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James Winter

James Winter

VP of Marketing, Spekit

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James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
What did you wish you knew at the very beginning of your product marketing career as a Product Marketing Manager?
Some random thoughts in no particular order: *  The importance of prioritization and how to say no: you will be under constant barrage for requests from all angles: the ceo, sales, CMO etc... These requests will range from the silly to the idiotic and you will never be effective if you...more
86 Saves
James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
How do you do the first-hand research (what's your process) for developing messaging around broader buyer trends instead of buzz words with a short shelf life?
Talk to people! Talk to your customers. Do win/loss calls. Understand their pain points. Understand their eco-systems, how they acquire customers, what challenges their industry is facing. What keeps the executives up at night.  If you don't have access to the people you need, find them on lin...more
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James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
What tool do you use to store/distribute your marketing and sales assets? I'm using Sharepoint currently, but there clearly is a room for improvement. What would be your advise on the best instrument?
I've used both Showpad and Docsend in the past.  Showpad has some additional capabilities that Docsend doesn't have but Docsend could not be easier to get the sales team and SDR team to actually use. I also put all of our gated content on Docsend which allowed me to sync visit times and view...more
25 Saves
James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
How can I break the ceiling from Sr. PMM to the next level (director or team lead)?
Adding on to all of the great advice above: * Build your network: meet as many marketing leaders as you can so that when they're ready to hire someone externally you are on their list. Also get to know some good recruiters.  * Be flexible and ready to leave your current company: your cha...more
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James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
What's your best product marketing 30-60-90 day plan to make a big impact at a new company?
One thing I'd add that's very tactical to the great stuff that David has already laid out: Find your allies.  Talk to everyone within the org that you can and assemble a shortlist of people who have good understandings of things like the customers, the tech etc... Befriend a good sales rep,...more
161 Saves
James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
What are the best ways you've seen case studies organized? I'd like to put something together that will make it easy for sales people to find case studies by vertical and by use case/business goal
Build out a matrix in a spreadsheet or PDF. In my company we've done that by having use cases as the rows and verticals as the columns. So if you're looking for a case study where the main use case was driving sales in the fashion space, you just go to the intersection of those two.  I think y...more
25 Saves
James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
Knowing that marketing is always trying to quantify their metrics, how are you in Product Marketing quantifying the ROI of your work?
Hopefully I don't make this answer overly complex.  I think the more important question here is what are you actively working on? Because product marketing can cover such a wide variety of activities and tactics, we can't exactly tell you which metrics would be important.  Greg Hollander ...more
68 Saves
James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
Are you always aiming for a single persona? Or are there situations where two or more make more sense?
In my experience, it's rare that a single persona would be particularly valuable. For example, in my current role, there are at least 3-4 main personas who all have very different motivations, roles, etc...  One of the most basic examples of why you'll probably need at least two personas, at ...more
19 Saves
James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
What tools do you use to track and determine the effectiveness of your published product marketing content (white papers, case studies, data sheets etc)?

I think this has been asked elsewhere already but I use Docsend and love it. 

33 Saves
James Winter
James Winter
VP of Marketing
What is your strategy for creating dynamic, interactive "canned demos" for the sales team given that the product frequently changes?

More tactically, here's a sample template originally from Salesforce that I use for training sales on demos. 

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzSot4wxOi-VUk5TZTlwdVMyQ2M/view?usp=sharing

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Credentials & Highlights
VP of Marketing at Spekit
Product Marketing AMA Contributor
Sales Enablement
Lives In Denver, Colorado
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