Harsha Kalapala

Copied over from a similar question: There are a lot of things you could do - and it's easy to get distracted as a product marketer. First 30 days - Listen, listen, listen. Ask a TON of questions. Hold back from providing ideas unless you are really sure about it. Help others behind the scenes on ongoing projects with work you are good at - like writing or editing copy, preparing slides, etc. Help them look good and make allies. This is also a great way to learn the business. Talk to customers - jump in on existing calls and ask good questions. Get familiar with basic analytics and KPIs - need to know what needle to move and what drives it. 30-60 days - Make a success plan & set concrete expectations. Create a list of things you are going to focus on to make the most impact on the business. Separate quick wins from strategic work. Have a healthy debate with your boss and cross-functional leaders in sales, product, and customer success. Focus on your first big win that can be accomplished in under 30 days. Get an A in that even if you let everything else fail or push to the next 30 days. Figure out which fires you are going to let burn. Also, do most of your work in the open - it's often not a good idea to wait for the "big reveal". Surprises are not your friends. We tend to miss out on helpful feedback others can provide when we are missing context - this is critical during the early days. 60-90 days - Create momentum. Ask leadership for informal feedback - how you are doing and where you can tweak things. Once aligned, I would focus on the next big win while delivering smaller, tangible outcomes that line up with your success plan. The most important thing a product marketer should be doing through this journey is saying "no" enough. Smaller companies tend to see everything that is not about generating leads to be product marketing's job. While you could make that argument, it is important to say no to those seemingly urgent things and let those fires burn. Jumping on things because the CEO/CMO said so without considering the tradeoffs to your current priorities can be your biggest enemy.

There are a lot of things you could do - and it's easy to get distracted as a product marketer. First 30 days - Listen, listen, listen. Ask a TON of questions. Hold back from providing ideas unless you are really sure about it. Help others behind the scenes on ongoing projects with work you are good at - like writing or editing copy, preparing slides, etc. Help them look good and make allies. This is also a great way to learn the business. Talk to customers - jump in on existing calls and ask good questions. Get familiar with basic analytics and KPIs - need to know what needle to move and what drives it. 30-60 days - Make a success plan & set concrete expectations. Create a list of things you are going to focus on to make the most impact on the business. Separate quick wins from strategic work. Have a healthy debate with your boss and cross-functional leaders in sales, product, and customer success. Focus on your first big win that can be accomplished in under 30 days. Get an A in that even if you let everything else fail or push to the next 30 days. Figure out which fires you are going to let burn. Also, do most of your work in the open - it's often not a good idea to wait for the "big reveal". Surprises are not your friends. We tend to miss out on helpful feedback others can provide when we are missing context - this is critical during the early days. 60-90 days - Create momentum. Ask leadership for informal feedback - how you are doing and where you can tweak things. Once aligned, I would focus on the next big win while delivering smaller, tangible outcomes that line up with your success plan. The most important thing a product marketer should be doing through this journey is saying "no" enough. Smaller companies tend to see everything that is not about generating leads to be product marketing's job. While you could make that argument, it is important to say no to those seemingly urgent things and let those fires burn. Jumping on things because the CEO/CMO said so without considering the tradeoffs to your current priorities can be your biggest enemy. 

You can't change/improve what you don't fully understand. When you join a smaller team where product marketing didn't formally exist before, it is important to recognize that product marketing always existed, but was probably executed as a team sport. It may have been carried by the product manager, the CEO, the CMO, or a content marketing lead. I would always begin by learning what worked and didn't work with product-marketing related efforts (which likely was not seen a product marketing work), and understand who is close to these efforts and outcomes. Make sure they understand you are their ally, and you are here to build upon their past efforts. Product marketers will have a hard time succeeding without building allies and support within the team. To bring along the exec/management team, it is important to be clear about what new insight and perspective you bring to the table. Listen first, and then suggest frameworks and ideas to change things that make an immediate impact. Quick action and small wins early on are much more appreciated than strategy and discussions - especially in smaller orgs. 

Tech is always a hard question for product marketers who don't have a ton of budget. I try to push for tools that are beneficial to more than product marketing. Tools that help me do my job better with my key partners - sales, CS, product. One way is to just get a seat to jump in on software they are already using. Some of my most helpful tools have been: * Appcues (partner with product and customer success) * Google analytics/Heap (helps you see what's working and where you need to focus) * DocSend (for sales enablement and content delivery) * Salesloft (for sales enablement) * Miro (for brainstorming and concepting) * Hemingway app (for copywriting) * Noun project (for icons) * Lingo (for quick access to logos, colors, fonts, graphics, etc.) * Skitch (for screenshots and quick edits like highlights, comments, blurring) And my recent favorite - LOOM (for short training videos I can send to sales and CS)

Any new product should have a “product brief” associated with it to help not just sales, but any internal stakeholder to be on the same page about the purpose and positioning of the product. Enabling sales can be done effectively without ever involving a deck. My focus is on content and training vs. deck creation. The product brief contains things like a problem to solve, buyer personas addressed, why it is important now (urgency), competitive landscape or what you are replacing, discovery questions, customer stories, user quotes, ROI calculators where applicable, product FAQs, assets to send ahead or leave behind, outbound messaging sequences, demo recordings, modified product screenshots, and recordings of effective calls of other reps - to name a few. Training reps on products starts with training on the specific pain points the product addresses for specific personas. Understanding what problem you solve, who you solve it for, and why it is important now is essential for sales to be effective. There should be a focus on lining up discovery questions to help the salesperson dig into the prospect’s unique situation before trying to pitch any new product.

The first step to engaging other teams is to make sure they are a key contributor to the go-to-market plan, and they are not just on the receiving end being told what to do. I try to understand the organizational goals of a launch, and also pay attention to what are the success metrics/criteria for each team involved. Every team involved in a GTM plan has to get a win out of it. It's also important to understand teams = people. I get people excited by bringing them along the journey, sharing the why behind key decisions. This really helps people on teams like engineering and design, who are typically removed from the customer-facing activities see the potential outcome of their work and get fired up about it. Product management is a critical partner to work with the entire way. I have had success engaging PM teams by being involved with product development from the early concept and research stage. Being engaged with customer conversations early on helps you develop strong positioning well before you reach the actual launch. One exercise that always makes a big impact is to write a mock press release along with the product team well before the product is made. Imagine you launched the product today - what story would you tell the world? That informs product development as well - and is a great way to build the right product. The risk with this approach is creating an environment where decisions are made by committee - which is not a productive situation. The way I avoid that is to be clear that everyone's input is being considered, but decisions are going to be made by a smaller set of people accountable for the success of the GTM plan.

There is no single golden arrow. Every piece of material has its role in the process. I look at effectiveness from two perspectives. One - did the salesperson use it? Two - did the prospect use it? Fortunately, there are tools for this today. You should be using a tool like Seismic, Highspot, or Docsend. These tools also allow for a third important measure - did the prospect pass it around to the buying group? Now you’re hitting the right notes. If the salesperson doesn’t use something, it doesnt necessarily mean it’s an ineffective asset. Sometimes it means they need more awareness and training on the value an asset can add to their sales process. On the other hand, more usage by sales doesn’t necessarily mean it is effective. It is important to track what role the asset played in the prospect’s buying journey.

Don’t overcomplicate it. Just find the fastest way to talk to customers. You could set up a formal feedback session with surveys, incentives, and all the jazz - which still gives you biased feedback. Or... you can just hop on an already scheduled customer call TODAY and casually ask customers for their quick qualitative feedback. Here is a sample message to your customer success folks: Hey {CSM name] - I am just trying to get a quick and casual reaction from our customers on this new messaging I’m putting together for an upcoming launch. Do you have any calls with customers this week where you don’t anticipate using the full scheduled time? If so can I please hop on it with you and ask for their help once you take care of business? This will be a huge help! Here is a sample script to ask to customers live on a call: Hey {customer name} - I’m here to ask for your help. I am working on some marketing content for a new product launch coming up. I can let you in on the secret early if you promise to keep it yourself until launch, and share your quick reaction? This will only take a couple of minutes and will really help me out. For quantitative feedback, there are great tools out there like Wynter.com to get reliable feedback from your target audience. 

This is an important question. The marketing rule of 7 exposures applies here as well. I try to get on as many opportunities as I can to educate and train partner stakeholders. Ask for a few minutes on their weekly team meetings — the product team, the customer success/support team, the sales team, etc. and walk them through the same talk track on the partnership. Why is it important for you and your customers? What does it do? When does it come out? What can you do, based on your role? Where can you find all the collateral? Who can you ask questions? The key is to steal a few minutes from existing team meetings vs. asking to schedule a special meeting — which will take longer, expectations will be higher, and likely will be less effective. I try to do discovery on what resources are needed very early on in the partnership by connecting with the user-facing team leaders in the partner's org. This really helps develop the right solution for the right problem when you get to the collateral development and training phase. 

If you build it, they won’t come. Product marketing assets are ineffective without proper sales enablement efforts - whether there is a separate team for it or not. The simplest analogy I use is that product marketing creates the juice, and sales enablement makes sure the sales team drinks the juice AND keeps it down. Now that’s oversimplified in some ways. The partnership between both functions begins at the problem identification phase. Both teams should be on the same page about the gaps in driving effectiveness for the sales teams - whether it is a recurring challenge in core performance, or an opportunity to train on a new product launch. Having a sales enablement roadmap is essential in making this partnership effective. This is typically owned by sales enablement with input from product marketing. For instance, if product marketing creates a new pitch deck for sales, it requires adding a ton of context, talk tracks, discovery questions, role plays, follow-up playbooks, and other preparation to make the pitch deck effective. Most of this is led by sales enablement with input from product marketing. SE also determines how much repeated exposure and training the sales team needs and how much ramp time it takes for the sales team to be effectively using the new pitch deck. Sales enablement schedules these training sessions and invites product marketing as subject matter experts to help drive the training sessions. Measuring the effectiveness of these steps in the process and incorporating that into future sales enablement efforts for continuous improvement is what makes this partnership effective in the long run.