Jam Khan

A team of three needs to be really agile and nimble. At the same time if you don't really prioritize you're going to risk burn out and poor quality work. For a team this size I would prioritize sales needs above all else. You probably want three areas of focus: 1. positioning and competition: who do we sell to, what value we create, why people should care, what alternatives they seek 2. messaging: who buys from us, what better future can we promise them, how can we prove our ability to deliver on that promise 3. activation: how do we get our content out to the field (internal and e...

The key here is consistency. Find a channel that works and stick to it. Else it becomes to fractured and fragmented. You can use a slack channel, you can have a dedicated section in your sales enablement platform, you can issue regular emails with links to content. Just make sure you stick to an appraoch so your GTM teams get conditioned to the process.

There are few things i'd look at based on the rhythm of the business. How fast is the business growing? How fast is the organization innovating, and how fast is the sales team growing. How many product managers are there (the PM to PMM ratio should be at least 4:1).  How often are there launches that need to be supported? What does the competitive landscape look like.  Factoring all of this you can get an assessment of how complex the solution is, how large the addressable market is, and how much content needs to be produced. Work that math to see how many PMMs are needed to support t...

Cultural nuances are a real thing. Get comfortable with not having the same amount of high touch, but bear in mind that the regional differences do matter. In the UK words that we would spell with a Z (materialize) are spelled with an S (materialise). These innocuous differences do matter. In a former role we sold a platform that managed entitlements, and that literally had no direct translation in French.  In many Nordic countries gifting isn't just frowned upon, it's against the law. So my biggest learnings are that you need to understand everything about doing business in a region, no...

These days everyone is remote is it's important to establish a process that works for your organization. Content and collateral can exist in so many places it can overwhelming. A sales enablement platform is essential for evergreen content. Tools like slack are great for quick updates and real time knowledge sharing (e.g. Sales just had a call where they discoverd a competitive weakness, or ran into an obstacle).  Easy access tools like battlecards are useful for regular consumption. For things like a top level strategic narrative and value centric messaging you can go as far as sending ...

Trusting the team and tracking key results and progress versus tracking what people are working on. Tracking what they are working on ends up being micromanagement. Things can change fast, especially if you're in a startup.  Stay agile, get disciplined about the key results you feel support the objective, and have your team share their progress on those. Be sure to assign ownership to those objectives. The classic V2MOM that Sales force defined had the O has Obstacles. Our CMO modified that to Ownership. If someone doesn't own a method no one owns it. Ownership drives a culture of result...

The hardest part in growth and scale is the balance between process, oversight and autonomy. A 5 person team is well aligned, you know what everyone is working on, and easily collaborate on projects. A 20 person team, not as easy. The first step once you get past a team of 7 is to start thinking about team structure and leadership structure. The team I get to serve has 6 pillars: messaging & positioning, partner marketing, customer marketing, product evangelism, market intelligence, activation and launch. Each of these pillars has a leader. In some cases it's a team of one. Other functio...

International teams are no different and should go through all the same enablement. In my experience since international teams are used to getting a lot less they are scrappy and more self sufficient. My advice is not to treat them as "international" teams, rather to carve out time to connect with those teams regularly.  Listen to the feedback from those teams, and if the business is large enough consider regional support. I've found some of the most informed and thoughtful feedback comes from international teams.

There's no room to go slow. I ensure that for a particular role the first interview after the recruiter is with the hiring manager. This gives both parties a feel for working with each other. Ideally the candidate feels a connection with the hiring manager and vice versa. If that instant connection isn't there then it's ok to lose a candidate. Don't hire in desperation. As hot as the market is, it's critical to hire the right people and not settle.

This depends on where you are in building your org, and your own experience. My path to PMM is that of a career generalist. I started my career as an engineer, then a sales engineer, then made my way to product management and marketing. I then took a left turn into consulting services before returning to product marketing. If I have a small team I will favor PMMs with some experience, but as I scale I like bringing in other perspectives and experiences into the organization.  Strong communication skills are a must regardless of your background. Hard to be successful as a product marketer...