Talya Heller G.

I’ve seen many methods out there but what worked best for me in past companies was a category structure based on customer impact (taking into account existing and potential customers). The lowest would be a functionality improvement and the highest would be a game changer in the market. The way I think about KPIs is not by tier, it’s by launch. Your goals might be very different between launches even in the same category—or similar for some even in different categories. A PMM leader I respect once said they choose 3 KPIs per launch and each of those are for different stakeholders in the business. I like that approach because it guarantees everyone has skin in the game and are working as one team.

A great briefing deck is a mix of big-picture positioning brought to life with customer stories and value drivers demonstration. And while it’s perfectly fine to have a go-to baseline deck, you want to tailor it to your audience, meaning the specific analyst’s interest and POV. Here’s the structure that’s been working for me: * Start at the 10,000ft view - what are we trying to solve - the pain and our vision; continue with high level GTM strategy (main use cases, who are our buyers, growth motion (i.e. land and expand/ freemium/…). * Why us - here’s where you’d have the typical ‘about us’ slide; I pepper it with customer or ROI stats. Then, how we’re connecting the dots between the vision and product. I finish this section with a how we do it/why we’ve been successful - where I outline our strategic advantages. There I mention in the details section some specific features but I don’t talk about them at length. I view this as a demo-primer slide. * How we do it - I like to start this section with a specific customer example and results (again, tailored to the analyst expertise), and then we kick it off to the demo. It should highlight the main a-ha moments that we introduced before - why us. I would always err on the side of fewer slides and feature-light demos to leave room for an interesting conversation and Q&A, and to leave the analysts ‘thirsty’ for more, hoping they’ll ask a follow up briefing with a deeper demo that they can invite more of their peers to. Remember, you can always follow up with more slides; no need for 4 customer stories in the meeting itself or countless slides about features! One last thing to keep in mind - who delivers the briefing? Although PMM owns AR, I don’t think we should deliver it alone. Depending on the company stage and role the founder/CEO has in it, I’d encourage having them involved in some capacity. Some might carry the pain and vision part really well and could come back for the customer stories—again depending on their closeness and passion to these topics and of course, ability to present well. We (the CMO and head of PMM) usually tackle the meaty part in the middle - we know the buyers, we know the GTM, we know the value drivers to our core. The demo is usually performed by our best SE. This has worked well because they speak to countless buyers and are trained to use features to deliver value.

There are three ways I’ve successfully achieved that in past roles: 1. conduct win/loss analysis regularly. Don’t neglect the quantitative part and look at competition, win rates against each, losses due to functionality and what status quo/ tech stack / competition looked like there. 2. Get in the habit of post launch retrospectives. Start them by looking at KPIs (good sources are product analytics, CS ticket volume, marketing/sales analytics) and ask questions - what should be done differently next time, what worked well, what should be added? 3. Competitive program cannot be successful unless other teams are a part of it. Create a tiger team with product, sales engineering, perhaps a few more prospect or customer facing pros and discuss regularly what each of you has been seeing. Decide if you need more research, enablement, competitive positioning or product changes. You’re more likely to succeed if you’re collaborative and is basing on insight rather than gut feeling.

In short: focus on enablement, not on battlecards. I don’t know how and why battlecards became the golden standard but I always felt that format miss the mark because it’s hard to read and impossible to process in real-time (i.e. on a call). And as marketers we know that packaging and delivery matter. So, here are elements that I find more helpful: 1. Deliver competitive news regularly - either 3 bullet points on a dedicated slack channel once a week or in an internal newsletter, but think of a channel to put news in front of reps proactively rather than waiting on them to ask for it. 2. Create a system for competitive positioning. What worked for me in the past was to outline our top strategic advantages as a company; and use variations of that slide practically in every asset (with format changes of course). For each competition I’d find the 1-3 levers out of that list that we can do better than them. This makes it familiar and easy to remember, almost like a framework for anyone at the company to use. And, much more useful in real time. 3. Train and enable on competitive landscape, before jumping to the details. Macro before micro. Which use case or which industry are the most crowded, what type of competition we’re facing in each. 4. Stay up to date yourself. RSS feeds, google alerts, whatever it takes to be on top of things. Focus less on who released what new feature and more on changes in messaging or pricing that can indicate a change in strategy, etc. bring those insights forward, This convos are much more meaningful and engaging then ‘ooh snap they also released filter views’. Again, macro before micro. 5. If you have the capacity, the ideal alternative to a battlecards in my book is a competitive playbook. Basically the more detailed version of step 2. * Get into important details about the competitors - geo, GTM, use cases, R&R scores, reputation, etc. * When someone brings up competitor X on a call say Y; if they ask you to elaborate, say Z. If they ask you for a written response, say A * Objection handling

You’ve received some great advice here. I think listening to calls, joining LI groups or following hashtags they care about is a great source of information. Here are a few other that I’d add: 1. Make it a habit to talk to a few AES and CSMs regularly. Ask them directly what they hear or see, stress-test your observations with them too 2. Speak to analysts. If your company has relationships with analyst firms, leverage them as your ear to the market 3. If you’re not doing it already, get into the habit of doing win/loss analysis regularly. In fact I’d recommend doing one 12-18 months back in your first 30 days in the role. Ideally you mix quantitative data (CRM) and qualitative (customer/prospect interviews, call recordings, AE interviews).

Speaking from experience, even if there’s no MQ in your category you should still engage with analysts regularly—if your buyers speak to them regularly. Here’s why: 1. Other than other research and publications remember - your analysts talk to buyers all day. Them knowing you well keeps you top of mind when they’re having these calls. We’ve had several leads coming in after engaging with analysts. They key here is of course to know your audience and who they’re speaking with. 2. Things change. If your market is getting crowded, maybe there will be a MQ one day. If not, there might be MQs for more specific use cases of it. As in everything else, doing your homework prior to signing a multi-year contract with Forrester and Gartner is a must. If your ICP personas are talking to them, and if there’s an enough analysts that cover your area or areas where your solution fits naturally in. A good indicator for that would be if you’ve invested in thought leadership content on the same areas, especially if it’s also performing well.

The answer is, as always, it depends :) Is the PMM the owner of the launches at the company? If yes, their KPIs can be process related; i.e. snags in as well as successes (think low volume of support tickets that were created due to the launch, campaign readiness, sales and support readiness, etc.). In either way, instead of thinking about a set of KPIs that don't change for each launch, I like the approach of setting org-wide KPIs for each launch that are relevant for that specific launch. So for example if you're launching an enhancement, the key outcome you're after is adoption among current customers. That can trickle outside of product usage to email CTRs (=messaging hits the spot), guides completion rates, demo hand raisers (depends on your GTM motion). If you're launching a new offering, the key outcome could be awareness. That can also trickle down to different areas: website traffic, demo requests/signups/interactive demo views, sales ability to perform demos (demo environment, collateral, etc.). PMMs can impact so many KPIs, I'd focus on setting the right ones and aligning with teams on ways to measure them in the short and long term rather than on fixating on specific ones they own every launch.

Enterprise sales motion is one of the harder ones to pull off because it's usually long and involves large deal sizes. That usually means big buying groups with many detractors (legal, finance..). PMMs can help in many ways: * Conduct win/loss analysis regularly--to keep tabs on shifts in market trends (spend, use cases, customer tiers), competitive landscape, product roadmap input. * Competitive positioning--to inform messaging and sales training (quick dismisses - how to articulate to ICP prospects how you're different) * Identifying ICP--useful for sellers, product prioritization and ensures brand, growth and content marketing work on the right things * Positioning and messaging at large--at the company level and for specific use cases. this includes working on the website, but also in developing sales decks and analyst decks. * This can mean developing persona-specific assets (think how do I help the champion sell internally and convince the CFO and COO this is needed?) * Launches--with enterprise products there is a level of expectation when it comes to communicating changes to current customers. That can tie directly into upsells and cross-sells but also to managing expectations around changes in the current offering. Launch messaging and comms should cover these cases too.

Two great sources of VOC that will interest your counterparts from other teams: * CAB - customer advisory board, usually run by Product but PMM and CS are well-positioned internally to be deeply involved (select customers, choose topics, even moderate the discussion). * Customer Communities - an avenue for PMM, Product and CS to communicate with customers directly and for customers to communicate with each other. This could look like a community-specific site with announcements, polls, Q&A, (gated or public), or a Slack community with different channels.

I honestly think it depends in the type of PMM you want to be. If you want to be in rooms where decisions are made and influence those, I’d say yes it’s a very important skill. Even if you’re only focused on market research, there will be a time to present your findings so everyone can see how awesome you are and what great insights you have. Presenting as a PMM doesn’t only happen for folks who wants to take center stage and demo a product at a conference, it happens every day when you have convos with Sales, when you present strategy to your Marketing team, and when you go through the findings from your win/loss analysis because your C-suite has to see it.