Christine Tran

I know there are sales CMS tools that track usage metrics, which can give you a sense of what's working, but it's really just directional since some content types will always get more use than others regardless of effectiveness. What I focus on is making sure sales has the core materials they need: slide decks, collateral, customer stories, and competitive intel - all tailored for different products, solutions, industries, personas, and integrations. I work closely with sellers to refine the mes ...Read More

I've found it to be critical in the organizations I've worked in, which have mostly had multiple personas. However, I've never been a fan of Marketing Mary or Annie the Analyst :) That may be a personal bias but I find it cheesy. But a basic persona framework and messaging has always been asked by sellers in organizations I've been at. It's extremely needed for new sellers but even senior ones who need sometimes need a quick reference / cheat sheet when context switching. A seller asked me TODAY ...Read More

I covered the basic flow of an introductory briefing deck in another question. I'd be happy to connect with you 1-1 to walk through yours and share a bit of mine :) Find me on LinkedIn! I've found 3 things that have really helped me have good analyst briefings. Being very thoughtful and very direct about why I've requested a briefing with that analyst. This gives the analyst context on why they should care about your solution, i.e. if you do a good job connecting the dots. As an example: You wro ...Read More

In general, a good flow for an introductory briefing deck is:  Introductions, and why you're here: I always like to start the conversation with a little context on why you've requested a briefing with the analyst. So I'll have a slide or just a few talking points on their specific research that sparked my request for a briefing.  Company overview: Before you jump into what you do, it helps to give analysts a bit of context and be very direct. This isn't a sales pitch. Analysts want to know a few ...Read More

This is a great question and top of mind for me right now.  For your executives, their primary goal may be to get into a Forrester Wave or Magic Quadrant. Yes, that would be the ultimate win, but it can be a long game AND there are many other ways to measure success over the life of a program. There are two buckets of goals to measure success:  Drive awareness, pipeline, deal acceleration of your solution (outbound): I measure this through research mentions and perception audit. Analysts publish ...Read More

This is the situation we're in right now. Our AR program is three years old and it's an ongoing initiative to identify and vet the right analysts, build relationships, and education/inform/influence their research roadmap. Here are a few tactics I'm using: Identify the analysts who (will) write the vendor guides that are relevant to your category. These usually precede a Wave or MQ. Write out your Wave or MQ criteria. Plot out your company and your competitors. Keeping those close to your chest ...Read More

It's really really hard to be in a startup with a small team and feel like you have to prioritize everything. I'm living it right now! Some people are just really good at ruthlessly prioritizing. But it can be hard to manage when priorities and strategies are changing fast, everything is being built from scratch, and multiple stakeholders are making demands. Don't I know it! What I try to do is: Prioritize which sector has the most juice to squeeze. There are a few vectors: existing traction (e. ...Read More