Sharebird
Manav Tandon

Manav Tandon

Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS at Cisco

Dublin, CA

In a career spanning 15+ years, I have accumulated a breadth of experience across business strategy, GTM strategy, product management and product marketing. I have helped organizations build innovative products, identify growth opportunities, enter new markets successfully, execute go-to-market strategies, craft differentiated positioning and messaging narratives, and create compelling marketing content and sales enablement collateral. I have delivered results by working effectively with cross-functional stakeholders in product, sales, demand generation, digital marketing, brand marketing, customer success, pricing, analyst relations, and press relations, among others. And I have built, managed and coached teams with a growth mindset to deliver outsized impact by leveraging the unique strengths of individuals and empowering them with decentralized decision-making.

Content

Manav Tandon
Manav Tandon

Cisco Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS | Formerly Adobe, Samsung, Verifone • 4y

Here's a non-comprehensive list of KPIs to choose from: Launch content # of press articles mentioning your product # of views on blog posts # of visitors to landing pages # of downloads of gated content # of social media post impressions # of users adopting the product/feature 30-60-90 days post-launch Demand Generation # of sourced MQLs (through activities like webinars) # of sourced SQLs (through activities like webinars) Position in Analyst Reports (e.g. Gartner, IDC, etc.) Position in Softwa ...Read More

22,069 Views
Manav Tandon
Manav Tandon

Cisco Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS | Formerly Adobe, Samsung, Verifone • 4y

Build relationships with your stakeholders in Product Management, Sales and other Marketing teams (Content, Digital, DG, Integrated, etc.). Ask them to invite you to meetings and listen intently to identify areas where they need help, and volunteer to help with with those areas - e.g. market trends analysis, customer segmentation, competitive analysis, content creation, sales enablement collateral, etc. In short, take the initiative to rise above your title and rank and prove to your stakeholder ...Read More

6,965 Views
Manav Tandon
Manav Tandon

Cisco Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS | Formerly Adobe, Samsung, Verifone • 4y

You should seek out product marketing specialist roles. In such a role you'll get to help product marketing managers conduct market, customer and competitive research, analyze data on product adoption and new customer acquisition, and develop marketing content and sales collateral. You'll have opportunities to learn from the PMMs the more strategic aspects of product marketing, i.e. customer segmentation, positioning and messaging, while you deliver tactical and tangible assets like drafting blo ...Read More

2,333 Views
Manav Tandon
Manav Tandon

Cisco Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS | Formerly Adobe, Samsung, Verifone • 4y

It's hard to pick one skill... product marketers have to master a variety of skills to be effective in their roles - influencing people, messaging, content creation, sales enablement, opportunity assessments, competitive analysis, etc. But if I had to pick one, I would advise product marketers to continuously refine their messaging skills. And what I mean by messaging is the ability to simplify complex topics and subjects into clear, concise and compelling stories and narratives that will resona ...Read More

1,677 Views
Manav Tandon
Manav Tandon

Cisco Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS | Formerly Adobe, Samsung, Verifone • 4y

The decisions you make are a combination of your circumstances and the options available to you. I think luck and timing is always an overlooked factor. I recently read Einstein's biography, and it struck me how fortutious it was that he failed to get a job as an academic after graduating from college and had to settle for a patent clerk job at the Swiss patent office. If it weren't for this turn of events, he might not ever have come up with the theory of general relativity, because the key ins ...Read More

1,648 Views
Manav Tandon
Manav Tandon

Cisco Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS | Formerly Adobe, Samsung, Verifone • 4y

If you have it, display it. It never hurts to try to differentiate yourself from the competition in a highly competitive field, especially if you don't have relevant bachelor's degree in business/marketing or an MBA. Some employers and hiring managers will care, others won't. But nobody will see it in a negative light.

837 Views
Manav Tandon
Manav Tandon

Cisco Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS | Formerly Adobe, Samsung, Verifone • 4y

In my experience, hiring managers don't know for sure how many years of experience is actually required for a role... it's not an exact science. What's more important is to demonstrate that you can do the work, that you can fulfill the requirements of the job. Find out what's relevant from your past experience that will demonstrate that you have the experience and skills to do the job, and that should hopefully get you in the door.

506 Views
Manav Tandon
Manav Tandon

Cisco Head of Product Marketing, Collaboration SaaS | Formerly Adobe, Samsung, Verifone • 4y

A couple of other areas beyond customer that PMMs and PMs can find common interests in are market trends and competitive landscape dynamics. PMMs can provide conduct their own research and provide insights around the directions the current market is heading towards, or even suggest adjacent markets that could be served by the product. Similarly, PMMs can bring insights into the competitive landscape, including, but not limited to, their feature sets, brand reputation, pricing and packaging, and ...Read More

426 Views