Devang Sachdev

Product Management and Product Marketing are two sides of the same coin. Organizationally there are benefits to both approaches. As a product manager, I have had product marketers on my team, and as a product marketer, I have reported into the Head of Marketing as well.  This decision is dependent on what is a bigger problem - product marketer not having a deep understand of the product due to product complexity, lack of documentation or exposure OR is it around go-to-market where product market ...Read More

On the surface this question is simple. How do you take sales feedback to product? But as product marketer your goal is not just to take sales feedback but to use it as one of your sources to make a case for roadmap additions or changes. Here is how I'd approach this: step 0 - build strong relationships with your sellers. step 1 - remove sales bias by aggregating feedback from individual sellers. They tend to have a bias towards the most recent or largest opporunity they have on hand or one that ...Read More

tl:dr: Both and then some.  It is as important for product marketers to be involve in the inception stage as it is when taking new feature/product to market. Features that are built in vacuum seldom stick or give your product a market advantage. Product marketers input is key to how roadmap is prioritized based on customer need, value delivered, competitive advantage gained or $$$ unblocked in deals, or $$$ unlocked in TAM. Being involved in the inception stage also gives the product marketer a ...Read More

Product teams benefit the most when Product Marketing stays connected from inception of new features/products to actual delivery. At inception, product marketers help with gauging potential impact and thereby help priortize the roadmap. Once a feature/ product is commited to a roadmap and is on a predicatable release timeline (90-180 day window is typical fast moving software teams) is setup, product marketers help communicate out to the roadmap to the field or key customers. As with anything el ...Read More

The goal of any new product/feature releases is to allow your business to capture or retain slice of the market. It is important to have as much clarity as possible before enbarking on any development. Monetization or value creation is easy to gauge when similar features are already offered in the market. But let's say your product team was working on feature that doesnt exist in the market. If you go back a few years there was no concept of anonymizing phone numbers when connecting two people. ...Read More

Product teams can get myopic with mandate from leadership or long term vision. But this is exactly where product marketing can be an excellent value partner to their product peer. Timeline focus assumes at features selected and priorities are spot on and set in stone. But that is often not the case, especially with constantly changing marketscape and customer needs. By presenting a case for change backed by data - customer interviews, sales interviews and pipeline analysis, you can bring new inf ...Read More