Lara McCaskill

Three words come top of mind for this one: Sales, Enablement and Ops. In a B2B company, you often have 2 (or even more) customers: Sales and Buyers. Sales can be a wealth of information and they are typically highly motivated ($$$$) to get their problems solved and are never short of providing input and feedback to Product Marketing. This can also be challenging to understand what Sales wants versus what actually address Buyer needs. Working with Sales also involves some type Sales enablement function. I've seen roles where PMM also does the enablement piece of this, however I think that really depends on the size of the sales force, type of product and how big the PMM team is. In my experience, it's most effective for PMM and Sales Enablement to partner closely together, but they are two distinct functions. Finally, there may be an Ops enablement function involved and they can be a primary stakeholder and feedback contributor, depending on the nature of the business. In B2C, the challenge is to market to consumers and they are fickle! Feedback can be hard to gather, especially from prospective customers. This is where customer research and insights are super critical for the PMM function. Brand marketing and creative also play a heavier role here and launch strategies will have different tactics involving paid media versus B2B likely involves more blog posts and events. 

This all comes down to how is the rest of the business organized. If you're organizing in a way that's incongrous to everyone else in the org, you will not be setup for success. With smaller nimble teams it's likely just based on bandwith and who has room to take things on. With larger teams, or as a team is being built out, it's best to align with your core cross-functional partners such as Product. There is usually overlap with PMMs working with 2-3 PMs. I've organized teams by product area in the past which aligned well to how Product was organized. 

The best way to assess the priorities of core PMM responsibilities against larger go-to-market launch efforts is to understand the business objectives and how these activities map to those objectives. Ideally you have clearly defined OKRs or measurable business outcomes that your activities support. For example: * Run the business initiatives have the OKRs of $XX in revenue, $ARR, or MAU, etc. - your core PMM responsibilities should ladder into this. Understand how competitive intel, research, messaging and positioning support all the specific work that directly connects to those run the business OKRs * On the flip side, launch efforts like have additional grow the business OKRs - such as increase new customer adoption by x% or grow trials by y%. It may also ladder into a revenue target as well. By understanding the relative impact of these PMM-lead activities and how they contribute to the business objectives and key results, you can start to assess how to prioritize the work. Ideally, you have a team that is aligned to the different responsibilities which allows for complete coverage across both new launch activity and core PMM/run the business activity.

The biggest opportunity to partner across marketing for a successful product launch comes down to understanding your partners' priorities. With any launch, you'll likely partner with a number of different marketing disciplines from creative, to brand, to lifecycle, demand gen, paid marketing, event marketing, and many more. Knowing where each of these teams priorities are is key to understanding how you can partner best with them and avoiding unnecessary headaches. * Are your cross-functional partners goaled against KPIs that connect to your launch? If they are, great! Now you both have a shared interest in a successful launch. Find out how their KPIs connect to your launch so you can get them on board with a solid plan. * Are your partners focused elsewhere with other priorities? Likely, yes! Find out how you can ease your asks within reason by getting ahead with a clear plan and reasonable delivery times. * Communicate early and often! I like to err on the side of over communicating in the early days of sorting out a launch plan. This may be regular Slack channel updates, or weekly emails, to the entire group. Identifying who your contributors are and who needs to be informed is a good way to get started. * You can always dial back the xf crew as you progress and people opt-out or don't need to get the play-by-play. * Another tip is, just because they aren't engaging, doesn't mean they aren't engaged or absorbing the information. Unless they actually come back and say - I don't need this information, assume they do. * Document your plan and share it out regularly for buy-in. Ask for feedback and input. This gives partners a sense of shared ownership in the success of the plan. * Be mindful that feedback does have an end date as your move through your launch stages and have dates for completing feedback. This is helpful to avoid spiraling feedback that never ends. * Have contingency plans. Things change, new information is received, dates shift. Know this going in and have backup plans for various scenarios that you can pivot to if needed.

The biggest differences in SaaS pricing and consumer software pricing can be grouped into 3 key buckets: * Discounting * SaaS discounts based on volume - e.g. price per user typically goes down the more user seats you purchase. There is also room to negotiate the pricing based on volume, term length, or if the customer is already or also purchasing other products from the same vendor. * Consumer software discounts typically come in the form of term length - e.g. the monthly cost goes down the more months you purchase up-front, such as a 1 year or 2 year subscription. * Contract Terms * SaaS contracts can be month to month, yearly, or multi-year depending on the business need and usually the business size - enterprise, mid-market, smb. * Consumer contracts are usually much simpler and non-negotiable with the ability to cancel at any time and terminate future billing periods. * Editions * These actually can be fairly similarly when you unpack the details, but are presented in different ways. Both usually follow a Good, Better, Best framework. * SaaS editions are usually aimed at enterprise customers, vs. SMBs or even start-ups with specific depth of features and capabilities aimed at these particular segments. * Consumer editions are similar, but presented as more features for more money. Of course, there's a lot more nuance to the specifics here, but this gives a high-level comparison of the big differences between SaaS and consumer software pricing.

A successful product launch should be measured across 3 key dimensions: 1) success criteria 2) measurable outcomes that PMM can influence and 3) shared understanding of business and cross-functional team goals. * Start with your ideal success criteria: what outcomes do you want to at launch and 30,60,90 days post launch? * Make these outcomes measurable and within your sphere of influence. Don’t sign up for product adoption goals if that isn’t a lever PMM can influence. * Collaborate with partners to understand their launch goals. What does product want to achieve? Understand what leadership expectations are and how this launch connects to your broader business strategy, then connect the success criteria of your launch to the top line strategy.

Measuring KPIs is an important way to tie your output to outcomes. My approach is to ensure PMM focuses on the metrics we can influence, getting buy in from cross-functional partners, and tying this to a specific time horizon, such as quarters or 1/2 year. For example: * If the primary marketing, company, product, etc. goal is to grow new customers, KPIs should align to this. In a B2B role, this could be something like increase pipeline by X% QoQ, or drive X Marketing Qualified Leads. * On the flip side, your goal is to increase revenue per customer, which would be tied to increasing product usage, such as driving % increase in MAU, or % in time spent on specific features. * Avoid committing to KPIs that don't connect to outcomes, such as produce X number of webinars, blog posts, emails, etc. While those are outputs, this type of KPI doesn't actually connect to the specific outcomes you want to get out of these outputs. * Another KPI to avoid is anything that is outside the control of PMM, such as specific feature or product launches. While the launch itself is important, the actual timing of that is usually outside PMM control and this could result in a missed KPI. * An better approach is to connect the KPI measurement to the things that can be controlled, such as readiness for launch. This could include sales enablement, beta customer acquisition, waitlist sign-ups, messaging and positioning, and post-launch targets for user adoption.