Josh Colter

Manav Khurana did a call with me years ago. He asked a lot of very good questions. The one that stopped me in my tracks was this:  Who or What is the villain in your story? I think about this with every new role. What's the big story here? Who is the villain for our customers? How do we hel...more

Demand gen needs a strong POV to differentiate the company in noisy channels. Content from subject matter experts can build trust while evangelizing the brand. Here are ways PMMs can participate with campaign ideas: * Company narrative takes based on industry/market research  * Customers who a...more

1. Use cases- Document how developers can use your product in different situations.See Ask Your Developer for a really good take on how important use cases are to developers.   2. Data- developers tend to be highly skeptical. Use empirical data and engage their "problem-solver" mind...more

Strategic advice: Combine the launch and rebrand into a single narrative. Your company rebrand should allow you to position yourself within a story where your customer is the main character and you are the impact character who helps them make progress (think customer = Luke Skywalker and you = Ob...more

If your role involves writing product messaging then you should be good at writing. Writing is a necessary skill to help users understand your product and to view solving their problem through the same frame as you.  Note that there are different forms of writing competencies. Writing short, s...more

Product is comprised of people. And so it should be clear upfront that you need to start with a foundation of trust with the people in product. Take them out to coffee. Ask about what motivates them personally. What do they want to accomplish? Who do they read/follow for inspiration and growth? ...more

Mike's answer is spot on. It's not uncommon for companies to have a poor strategy or fit within their marketplace and then expect marketing to sprinkle magical growth hacker dust on it make the problem go away. To help alleviate this trend, marketers need to do two things: be good at math and spe...more

Apply agile sprint thinking to launches. You can do this by creating themes just like agile has a sprint (my team is moving to quarterly message themes). These themes encapsulate at a high level the features that the product team is working on.   This approach has a couple of benefits. First, y...more

First, make a concious decision to give them respect without demanding any in return. You don't really "deal" with them. Instead, you learn to foster a healthy and productive working relationship.   Now, treat PMs like a customer who you have to understand so you can win over. Enter into their ...more

Buyer Personas should be formatted to be easily digestable and convey key insights that help teams in your org operate more effectively. The ideal format can vary by situation, organization, insights communicated, and even business model. For example, demographic info about age and gender might b...more