Liz Gonzalez

PMM can influence several touchpoints across the enterprise sales motion. PMM’s biggest impact will likely vary widely depending on the business stage. Identifying and anticipating the needs of each person in the buying group and building appropriate content and messaging and aligning that to the sales process will be key. Adding value through the enterprise sales cycle can be done in a number of different ways including managing standardized Request for Proposal (RFP) responses, building a partnership with analyst relations team to help drive analyst outlook, and enabling the sales team with a differentiated story that speaks to large business impacts with solid proof points. I’d recommend analyzing your current sales motion today, what’s the biggest area of impact you find? Is there enough pipeline coverage? What are your conversion and win rates, can they be improved? What objections do your sales teams need to overcome? Is your message resonating in the market?

Ideal customer profile (ICP) is a great way to focus on the most valuable prospects likely to purchase your product and align all areas of the Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy on targeting those accounts. I recommend taking a three-pronged approach when it comes to collecting data for ICP. 1) Do the quantitative analysis 2) Conduct internal interviews from sales and account managers 3) Talk to customers. You’ll then start to see some trends across several attributes like industry; use case; tech stack; regions, growth rate; etc. It’s always good to think about your future ICP as well when designing and implementing and ICP so you’ll have some room for growth. Ask yourself what your most valuable prospects will look like in 6 - 9 months? Is your product changing? Is your company entering a new region? Launching a new product line? All these will have an impact on your future ICP. And always, always, always identify key stakeholders early on in the process as implementing ICPs is a cross-functional project and requires collaboration to get an ICP successfully implemented across many GTM teams.

One of the key areas of differentiation is the buying group involved with a larger organization which typically lengthens the sales cycle. It’s critical to understand who are the key players in your buying group at an enterprise level organization. You’ll likely need to build business impact messaging and content for executives/c-suite in addition to the economic buyer and end user as enterprise sales motions typically require senior leadership review and input. Enterprises also usually require more steps during the sales process, for example sometimes they require a Proof of Concept (PoC) or they cannot move forward with a vendor unless there is a Master Services Agreement (MSA) in place. Oftentimes, they have some type of legal or procurement step that requires additional time and process. Larger enterprises also must adhere to compliance standards and regulations. Most likely it will involve folks from the IT organization, therefore it’s best to have an understanding on how your product manages data security and privacy, integrates with their existing tech stack, administration, etc.

When it comes to hiring a segment PMM like an Enterprise Product Marketer, one key trait I look for is someone who is problem-solver. As an enterprise PMM, you’ll need to identify and investigate business issues, read through the data, and solve challenges or make appropriate suggestions and be able to pivot when needed to get the desired results. I would also prioritize communication and story-telling abilities. From internal enablement to GTM functions-– a PMM needs to tell a compelling story with a POV to spur action.

It can be hard to measure effectiveness of an asset, launch or campaign in longer sales cycles because attribution is tricky in a 6+ month sales cycle. Measuring the number of touchpoints that influences customer behavior spanning a quarter or two will show you the bigger picture of the pipeline you have influenced. Expect to see bookings more than a quarter out during the enterprise sales cycle, but you can still measure “created pipeline” and “influenced pipeline'' in quarter. Additionally, you can also report on cumulative bookings at the close each quarter or report a 6-9 month roll-up report to see how a campaign is performing and contributing to the bottom line.

This is something you'll see often in a certain space with high competition, often times products can do more or less the same things with a few differentiating elements. You'll have to ensure you cover the basics of "what is the job-to-be done" so people can understand your product can achieve what they're looking but find ways to incorporate your special sauce too. Some of it will be your brand tone helping that brand identity come through and some of it will be what makes you different and lean into the outcomes you provide for customers. For example we use this message: "Take the guesswork your of quality assurance" -- because we heard from our customers they felt like a lot of the time they we're guessing/assuming so we wanted to let them understand our product helps eliminate that ambiguity for them.

If your product doesn't have the innovation on it's side to highlight I'd recommend turning to customer win feedback to learn why your product was selected and lean into those differentiators. It could be intangible differentiation like costs, ease of doing business with your company, excellent service. Or you could offer some of these non-competitive features like a native solution, more flexible/integrated solution, a better user experience, expertise, etc -- there's always a reason why people choose your product so don't be afraid to say what it is even if it's not a shiny new, super cool feature.

Lean into the customer pain. Don't just use that to craft a nice 'benefits' list...use it to evoke a sense of "oh they understand what I'm going through or what I want to achieve" with your messaging. Quick example for illustrative purposes: Pain: "My quality of service is going down, and I'm not understanding what's going on" Plain Benefit: Gain visibility into important quality metrics Benefit with emotion: Coach agents with data that pinpoint exactly where training efforts are needed As a leader, you want your team to succeed, gaining visibility is great but it's truly what you do with that data that matters. If we can help Managers use the data to be a better leader and coach for better outcomes that is a win-win and makes the leader and agent feel more successful in their jobs.

Our stakeholders typically involve the big 3 which include Sales, Product and Marketing. Each product PMM works with their counterpart Product Manager to learn about the latest product developments, what's coming ahead and how it's differentiated from the competitor landscape. Our sales folks are involved for stress testing what this looks and feels like in real-world conversations, as well as getting insight into what is resonating with prospects -- we're looking for the 'ah-ha' moment when it clicks for them. And last but not least, we're plugging into our overall market narrative and vision of our brand at the highest level from the marketing team to ensure consistency and keeping that drumbeat going in a crowded market landscape.

Yes, we have used AI available to help us in crafting messaging - we're bringing AI powered CX to the market so naturally it makes sense of us to learn to use it to help our day-to-day jobs internally as well. I recommend testing it out if you haven't already, it's not a replacement for developing your insights and differentiation...and of course you need to human review. But, we do see that AI helps our writing to be more concise, and when you've hit a creative block it's a great way to get a fresh idea or spin on messaging. Often in marketing we can get caught up in jargon and end up all saying the same thing sometimes so having AI can help eliminate some of that.