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Kristen Kanka

Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions, Morningstar

About

Hi! I’m Kristen Kanka, Head of Enterprise Software Product Marketing at Morningstar, Inc. I manage three teams of product marketers and a creative group. In my role I oversee product launches, campaigns, and lifecycles across our Enterprise Softwa......more

Content

What are the key things (traits, skills, experience) you prioritize / look for when hiring? How can we best assess during the interview process? Are there any specific questions you like to ask or things to look out for?

Morningstar Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions • January 26

Storytelling is the biggest trait is look for. I want all of my product marketers to be able to tell stories that anyone can follow that inspire action. Everyone I interview is asked to provide a writing sample so I can see if they’ve got “it.” The next trait is problem solving: In every intervi......Read More

775 Views

What have been your biggest learnings on scaling a business globally?

Morningstar Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions • January 26

The most important thing is understanding that regions work at different paces—the rate of acceleration between role types and career progression. And it’s also important to understand the hierarchies of every region: While it might be OK in the US, for example, to get direct answers from team me......Read More

741 Views

When building a team, how would you ideally split responsibilities? By product line? By PMM function (CI, enablement, GTM, etc)?

Morningstar Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions • January 26

I love this question – and I am going to take a different approach to my answer here. One of the things I think product marketers can struggle with is responsibility versus authority. To be effective in their role, product marketers must be highly collaborative, lead and influence people who don’......Read More

733 Views

What are the three most important metrics to measure the impact of a product marketing team?

Morningstar Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions • January 26

1. Revenue - this should specificially be marketing contributed or influenced. 2. Retention - this is typically a percentage and the target number will be dependent on the maturity of your prodcut line. Its also possible to see this target exceed 100% if you are increasing your price o......Read More

705 Views

What are the biggest challenges in growing and scaling a team? What were your biggest obstacles and how did you overcome them?

Morningstar Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions • January 26

The biggest challenge for me is scaling my management style as the team has grown. It’s not easy! I want to be a manager who’s responsive to the needs of my direct reports, wherever they are on their career journey. More-tenured people need a sounding board, and reassurance in their plans, wherea......Read More

650 Views

I've seen more work going into smaller regions that may not yield a high ROI (more enablement material, training is required w/ the smaller regions). Any recommendations on how a team can use their resources and time wisely when covering a global market while ensuring that each of the regions feel supported.

Morningstar Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions • January 26

I talked above about regional nuances, and how understanding those aspects of a region are crucial, but that doesn’t mean a huge shift in strategy is needed for every region. I think that if you build a strategy made from a modular set of parts, you can then deploy those parts across regions with......Read More

272 Views

Credentials & Highlights

Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions at Morningstar

Formerly CaptureX, Medline Industries

Product Marketing AMA Contributor

Building a Product Marketing Team

Studied at Bachelor of Science from Eastern Illinois University

Lives In Chicago, IL

Hobbies include Cooking, Baking, Squeezing Puppies, Wrapping Presents

Knows About Team building, Business Planning and Strategy, Cross team collaboration, Market Sizin......more

Speaks English

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