Sharebird
Sara Rosso

Sara Rosso

at Self Employed

San Diego, CA

Sara Rosso

Self Employed

Hi all, my name is Sara Rosso. 👋

💼 Job: Sr. Director, Smartcat AI; formerly HubSpot, early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com/VIP)

📍 Location: San Diego, CA; prev. Bay Area
PMM Topics I think way too much about: KPIs / attribution, Influence vs. direct impact, messaging & positioning, PM/PMM, sales enablement <--- always happy to just talk shop / chat. PMM is not fun in a silo! :)

🍦 Favorite ice cream flavor: Anything with lots of stuff/crunch in it - have you ever tried cereal on top of ice cream?
🤔 Random: During my sabbatical I did all the coursework required for a certified financial planner - such an investment in myself/my family!
➡️ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sararosso/

Content

Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso

Self Employed | Formerly HubSpot, HP, early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • 6y

One of the biggest risks of operationalizing a GTM plan is the lack of a common understanding of the time it takes to do good marketing work, internally. Marketing shouldn't slow down product; but at the same time, the more time and advance notice marketing has, the more we're able to enrich, adapt, and customize a GTM plan appropriately. A GTM playbook is a best-case scenario and a guideline which has to be adapted rapidly and practically to the lead time available. The marketing team for WordP ...Read More

7,177 Views
Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso

Self Employed | Formerly HubSpot, HP, early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • 6y

As a fully distributed / remote company, we operate slightly uniquely than other companies - the two biggest differences are 1) we don't use email and 2) everything by default is public to the entire company. Instead of email, we publish everything on our intranet, which is naturally powered by WordPress, and it's also public to the entire company. The intranet is essentially hundreds of WordPress(.com) sites, which we call P2s after the theme they run. P2 is available for anyone to use https:// ...Read More

2,050 Views
Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso

Self Employed | Formerly HubSpot, HP, early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • 6y

See this answer for how we work as a 100% distributed company. We work a lot in "public."As for updates, the entire company publishes bi-weekly updates on a special p2/site that's meant to aggregate the most important updates from each team or division across the company. This is the opportunity for the team to highlight wins, lessons learned, or changes the rest of the company shouldn't miss. And it's great to be able to link to specific project, research, or test results for more details witho ...Read More

1,459 Views
Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso

Self Employed | Formerly HubSpot, HP, early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • 7y

Having worked on both the B2B and B2C markets, as David above says, the sales cycle length is completely different, and B2B can be weeks or months depending on the product and budget approval needed. 

With a startup you might be able to get to the decision maker or budget holder much faster than an enterprise, but depending on the product it might not be an essential buy for them depending on what stage they're in - make sure to factor in what Series / stage the startup is in to your planning. 

924 Views
Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso

Self Employed | Formerly HubSpot, HP, early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • 6y

It depends on what you'd like to accomplish - Zoom is great for video because you can shift between a very personal feeling like showing all participants on video, to more formal broadcasting with focusing on you as a single speaker or spotlighting an entire panel. I don't think Zoom's chat function is as robust as it could be compared to other tools, so if you're dependent on that to surface questions or engage customers you might look at others. We've used GoToWebinar and Crowdcast as well. If ...Read More

863 Views
Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso

Self Employed | Formerly HubSpot, HP, early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • 7y

I think you need a mix of experiences AND data to transform what might seem like different opinions into persuasive arguments with impact.  Experiences provide the context and detail, relatable quotes or example customer pain points, etc., and Data provides the measurement - how big of a problem is this? How easily can we quantify it? What impact might it have? That way it can be prioritized. In your example, perhaps a sales team says "Customers tell us they want this feature / benefit we don't ...Read More

757 Views
Sara Rosso
Sara Rosso

Self Employed | Formerly HubSpot, HP, early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • 7y

Foundational qualitative research should be done as soon as you are able, and also ahead of any major product shifts or market expansions. We've also explored qualitative research with "the ones who got away" - lost, paying customers. Understanding where we've failed them or where competition has become a better alternative has also been really helpful - sometimes it's a solution we already have that they weren't able to find easily and we can make changes without largely changing the product. T ...Read More

729 Views

Posted podcast

Working Remote for PMMs with Sara Rosso, Director of Global Product Marketing at CloudBlue

Working Remote for PMMs with Sara Rosso, Director of Global Product Marketing at CloudBlue

Connect with Sara on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sararosso/Join Sara on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/sararossoQuestions we cover in this episode: Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM? So you did you Sharebird AMA on how product marketing works at Remote companies? What’s your experience working with remote companies? We’re all remote now, but are their noticeable differences in a 100% distributed company? What are the biggest challenges or things you don't like as much? How did you all organize product launches? How do you onboard and build relationships with new team members? How do you build relationships and create excitement for campaigns? How do you work with products and build those relationships? How do you deliver a good pitch or narrative virtually? So the vaccine is rolling out, what do you think the future of work will look like? What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?