Sean Lauer

Before launching a product, it's important to conduct thorough testing and validation. Gathering feedback from the target audience can reveal valuable insights that can be used to improve the product. When collecting feedback, focus on product functionality, overall experience, and perceived value. * Closed alpha or beta tests with a select group of trusted customers or partners can uncover bugs, usability issues, or potential enhancements. It's important to include participants with a diverse range of user personas to capture different use cases. * Conducting pilot programs or limited releases can provide insights into longer-term product use and value. This involves allowing potential customers to use the product in real-world scenarios, often at a reduced price or for free. It's important to gather feedback not only on technical aspects, but also on users' understanding and perception of the product's value proposition. This information can inform marketing and sales strategies. Maintaining open communication channels with participants, acknowledging feedback, and demonstrating responsiveness can help build trust and transform early testers into product champions upon launch.

When entering a competitive market, it's crucial to carefully evaluate your launch messaging to ensure maximum impact. There are three key factors to consider: 1. Clarity and relevance - your message must be clear and address the primary pain points of your target audience. Avoid jargon and buzzwords that may confuse your value proposition. 2. Differentiation - it's important to clearly articulate what sets your product apart from your competitors, highlighting unique features or benefits. 3. Resonance and memorability - your message should emotionally connect with your audience and be memorable, leveraging relatable stories or scenarios. By effectively incorporating these three factors, you can increase your product's visibility and desirability in an already crowded market.

There's nothing that says gathering intel in standard ways isn't ethical or fair. There are definitely some tactics that might straddle the line and a few that go way over the line that should obviously be avoided. I would rely on approaches that are very common, ethical, and effective: * Win/loss interviews * Seller interviews * Analyst inquiries * Analyst category/industry analyses * Investor resources * Using competitor products (if possible) * Competitor websites * Competitor community forums * Industry community forums * Social media * YouTube * Media reviews This is just a start, but there are many ways to gather intel that will work no matter your product. Also, check out a product like Crayon that will help you supercharge your efforts if you have limited capacity.

As the first Head of PMM in a startup, you should use a structured approach over your first 30, 60, and 90 days: * Day 0-30: Learning & discovery—Focus on learning as much as possible. Don't worry about your impact at this point. It's your job to learn in order to make more informed decisions and build an effective plan. * Key actions: * People * Familiarize with company tech, culture, people * Stakeholder and customer conversations * Meet and assess marketing team * Understand sales, marketing, and product roles and responsibilities * Establish rhythm of business & team culture Product * Product and metrics deep dive * Understand customer journey * Analyze marketing data and effectiveness * Market & competitor analysis Plan * Review existing sales and marketing materials and strategy * Day 31-60: Strategic planning & alignment—Now that you have a basic understanding of the landscape, it's time to start thinking about strategy and diving deeper into the GTM motion. * Key actions: * People * Ongoing customer & stakeholder conversations Product * Further market & competitor analysis * Examine tech stack and operations Plan * Assess marketing objectives * Evaluate resources (people, tech, budget) * Understand revenue model * Day 61-90: Execution & optimization—It's time to start creating some small wins as you build toward a more comprehensive strategy. * Key actions: * People * Celebrate team wins and reinforce culture Product * Additional customer conversations Plan * Optimize existing PMM efforts * Upgrade tech stack * Monitor revenue model * Key deliverables by day 90 (draft or final state): * Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) * Positioning and messaging framework * Product release process, including tiering structure * Customer testimonials/quotes * Competitive landscape overview * Website and core asset inventory and analysis * Plan for next quarter

Ideally, your narrative should actually be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to differentiation. Features can easily be copied. As this question states, it often leads to products being essentially the same across a competitive set. The components of your narrative—the story and the reason why your product exists—can be the difference maker in conversations with prospects. What does your product stand for? What is the driving force behind your product strategy and the value you want to create for users/customers? You may have the same features as a competitor, but my guess is you don't have the same vision for solving your customers' problems. When that vision resonates with more customers, you'll find that it can make the difference between winning and losing. 

When managing a PMM team that covers multiple products or is matrixed, high-level or aggregate metrics are key. While more granular data may be needed to drive specific metrics, you need to measure the team at a higher level to measure overall team health. By looking at team-level metrics, leaders can get valuable insights into how their PMM team is doing. Here are some examples: * Team NPS (by internal stakeholder groups) * Adoption of new features * Product usage (DAU or MAU) * Customer retention * Lead gen and/or conversion rates * Sales revenue and growth Then measure at the team level and drill down to understand drivers. A mix of high-level and granular metrics gives you a complete view of the PMM team’s performance so you can see the impact of your strategies and initiatives across the business while also zooming in on areas that need attention and optimization. By using these metrics PMM teams can align to company goals, drive real outcomes and continuously add to the company’s success. When showing the impact of a PMM team through these metrics there are a few approaches: * Regular reporting through a single source of truth or dashboard (i.e. Google Sheet, Slides, Notion doc, etc.) * Case studies and success stories to make it more concrete * Customer research and reporting to quantify the impact beyond the metrics * Education to explain how PMM impacts the customer journey and company direction

One of the key things to consider with any information provided to a sales team is making sure you answer two questions: * Why does it matter? * What should they do with it? When it comes to competitive intel, keep in mind the following factors to deliver value to sales: * Timeliness * Impact * Action Is the intel you are providing timely? Is it new and relevant or is it old news? If it's old news and most sellers are already aware, but you still think it's valuable, think about just adding it to background material as part of a more comprehensive update. Emphasize the intel that's going to matter most. Is it impactful? Is it something that will help win more deals or are you just adding more noise to their day-to-day? Sellers get a ton of information thrown at them and you need to make sure what you're sharing is worth their while. Make sure the intel you prioritize is something that can make them better sellers. Is it actionable? Is the intel you're sharing something that a seller can use in their sales motion to win more deals or is it just something that's nice for them to know? If it's actionable, make sure it's clear how they should use it. If it's not actionable, maybe just add it to background material as part of a more comprehensive update. 

The most important resource for competitive positioning is battle cards. It's the best summary and most actionable document (or group of documents) that can drive impact quickly. Some important components of battle cards are: * Top competitor profiles (firmographics) * Quick dismiss responses to common objections about your product vs the specific competitor * Wedge questions to de-position each competitor * Recent news so sellers can stay up to date Beyond those core components, teams might also find it valuable to include other information in battlecards like: * Competitor narratives * Links to competitive materials * Pricing and packaging comparison * Competitive demos * Win/loss analyses Other documents that can be helpful in the sales process are: * One pagers that are specific to each competitor and why customers should choose you * Longer-form competitive narrative vs a specific competitor (or competitors) that allows for more of an in-dpeth positioning story * Quarterly (or some other pre-determined frequency) executive summaries to inform executive leadership about the competitive landscape and allow them to make better decisions At the end of the day, it's up to PMM to determine who their audience for competitive intel is and what resources are most valuable and effective for them. 

A competitor is anything that can be substituted for the value that your product offers. Sometimes, that's a product with a very similar feature set. Sometimes, it's a product that is designed for a different purpose, but people are using it (poorly) to solve for your product's value prop. And in some cases, a competitor may be nothing at all—the status quo. When you're trying to sell a product to customers that's in a new category, requires a new skill set, or is rooted in people doing things differently, it's easy for a customer to stick with the status quo. It's also something that's much more common in today's market with companies really tightening the purse strings when it comes to their tech stacks. The status quo is often the cheapest alternative, especially if a customer doesn't see the potential business impact/ROI of your product. 

When setting up a PMM team consider: * Who is the product for and is it a single use case or multiple audience’s * Do you need deep technical knowledge to understand and market the product * The product management team structure * The sales team (or lack thereof) * The current and future marketing functions in the company * What drives the product growth, is it sales, marketing, the product itself or a combination of these, Product-Led Growth (PLG) or Sales-Led Growth (SLG)