Jeremy Wood

This is definitely one of the trickier elements of sales enablement and the quantifiable value driven through product marketing into sales enablement. In short much like the majority of PMM KPI's and metrics, its hard to have 'absolute' metrics but I have no hesitation in owning the influence on key business metrics by way of strong sales enablement. A good example of this is things like decreased Time To Close (TTC), increased Average Contract Value (ACV), and higher win rates. If PMM is enabling sales in the most impactful and effective way, with the strongest value propositions, the most disruptive competitive differentiators, and the most aligned messaging to the customer..then metrics like the ones above will happen! There are alway 'softer' metrics you can use too like attendance (of enablement sessions) and content downloads/usage through your content/enablement portal such as Highspot but in my opinion the real value shows through the key business metrics..more revenue, quicker, and stickier!

I always like to go back to basics and follow the same principals that we as PMM's follow when it comes to positioning to our customers. What is the customers pain point? What use cases are they trying to solve for? How can our products/solutions help them achieve their key business objectives? If we take those similar principles and apply them to an enablement curriculum you ensure you're aligning and delivering value to sales. * How are you helping them? * What will they be able to achieve from being enabled? (i.e more deals, higher contract value, close deals quicker etc) Lastly, pay attention to some of the process/frameworks that sit around enablement. What is the best frequency (to avoid burnout and sales switching off or not showing up) and what level of training is needed for a given audience. Make sure these are well thought out, calendared well in advance, and appropriate amount of guidelines provided leading up to session (and after) to ensure the highest level of success.

This is a great question and probably one of the hardest to actually achieve depending on the topic and the environment you're doing the enablement in. I think the trick is to ensure THEY know why they're there and why it will be beneficial for them to pay attention! The same way you would always design your product messaging, value proposition etc around the customer and the benefits they will get from your products, make sure you are clearly articulating what the sales teams are going to get out of these enablement sessions. Speak their language! "You will be able to sell more x product when we're done" and "You will be able to retire more quota, do bigger deals, and sell faster once you go through this session" and the like. This will help reinforce 'why they should care' and set the right expectation around it being of value to them!

You have to be very clear up front around the objectives of the enablement effort itself. That is to say if you're running an enablement session on X product and its for sales that are brand new to the product, then outline within the calendar invite itself that this is a '101 level' training and you should not expect deep dive nor overly technical information to be part of the delivery. This helps level set first and foremost what they're going to get out of the session (and what they aren't!) I've always also found it helpful to have a really strong opening slide/talktrack around what they should expect to learn from the given session. Lastly, be sure to finish with 'Find out more' type resource slides and even better, when will there be further learning delivered? i.e if this was a 101 session, when is the 201 session etc? That lets them know that this is just the beginning and there's plenty more to come!

This is a great and highly relatable question as I've been a product marketer both at HQ (central) as well as in the region and this has happened frequently! As a 'central' product marketing team rolling out a product or solution in to the regions I think the first thing thats really important is to value the expertise of the regional PMM's. One of the core responsibilities of these teams is their regional market knowledge and expertise! They know the market best and also know what solutions/products would likely be successful in their regions (and why.) Consult with these teams as much as possible by way of your launch strategy. Sometimes the insights you get from these consultations are invaluable in HOW these products get rolled out. For instance it might just be a fairly small pricing & packaging or bundling tweak that needs to be made to make it more tangible in a particular country or region. Or something similarly minor. On the flip side if there is absolutely no product:market fit or one which might be a ways off (I've often seen this with different levels of market maturity and that dictating which products would work or not) the regional teams have a duty to raise those concerns and articulate why they won't be prioritising this roll out. I can't think of a time where I've seen pushback from product leadership or other leaders of of a business where they were being given clear indications that a product won't succeed and thus save their marketing spend, R&D, and future revenue aspirations by focusing on other markets! Just make sure you put forward a strong and clear business case on why this product isn't a good fit and thus less of a priority and show the trade offs if you were to have to focus on it and I would be surprised if they pushed back.

Probably an obvious answer but for me it's always started with the talent..people people people. Poor hires have always plauged folks and its very hard to translate that into high performing teams. Spend the time defining exactly what you need and the right fit of PMM that will be able to deliver on your expectations. Sometimes you're forced to make compromises (levels, salary, backgrounds, locations etc) but try to maintain a core set of skills and capabilities that will be the foundation of then growing these team members into strong PMM's. I'm a big believer in 'culture fit' as well and to not be swayed purely by experience or an impressive resume/LinkedIn profile. Through screens/interviews spend time on whether this person would add to the culture of the team! Once you have the right people as your foundation it's much easier to distribute responsibilities based on the key objectives of the business!

The biggest one I've seen not just with new programs but existing is not incorporating/including sales into the plan itself! I've found in my experience that sales can be less trusting of marketing/product marketing "telling them" what to do vs having some buy in to the process. I've always found consulting with sales leaders or a few 'ambassadors' to be very handy! They will also act as advocates to ensure you get strong attendance and participation from the rest of the sales teams. Also include sales in your actual enablement! i.e did someone just land a great deal or new customer? Have them come and speak to their peer group about it. What worked? What didn't? How can we replicate what worked?? Hearing this from their peers will be much more appreciated then having a non-sales person (i.e PMM) tell them! Find the right balance of where sales themselves can lead vs when PMM is the true domain expert and needs to lead!

In my experience customer testimonials and case studies are always the #1 most requested asset from sales. In a couple of my roles we ended up polling the sales teams on what their most requested item(s) might be from Product Marketing (because we were all bombarded with various requests!) This way we could stack rank them and focus on one or two key items based on the inputs. Furthermore this gave us a strong mechanism to take back to Sales when they demanded more items or ones not prioritised (i.e 'you told us that x and y are your key asks!") But it shouldn't just be about delivering on what they want and in an ideal world you would help quantify the value of any of these assets including case studies. i.e Did they help close deals? Is there any revenue attribution you can put against these assets? What is the ROI on case studies? etc. Outside of robust tooling that helps you with attribution this is often very difficult to track but putting some level of rigour into quantifying the value helps you align better with Sales and also provide insights in to the value of any given asset!

I'm not sure I've ever used a 'system' but I would say that alignment with product is key! This isn't just around roadmaps and product timelines it's for everything from product development all the way through launch and beyond. Product Marketing is an invaluable resource for product to have 'at the table' to ensure everything from product:market fit, positioning, messaging, and so much more. So many 'mistakes' can be caught early if PMM is part of early conversations (earlier the better!) So from that alignment comes a regular interlock and with that strong comms etc. By and large this will take care of all updates, timeline adjustments and so on.

I touched on this briefly as a response to another (scaling a product marketing team) question but a lot of what I've seen from a hiring perspective is a lack of research into the company and some of the core aspects of the business they're trying to get hired into. Obviously it has to be public facing information and they shouldn't be expected to know all the moving parts of the business but I've interviewed seasoned PMM's who really couldn't 'pitch' some of our core (and best known) products back to me in any conceivable way. They're too reliant on their experience and their resume to do some research on the company they're interviewing with and I think that's a huge flaw. The other one that I'm particularly picky with is passion. I want to see genuine excitement for the role. Why are they SO excited to join this company and go after this opportunity? Are they genuinely passionate about the opportunity? Its really easy to see the ones that aren't even if they're trying to be. I often find younger PMM's are way more genuinely excited about an opportunity but seasoned PMM's might have lost that spark.