Kevin Au

At Bill.com, we work extremely close to our growth marketing teams. They are a critical partner as we launch and scale-up our growth. Both groups have their strengths. For the PMM, we have the deep knowledge about the customer needs to clearly articulate the value prop that will resonate most with this segment. For the growth marketers, they have the expertise on how to reach this segment and what is the best way to do so. It is a 50/50 partnership with co-owned KPIs and regardless of who "owns" the campaign, it requires tight partnership to be successful. I'd suggest developing a plan together to ensure alignment and leveraging the strengths of both teams.

A PMM has one of the most cross-functional roles in most organizations and developing those strong relationships with key stakeholders is critical. While there are many relationships you have to develop, I believe the top three most important relationships to cultivate and get right are: 1) Product Manager/UX designer - One of the keys to a successful product launch is to ensure you're providing the right product experience. By having a strong relationship with your PM and UX designer will allow you to effectively influence the product roadmap 2) Sales / Customer Success - Assuming you have a B2B PMM role with a salesforce, sales and customer success are your key channels to market your product as well as provide that continual customer feedback loop. 3) Growth marketer - you're ready to launch and are ready to scale. You want to be 100% aligned with your demand generation marketer to ensure you are implementing the right channel strategy to generate the buzz and awareness of your new product launch.

I develop a 1-slide messaging framework to clearly articulate the key messages. It has a few key items: 1) Key pain point / challenge you're looking to solve 2) Target segment(s) 3) Single minded proposition (SMP) 4) Reasons to believe to support your SMP 5) How is this differentiated from other competitors in the market I then shop it around with my key stakeholders (via 1:1 or in the regular team working meetings).

Throughout the project, you'll be getting feedback from multiple stakeholders (both internal and external). Everyone wants to be heard and having an open door policy is helpful. However, not all feedback is created equal so you want to identify which feedback sources are the primary and which are secondary. And it does vary as you proceed in the various stages of the product development and GTM. For example, in the early product development phase, I rely heavily on the customer feedback through our customer interviews / focus groups / surveys to ensure our team clearly understands the customers' needs. I also rely on the core team feedback that is in those same customer research sessions to help synthesize what we're hearing from the customer. Then as I prepare for the pilot and launch, I share my plan and gather feedback from all my cross-functional stakeholders (E.g., sales, customer support, marketing) to ensure we're thinking through all the details. For these sessions, i normally set a kick-off session and use the regular meeting cadence to get this feedback regularly.

Product Marketing is one of those roles that can be very different from each organization. I find the most successful way to develop a strong relationship is to show value from the start and align on your mutual goals / objectives. If there are certain functions where you have a tense relationship, i'd suggest to first understand why there is this less collaborative relationship. Is it based on some historical context (prior launch)? Is it due to a difference in role expectations? Once you've identified the possible root cause, setup time with your key stakeholder and have that open discussion. Often times, there is a miscommunication or misalignment of expectations and just having this convo to reset will help. This will allow you to wipe the slate clear and then you can rebuild that relationship built on shared objectives and open communications.

It varies as you proceed in the various stages of the product development and GTM. For example, in the early product development phase, It is more ad-hoc where I rely heavily on the customer feedback through our customer interviews / focus groups / surveys to ensure our team clearly understands the customers' needs. I gather feedback with the core team that is in those same customer research sessions to help synthesize what we're hearing from the customer. Then as I prepare for the pilot and launch, I typically share my plan and gather feedback from all my cross-functional stakeholders (E.g., sales, customer support, marketing) to ensure we're thinking through all the details. For these sessions, i normally set a kick-off session and use the regular weekly or bi-weekly meeting cadence to get this feedback regularly. For senior leadership, we have key weekly exec Ops Co meetings where you can schedule time to get feedback.