Christine Sotelo-Dag

If I were assigning this work, I'd expect to see the common elements of a GTM plan outlined (not necessarily the content, but the outline for sure). I'd look for elements such as * Who is the core audience * What is their current pain (before using your product) * How does your product solve that pain (what value does your product provide) * What are the reasons the audience should believe you (proof points) * What strategies will you implement to reach this audience based on what you know about them * What do need to know about the competition There's probably a lot more, but the key idea here is that most GTM plans have very similar core content that looks like a variation of the above, so be prepared to speak to these bullet and how you'd define them for your GTM plan. 

Our product marketing org strucuture is made up of 6 groups. Most of our groups are aligned directly to product, and how product strucutres their org. So each product group that is focused on building customer facing product - has a PMM group aligned to it. We refer to these PMMs as "full stack" PMMs partnering closely with product in defining roadmap and scope and GTM teams in bringing new products and features to market. We also have a group focused on enablement - supporting our customer facing teams with industry and segment positioning and messaging, customer facing assets, content and more. I will say that our team has evolved many times over the years, and we continue to be flexible and adapt to the needs of the business. PMM orgs need to take into account a companies gtm strategy, product strategy, etc and adapt as those things evolve as well. 

This is a great question, and one I thought deeply about prior to starting at Mode. Thankfully, I had a nice long break between Intercom and Mode which I leveraged for lots of down time 😉 but also as a time to reflect on how I wanted to approach those first 90 days. First, I'd recommend reading 'The First 90 days' by Michael Watkins. There was a lot of great information in here that I definitely borrowed from. Here is a birds eye view of how I applied it: First 30 days - Listen! This can often be the hardest part of starting any new role. The urge to jump in and start proving value is very strong but without context and an understanding of the company, teams, problems, customers etc - this can be a detrimental move. So my goal was to spend the first 30 days building as much context as I possibly could. I met with as many people as I could - with the goal of learning about their roles in the company, asking for as much historical context they could provide, and digging into what challenges they were currently faciing - and how they saw product marketing playing a role in tackling those challenges. The goal was not to commit to anything, it was simply to listen. I listened to customer and prospect calls. I read, and read, and read - blogs, competitor sites and blogs, industry repots, substacks, internal docs, etc. I joined right before a big product launch and a rebrand launch, so the urge to jump in was strong - and I did in fact pick up small pieces that I could help with, to start building the cross-functional muscle, but ultimately I measured the success of my first 30 days by how well I was able to start identifying gaps, and what priorities I was able to distill out of those gaps. It is very important to align with your manager at this stage (and the rest) on their expectations - to ensure there is alignment - and pull up together at the end of those first 30/60/90 days. First 60 days - Longer term goals / early wins Building context will continue well into the 60 days, but at around the 30 day mark there is a transition into taking action. What small wins have been identified, that you can start taking action against? Smaller wins usually can be accomplished without large x-functional buy in and without heavy internal resourcing. What larger gaps have been identified and how to start building a plan or brief to tackle those gaps? This is the time that it is also important to start setting up your strategic alliance. Who are you x-functional peers - and what standing meetings should you be joining, and reoccuring 1:1s should you be having? This is critical as you start to build out your plans as you'll likely need buy in from these peers, so set up the right working structure ahead of any plan execution. Bring them into your early thinking and ASK FOR FEEDBACK! First 90 days - Rhthym and results By the 60 day mark you should be moving into a rhthym of work. You've established your aliances, you've implemented team rituals, you've identified gaps and problems to be solved and translated those into a plan for the next 1-2 quarters that outlines: * top priorities * goals (success metrics) * specific milestons to achieving those goals * what outputs are associated with each priority * alignment from manager and cross-functional counterparts This is the time to start promoting yourself and your team as well. Build and share your team charter. Share your priorities, and set up the right structure for sharing out results. ASK FOR FEEDBACK and iterate. There's a lot packed into each of these 30 day segments - but hopefully this provides a high-level overview of how to start a new role focused on optimizing for long-term success by setting up the right foundation first. Go slow to go fast. 🚀

First and foremost it is critical to make sure that Sales has plenty of visibility into what product is building, timelines around availability, and how PMM plans to take it to market (what tier/priority is the launch). For any Tier 1 or Tier 2 launch, PMM should align with Sales Enablement on * What is being built * Why it's being built now * Who is the audience (existing customers/prospects) * What is the persona * How does this compare to competition * Value pillars for customers From there, Sales Enablement works with PMM to determine what the best ways to enable the Sales teams. Some tactics include: * Live trainings that cover positioning, messaging, competitive landscape, demo, pricing, etc * Recorded training + testing with tools like Workramp * Techinical training for Support or Technical sales reps - usually in partership with Product * Assets: Pitch slides, customer testimonials, business claims, one-pagers, feature comprison sheets, etc Regardless of the tactics used, the key to success is aligning with Sales (either via sales leaders or the sales enablement team) on the what, why, who, and how - to build a successful enablement plan together. 

Any GTM presentation should probably include some variance of the following: - Intro to the problem you're solving with this feature/product - Why you're solving it now (the opportunity) - What you've built - The target audience - Messaging: Key value drivers / benefits (for each audience) - KPI's - GTM strategy / campaign approach (how will you bring this to market?) - BONUS: any social proof or claims derived from beta

Outside of researching common product marketing interview questions and generic interview prep like that, I think the best resources probably live on the hiring organization's website and resources. Learn as much as you can about the organization, how they position themselves, who their core audience is, the competitive landscape. This is going to take your interview to the next level and really help the hiring manager see you in the role as you already have a baseline knowledge of the organization. The best preparation you can do is to have really clear examples ready for your work. Think of the STAR example. Situation, Task, Action, Result. Keep those elements in each of your examples and it will help you prepare concise answers to your cross-functional partners questions. Be prepared to talk about how you've worked cross-functionally in the past and cover both highs and lows of those working relationships. 

There are a few core characteristics that make product marketers stand out, especially those with less experience to pull from in interviews and resumes. Characteristics such as time management, prioritization, strong execution skills, cross-functional collaboration and a basic understanding of the role of storytelling in marketing. Wherever you can showcase these skills, even if it's pulling from experiences in a different role or as a student, will help build confidence with the hiring manager that you have the core skills and the rest can be taught. 

This is a hard question to answer because it is pretty dependent on your company's industry, business model, gtm strategy, etc. However, I'll give some examples I've come across in my experience. 1. Website. As a marketer, your website is your storefront - and there are endless ways to continue to improve it to maximize results. Whether your business is built on a self-serve model or you are 100% sales-led - the role of the website is an integral one - spefically in letting prospects and custoemrs know you understand their pain points and have a solution that can help solve them. So - spend some time evaluating your company's website - especially while you have fresh eyes as an outsider, and note ideas for how to optimize. Look at product positioning, audience targeting, clearly articulating value, CTAs, etc. There are likely many quick wins to be found 2. GTM plans. Take a look at how new products and features are currently being brought to market to prospect and existing customers. There are likely quick wins here as well. If there isn't a current GTM template, create one. That is a really great quick win. Make sure your company is taking products to market with the right channels based on what is being released, and to the right audience. Are announcements segmented? (if your company doesnt have clear segments - this should be something on your list of things to help tackle). Are there new and creative ways to get your audiences attention (not everything needs a billboard) -- this can be a clever social media strategy, or in-house videos. When I started at Intercom, the PMM team created 'quick look' videos that were short videos made by an individual PMM, delivered in product. They were not shiny, or overly polished - just a way to connect as humans to customers that didnt require a massive budget or an eloborate project plan. Just a PMM, a script and screen recording software. 3. Sales assets. There are many ways to support a sales team, and hopefully once you've done your listening tour you'll have identified a few areas that are low hanging fruit. I'd say often times an item that shows up on sales wishlists is competitive intel. Not just a feature comparison grid, but how your company can and should win in deals against specific competitors. This is a great first project to take as it often kills a few birds with one stone. on Usually, with some dedicated space and time carved out to do research, this research can be tackled fairly quickly - and as a new person in the company it is a great way to get up to speed on your product and market and build context. You can also start by delivering the content in small digestable pieces. Talking points to SDRs/BDRs, a battlecard for all of sales, a live training, feature deep dives, etc. 

I always like to hear from product marketers what companies they believe do product marketing well, and why. Before I go into what makes a good answer, I'll point out that there is a difference between a good product and good product marketing. Many times I'd hear all about why a PRODUCT is great, but not enough about how their marketing was great. I'd also say that although companies like Apple and Patagonia have renowned product marketing - it is sometimes more beneficial to focus on the examples that may be less referenced and more original. :) The best answer I heard here was from a candidate who pointed out one of our competitors. It was a risky and bold move, but I really appreciated the thoughtful answer and it showed me that the candidate knew our space and did his homework. 

This answer may be two-fold. As for tools we use for launches, we find Coda to be pretty indespensible. We've designed our launch template within it that serves as a master doc for all GTM documentation associated with a launch. It centralizes all our key launch documentation from the GTM strategy, deliverables, DACI, launch activities and more. It's indepsnesible because it truly makes project management extrememly easy, and offers a ton of flexibility. The reason I say this answer is two-fold is because Coda is only one part of the solution. I think all product marketing teams should have a solid tiering framework that is used to align on how product and features will be brought to market, and a solid launch template that is reusable and flexes depending on the size of a launch.