Melinda Chung

For myself, I track based on completions of specific milestones (specific deliverables we planned for - i.e. sales play development, enablement, strategy completed, etc) that were led by myself and/or my team. I also track my team’s engagement score in our annual surveys and work towards improvi...more

People often say that you can get into organizations by either function or domain. If you haven’t been in SaaS before, get into a SaaS company through your functional expertise - product marketing. I would recommend moving into a SaaS company that does both B2C and B2B. You have the product mark...more

The key differences in Sr PMMs and PMMs come down to ownership, self-sufficiency and complexity. As a Sr PMM, you will be expected to self-sufficiently drive projects on your own without significant guidance from your manager. You will also be expected to be able to lead and own more complex ini...more

With every new job, you have a period during which you need to prove yourself. As PMMs, we gain influence and prove ourselves by knowing the customer, market, business, and product better than others in the company. Figure out which one of those matters most to your company and your leadership, b...more

People often say that you can get into organizations by either function or domain. If you haven’t been in SaaS before, get into a SaaS company through your functional expertise - perhaps marketing, demand generation, or operations, for instance. From there, you can move around. The core competen...more

Yes, this is a tough one. I would suggest doing the following to gain some more recent “management” experience: 1. Hire an intern - either summer or part-time 2. Manage agencies or contractors 3. If side projects are possible at your company, see if anyone wants to work on a PMM side proj...more

Great question. I haven’t focused on this, but here are three actions that I’ve intentionally done: 1. Show up on video in meetings where important leaders are present so I get visibility (literally) 2. Set up virtual 1:1’s with people I haven’t seen or connected with in awhile 3. Comment...more

Required Hard (Functional) Skills: * Analytical — both quantitative and qualitative. From financial modeling to behavioral analysis to awareness campaign tracking to focus group findings, you’re going to need to be able to dissect data, interpret it, and figure out what the implication...more

Here are two opposite examples of people getting promoted to more senior product marketing roles: 1. “Nancy” was extremely motivated and driven to get promoted. She proactively raised this in our regular check-in’s, and I asked her to create a plan with milestones against her annual obj...more

1. Ensure that your focus areas are aligned with what is most important to the company. For example, if Enterprise is the core segment, you might not get the support and interest you need/want if you are focused on B2C. Doing what is most important to the company means that you are delivering val...more