Adam Lagerhausen

This may change in 6 months, but for now... AI will make an average PMM faster. It will not make an average PMM better. LLMs predict the most likely next word, which means every output trends toward the average of everything it's trained on. Your messaging will sound like everyone else's. Everyone is already drowning in content, you can't afford to "sound like everyone else". Worse, people can smell it now. "It's not just X, it's Y!" "A game-changer for..." Buyers are developing an immune respon ...Read More

Let me reframe this: What you have is a value translation problem. Reps sell what's easy to sell, easy to explain, and easy to close. If your product isn't getting airtime, you haven't made it dead simple for reps to connect your product to money in their pocket. Step one is giving them a 30-second story they can tell a customer without opening a single slide. If your rep can't explain your product's value in an elevator ride, you haven't done your job yet. Step two: If another product is domina ...Read More

AI changes segmentation by changing the cost curve. Segments that used to be too expensive to research, message, and enable may now be worth testing. That means PMM should revisit TAM and ICP assumptions, because AI lets the company economically serve and learn from more slices of the market. The right question becomes: which previously ignored segments become attractive now that we can lower the cost of research, personalization, content, enablement, and sales support? But don’t spray and pray. ...Read More

You got to remember with salespeople, they're running their own business. There's a thousand things they have to remember to do, all of which are more important than the location of an asset. As a product marketer, do whatever you can to make your salespeople successful. If that means hand-holding a specific rep, do it. More than likely, the reason they're struggling with this is that it's in a place or presented in a way that doesn't work for them. Ask them: How can I make this easier for you? ...Read More

The biggest mistake in sales enablement is treating it like a presentation instead of a learning problem. The first time sales sees your enablement should not be during the enablement session. Before I train anyone, I want to understand what sellers are actually struggling with: where deals are getting stuck, what objections are showing up, what competitors are saying, what parts of the story are confusing, and what they need to sell with more confidence. So I talk to sales first. I listen to ca ...Read More

I was doing a launch, partnering with another product marketer, and this product marketer was very good at talking about why this launch was important, why it mattered, etc. So for the launch, we had a full bill of materials ready to go. We put a lot of effort into it, cross-functional effort. Right before launch, it turns out that really what they were trying to do was get a hundred beta users. Which at the time did not warrant the full bill of materials that we put together. I wasted a lot of ...Read More

Assuming you're already working as a digital marketer, the best thing to do is talk to an existing PMM at your company. To get to my first PMM job I did exactly the below: First, PMM is such a varied job, you should have a very good idea which part of PMM you like: - Core = positioning/messaging - GTM = working with sales - Hybrid = events/specialty roles (ex: product launches) It's much easier to make the transition after you understand what you're interested in. Then, (after talking to your ex ...Read More