Charles Tsang

This is likely something that can differ a bit depending on company and organization, but in general: Sales Ops functions are focused on strategies, systems, and processes related to stuff like sales forecasting, quota assignment, sales comp design, sales coverage, and administration/maintainance of a company's CRM and lead management systems. All this is of course done in service to not only enable sales, but also execute on the desired sales strategy.   Product Marketing's focus on sales enabl ...Read More

Balancing alignment with avoiding “too many cooks in the kitchen” really comes down to clarity of roles, and for me, that starts with a DACI (Yes, I’m obviously a big fan of these 😊) If you’re truly concerned that you’re working on something where alignment will be dicey make sure at the beginning of a project, you make it a point to define the DACI and set expectations clearly. It’s especially important to remind stakeholders that “C’s” (consulted) are not “A’s” (approvers). Their input is valu ...Read More

Great question. I’d zoom out and look at this in the context of how PMM should collaborate across the broader cross-functional (XF) team involved in GTM—Product, Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing. Each stakeholder plays a critical role in shaping a product launch, contributing insights that inform messaging, positioning, and GTM strategy. While each team views the launch from a different angle, their inputs help refine the overall approach. For example: Sales understands how customers talk ...Read More

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but I boil down measuring sales enablement success into three categories: Usage: This would be the volume of assets developed as well as ways to measure how often they’re utilized. For example, maybe you post your sales collateral to a sales team portal where downloads / views can be tracked. Quality: This is about getting feedback from sales on how useful the collateral you've developed is, which can be gathered informally in discussions with your sales t ...Read More

The short answer is yes, it can become a differentiator but it has to be intentional, aligned with the audience's needs, and relevant to the company / brand. But it's extraordinarily difficult to do and most companies aren't able to break through. I think most people would point to Apple's "Think Different" campaign as the most obvious example of a company that did this effectively. The story effectively transformed and framed the company / brand as a champion of creativity and nonconformity and ...Read More

[Insert shameless plug for the my template that is being shared for this AMA]. :-) Kidding aside - the template does reflect my thinking on the framework for good storytelling: Intentional focus on crystalizing core "story inputs" --> e.g., personas, function and emotional pain points, market / industry / competitive context, etc. Using this to fill out core story components such as: Every story needs a protagonist and antagonist, so mapping the persona and pain points to these elements helps ...Read More

The answer depends a bit on the situation. Here are two scenarios/examples.  Scenario 1: Sometimes sales has a ton of institutional knowledge around their target customers. This might be because of the history they’ve had around this sales motion/target audience and how long the company has been focused on selling a particular type of product or solution. Using a Visa example, our sales team has had years of experience working on selling our core products to heads of card programs at financial i ...Read More

I meet with Sales at a minimum once a week, but most of the time several times a week.   What I like to do during these sessions is to: Begin to understand their needs and where they need the most help. For example, as they work on engaging with prospects, are there common sticking points that come up in sales conversations (e.g., pricing, competitive differentiation)? What are those sticking points and why are they occuring? Share a point of view or strawman. Blank sheet discussions to collect ...Read More

It's difficult to paint a broad brush stroke answer on this, but as a general rule of thumb: Meet with Sales to understand their expectations and where they need the most help. It all starts with a conversation to understand gaps/opportunities.   In most cases, Sales will look to Product Marketers to help ensure they have impactful content/assets (informed by research/insights) to help them sell. I have not met many sales reps that are interested (or have the time) to develop sales content on th ...Read More

Fintech is definitely a dynamic and ever evolving space – which makes it super exciting! What’s interesting about Visa’s role here is that we sit at the center as a network and have exposure to and partner with fintechs of various shapes and sizes. So speaking a common language is less of an issue at Visa given our extensive engagement in fintech (we like to think of ourselves as the world’s first fintech). That said, this is a super valid question. Standard messaging documents that sales reps c ...Read More