Naman Khan

There is a ramp plan that I like & have used many times, both for myself and members of the team. Like most things that are awesome, it takes the form of a very simple looking table. 3 Columns: People: Meet with stakeholders and the team I will be working with, understanding their needs & determine how to best work with each person Product: Learn the product, value prop, messaging, pitch and know how to do a killer demo Business: Understand the buyer journey, key metrics, market and all ...Read More

I’m a big believer in customer research as a part of the overall launch plan. It’s tempting to make decisions based on “I think” or “I like” but in most cases, the PMM is not the target audience so it’s important to balance a convicted point of view with actual customer signal.  At Dropbox, we work with our Customer Intelligence team to do quant & qual research across areas like: value prop definition, messaging, creative brand and even perform research early in the pre-build phase to help i ...Read More

There are 3 that I couldn’t live without:Total Project Manager (TPM): This is the “quarterback” of the launch, they own the master launch plan, ensure dependencies are captured, establish alignment & drive accountability. When I was at Salesforce, we assigned a TPM for Dreamforce every year from within the PMM team and it was a key to a successful launch across the exec keynote, breakout sessions, analyst briefings, web & more. Workstream DACI: This is a comprehensive list of the various ...Read More

In terms of similarities, I think the craft of Product Marketing stays the same across B2C & B2B (SMB & ENT). The functional competencies required are generally consistent: Target Market Definition, Audience Definition, Pain Point/Needs Definition, Value Prop Definition, Core Messaging & Positioning, Core Content Development, Launch Planning etc. In fact, I have found that PMM’s with B2C backgrounds that move to B2B perform exceptionally well! One theory is that Product Marketing has ...Read More

Yes! Here are a few examples, mostly B2B SaaS. Asana: I love how they take, what is a horizontal app, and position it to address specific use cases by function & persona. Whether the target user is in Sales, Product, Operations, HR or some other function, the PMM team at Asana know your top use cases and help you understand how Asana can help. Notion: Also do a great job positioning a horizontal product but the highlight for me is the core content & messaging. Its so human and straightfo ...Read More

First, I would start with the customer in mind, develop a clear understanding of who they are & what they care most about. If your target customer is an IT Leader in a large enterprise, they might be more open to regular updates & even expect them from their vendors. At Microsoft, we would send weekly updates to these customer audiences including detailed product updates, it was the right cadence for this audience as they really valued constant information in their function. If however y ...Read More

I approach competenices in 2 areas: Functional and Core. Functional competenices are specific to the role, so for PMM these would include messaging, pricing, content etc. I actually did a session on these last year Core competenices are applicable across roles and are usually defined at the company level, like collaboation, managing ambiguity, decision making etc. For PMM, there are a handful of competenices I think are "foundational" in nature across both areas: Functional: Target Market & ...Read More

At Dropbox, PMM maps to the Product/Design/Engineering organization and reports into Marketing. Our pricing teams report into an adjacent team to Marketing and we have PMM's aligned to work on packaging. For the PMM team, we also focus on balancing the work we do with Product across "pre build" where we provide the voice of the customer (ie, target segment & audience, challenges/pain points, competitive landscape, market opportunity etc) to help inform product roadmap & the work we do wi ...Read More

It's tough to answer broadly as different business will have different needs but if I were to pick one area that PMM can uniquely add value its: A compelling understanding of the customer. There are so many teams that have knowledge & insight into the customer but PMM is in a unique position to synthesize customer insight across several areas including product, sales, success, support, market & competition and more. It takes a ton of work and time to develop this level of customer knowle ...Read More

Great question! Far too often, major product launches end up being HQ centric, with launch events at HQ, customers on stage that are from the same city at HQ, execs that are all based in HQ etc. The irony is that for most SaaS companies, the majority of their customers are nowhere near the HQ! During my time as a PMM at Microsoft, I was able to be part of some awesome international launch moments that reflected a non-HQ centric model, also at Salesforce I think we did a great job and internation ...Read More