Sean Regan

I test candidates on whether they can understand their audience and tailor their message accordingly, starting with the very first interview question. One simple test I use is how candidates handle the first question almost everybody gets in an interview: "Tell me about yourself." I'm buying something, and you are selling something, and 9 times out of 10 people answer with a harbor cruise of irrelevant information. The people who crush it often stop me and ask a few questions first: "I just have ...Read More

Recognize that everyone has doubts - even executives - and don't let imposter syndrome erode your confidence. Everybody's fake, and the minute you learn that, the better off you'll be. Steve Jobs said something like "the world around you was created by people no smarter than you - you can literally design and create the future if you will it." I don't know any executive who, below the water, isn't paddling like that duck analogy. If you looked at their inbox and chat messages, it's 10x yours, ye ...Read More

Great product marketers focus on "big hits, not big lists," which is an organizational skill rather than a talent skill. We're in the noisiest market the world has probably ever seen, and product marketers often get trapped doing a bunch of things - a big list. But a Forrester white paper isn't going to change the market. The best product marketers figure out how to both show up (nail the fundamentals) and stand out. They do this by focusing their remaining energy on big hits rather than big lis ...Read More

Communicate in business outcomes, not tactics, to be viewed differently by leadership. One of the biggest small things that can change how you're viewed by leadership is communicating in business outcomes rather than tactics. Many product marketers come to me with their tactics - "we did the presentation at the company event" - but leaders want to know the impact: "172 people attended the presentation at the event, and 52 skipped a step in the pipeline within 30 days, which is faster than it wou ...Read More

Practice the 10-word rule to develop executive presence - if you can't say it in 10 words, sit back down. I had a professor in college who would stop you mid-sentence and say "10-word rule is in effect - if you can't say that in 10 words, sit back down." It was very aggressive, but if you've ever been with an executive who has the power to use as few words as possible as clearly as possible, it's impressive. It's almost hard to work in a company that doesn't have that clarity - you start to tune ...Read More

Spending time in sales, even briefly, is a huge advantage for developing product marketing soft skills. I'd encourage everybody to do it for a little while, even if you just sit in inside sales for a week and make phone calls with people. It's incredible - you can test messaging a hundred times in a day if you do that. At trade shows, I personally choose to work the booth, not because I was assigned to it, but because I can get a hundred customer conversations in a morning. The more you do this, ...Read More

Face your fear of AI and embrace these tools, as they won't replace the strategic and customer-facing aspects of product marketing. If you're afraid of AI, you will be replaced by it. Go out and wrap yourself in these tools and learn everything you can, because the people using them are 10x more productive than those who aren't. Make it safe in your organization to show that you use AI - I'll share the prompts or how I used AI with my team so they know I'm not hiding it. AI might help you run pr ...Read More