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 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.

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!

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!

Great question and to be honest in 25+ years in product marketing, I'm not sure I've fully cracked the 'measurement' topic in general! That being said what I attempt to do is two things. 1) Try to 'attach' ourselves to the key business KPI's i.e Revenue, Won Deals, ACV, Time to Close etc. PMM contributes in some way to all of those so it's important to ensure your plans and your activities/.initiatives correspond with those core business objectives somehow. A good example of this might be the product enablement that PMM drives should help sales close more deals, and possibly bigger deals etc etc. Also if we do better competitive differentiation workshops, then we should have more competitive wins etc. 2) I try to have some more distinct and slightly 'softer' measures as well such as content product (5 case studies per quarter, engage with 10x customers per quarter etc etc.) These are quite quantitative and can be used as secondary metrics to help showcase productivity etc.

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.

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 think one of the key issues with growing and scaling a team is losing track of what makes a great team. This starts with creating a culture of empowerment, safety, openness, kindness, and of course collaboration! Once you have some of your 'culture fundamentals' figured out you can use these to ensure any new hires align well to those fundamentals. Poor hires (or poor 'fits') end up breaking the ability to scale up and get the most out of your team as there will be issues that slow you down. Make sure you have clarity on the type of team you want, the people that will be successful in that kind of team, and then do not compromise when putting together and growing that team! The other challenge I've seen is losing 'touch' with team members as you quickly grow to a scale where 1:1 and hands on management might become a challenge. I oversaw a team of 70+ marketers at one stage and my previous teams had been 3-7 or so. My instincts were to try and spend equal time with all team members and give them my time whenever they needed it but that worked well with a small team that was relatively flat..it doesn't scale. I quickly learned to lean more on my management team and to leverage things like skip level meetings to have time with the broader team (as needed.)