Katie Gerard

Building out a launch process is actually fairly simple in concept. The hardest part is definitely getting cross functional alignment. This process can easily take 6 months in a larger organization, but I recommend being quick and scrappy and then iterating. The steps I take: Understand what's been done before. What works, what doesn't? How do the teams in place feel about past launch efforts? Map out your launch goals, at a high level. Why are you doing product launches at all? Are they for cus ...Read More

The best way to get a handle on the success rate of your enablement program is to evaluate it both quantitatively and qualitatively. On the quant side, it's helpful to do some regular sales surveys around satisfaction, whether that's quarterly or after every launch. On a scale of 1-10, how confident do reps feel speaking about new features or going up against competitors? You should also pull metrics like competitive win rates to get a broader view of how sales is performing overall. Qualitative ...Read More

The easiest way to differentiate yourself is to have a really innovative product and solid marketing to back it up. My favorite example right now is a Klaviyo customer, Magic Spoon. They make low carb/keto diets for people on a diet but wish they weren't. On their website, they even have a tagline "Hold on to the dream." (The dream of eating sugary cereals guilt free.) They have lots of fun cereal flavors you'd associate with your childhood but they're grain free, low carb, etc. For a certain ma ...Read More

This is a great question and a super common scenario within PMM. At Klaviyo, we've played around with a lot of different launch cadences and resourcing levels for launches. Product launches tend to be more about product adoption than any short term revenue gain. Yet, everyone agrees it's important to show a strong cadence of innovation to the market. This tension is especially acute if you're talking about new functionality that's important but isn't actually opening up new pockets of revenue fo ...Read More

It depends on where these requests are coming from! I'm always cautious with competitor specific one pagers because it's so easy for these to get back to the competitor. I've personally seen slides our competitors have made about us and this is a) legally risky b) detrimental to any partnership you might have with your competitor c) super easy to debunk when you see it neatly written down! We do come up with "battlecards" for all our major competitors that Sales can use to quickly respond to som ...Read More

This is a tricky one and there are definitely some more above and also below board answers. I've known people who have made up fake identities in order to get demos from competitors. If you're not a great actor, here are some other approaches: Ask your customers. You may have a customer you won over from that competitor. Maybe you have a customer who considered your competitor and remembers their pitch. Ask your partners. Your partners often have a pretty good idea of how your shared customers f ...Read More

As a PMM, it can be frustrating to put a lot of work into something and have it sit unused. But I have a lot of empathy for my sales colleagues. Their lives are super busy and they're overwhelmed with information. It makes sense that it's hard to get their attention! When working on competitive intel for a new competitor, here are some action items that will help you to optimize sales engagement: Prioritize the right competitor. Within PMM, we get a lot of one-off requests for comp intel and we ...Read More

Competitive positioning is basically a zoomed in version of your overall positioning. If you think of a competitive matrix, your overall positioning puts you on the map. How you're positioned versus a specific competitor zooms into the matrix and describes your exact position relative to this one other specific data point. Also, all positioning is competitive in a world where you have competitors. Not everyone in your company will understand the difference and that's ok. When I think about enabl ...Read More

I typically think of direct competitors as being other players in the same category of my org that are going after an overlapping share of wallet with an overlapping group of target customers. You may also spend time on your indirect competitors or even substitute products, but you're much less likely to hear about them from your sales team day to day. There are actually a few possible goals of competitor analysis, here are some common ones I've seen in my career so far: Create battlecards and t ...Read More