Nate Franklin

I'm glad you asked about KPIs. As Product Marketers, we don't have the luxury of a single metric or even a couple metrics. We own the health of the story & vision our company is selling. I say health intentionally. It's not just that we own the story (we do) but we also need to make sure it's landing amongst our key segments, that we have the right segments, our sellers can actually deliver the story (if you're B2B) and on and on. And it's something that we need to be monitoring regularly -- ...Read More

I see those as different skills sets and usually different teams but I don't think there are strict lines in between them. Product Marketers should own the story, the core positioning and messaging, the surrounding context / thought leadership and GTM strategy. Ideally there are counterparts in integrated marketing, campaigns or growth marketing to help make that come to life.  But I think there's also what is ideal on paper and what is practical in real life. More often then not those integrate ...Read More

Let me preface my response and say that B2C is not the bulk of my experience, but here's how I would approach it. You have to talk to customers. I would start by trying to understand what customers alternatives are to your product and how much time, energy and of course $$ it costs them. That's a good way to think about a starting place. Then running a pricing survey and ultimately a price test is the way to go. Depending on your product, having multiple levels will make sense - but you probably ...Read More

Friction with stakeholders definitely comes with our jobs. While it can be stressful, frustrating and evening maddening, ultimately I think it also makes us better PMMs. That's my biggest suggestion for how to approach these situations. Ask yourself what can you learn from their pushback? A few years ago I had a sales leader tell me on sales leadership meeting that our play for a specific competitor was completely broken and he was instructing his team not run it anymore. Obviously having this b ...Read More

Love this question. I believe that a major difference between successful PMMs and those who struggle is their relationship with the Sales org.  Here are some ideas that can help you build trust with sales: Help win a deal - This might mean some busy work creating slides, joining a call to offer a new perspective or sitting down with a seller to game plan an account. Often times, it's work that's not directly related to your day to day but can translate to a salespersons takehome pay. And money t ...Read More

I've found that running a price / packaging revamp in-house versus with a consultant depends on three factors: Assigning a DRI to lead the project and having a clear decision matrix Ability to run a pricing study & impact analysis Scope of risk of the change / ability to run pricing as a test Ultimately, this is a judgement call - but clearly if you are not feeling confident in any of the above - you should take a hard look at whether or not it is right time to do this project. Here's my bre ...Read More

Competitive Pricing Intelligence is tricky because that information is often confidential so you cannot just go ask a customer or a partner for it. However, it's natural to come across it and there are some ways I've found to go find it. Talk to your sellers. Customers (existing and prospective) will often share pricing of alternatives in regular conversation as they negotiate a deal -- you may not always get specifics, but if you get enough ballpark estimates you can get a pretty good sense of ...Read More

Let's just agree that no likes paying more for the same thing and no one likes having things taken from them. So your job is 1) to not let them see it that way, 2) decide a method for grandfathering customers in and/or 3) be willing to take a bit of PR hit. Regardless of what you choose, you need to give customers time to adjust - the larger the change, the more time they need. For #1 -- Ideally you can do this after a major launch / release which introduces new uses cases to your product. That ...Read More

Love this question! Definitely a daunting task for any PMM. Here are my top three suggestions: 1) Incorporate customers 2) Get sellers to present 3) Make it a competition. Incorporate Customers - This can be hard to do but it will go a long way to making it land. In the past, I've done this with a video showing a bunch of customers talking about their business and the challenges they are facing. You could also invite a customer for a fireside chat and be sure to ask them questions that hit on ke ...Read More