18

The biggest mistake I’ve made is not involving Sales at the ideation stage. Too many times, I’ve thought I had a great idea for a new program or piece of content, only to find upon rolling it out that I was solving a problem nobody had. It’s always good to have a few “friendlies” on the sales te......Read More

1401 Views

What role should product marketers have in writing email templates for sales development reps?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • December 18

If you have the opportunity to be involved, snatch it as quickly as possible! The core of product marketing is creating messaging that works, and the fastest way to test messaging is through channels that scale. SDR templates are one of those, along with digital ads and high-traffic web pages. O......Read More

1347 Views

What sales enablement changes do we need to make as we shift focus from selling to SMB and mid-market to selling to enterprise?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • December 18

It’s exciting that your company is making the shift up-market! The first question to ask is whether you have the right people in place to sell into enterprises. Promoting the best people on the mid-market team is highly risky, although that decision is usually outside the purview of product marke......Read More

1301 Views

How do you create a sales playbook that gets used by sales?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • December 18

A good question to ask before starting a sales playbook is, “what’s in it for them?” Good sales reps welcome support from anyone who can truly help them, and product marketers are well-positioned to provide that type of assistance. But I’ve made the mistake many times of taking the “build it and ......Read More

1233 Views

How does your team divide up the responsibility between the PMM team and the Campaign team? How has that worked for the new products/new markets for existing products that company has wanted to go into, where the campaign team cannot just package up existing asset but needs to create a PoV?

Jeff Beckham

Gem Head of Marketing • May 7

The setup at my previous company, Mixpanel, is one that I’ve seen be more and more common at businesses scaling up. We have two arms of marketing: product / content and growth (the “campaign team”). When the head of growth and I need to explain who does what, we like to simplify things to: PMM b......Read More