Yify Zhang

The size of your target customers influences the types of channels you lean into with your communications and the motion of each. The question to ask yourself is: where are your customers showing up, what does it take to convince them to use your product (or take the action you want). GTMs targeting enterprise customers would require: more thorough Sales enablement, one that is perhaps segmented for each persona at an enterprise who are decision makers versus influencers versus users.  potential ...Read More

There are four areas of competencies as a PMM / PMM leader. It is usually good to focus on one of these as your unique "strength" and keep the rest going so that you are functional. As you advance into a management position, you can hire those strong in areas where you're weak. Strategic Thinking - the ability to break down complex problems into achievable questions / topics. The ability to identify opportunities that result in significant growth for the company, and well-structured communicatio ...Read More

Measuring sales enablement effectiveness requires a combination of business metrics and internal metrics. Ultimately, you need to ensure that enablement is making an impact in Sales teams' ability to win deals and retain customers, while making sure that the process to do so is efficient and effective. Business metrics should be mostly include ratios, not just the absolute number of deals or revenue. Classic metrics include - win rate, renewal rate Time to close deals Sales team readiness feedba ...Read More

The competencies that moves one from individual contributor to manager are not unique to Product Marketing. What is unique is how these are applied, within the PMM scope in your role / organization. Generally these are: Strategic thinking: the ability to break down complex and ambiguous problems into questions / topics that can help guide the work of a team, and your XFN partners. The higher you move, the larger your scope becomes. The ability to move between levels of detail to ask the right qu ...Read More

I was hired into my current management role, but in terms of how I moved from an IC to a management role earlier in my career: The company I was working for was building a zero to one product marketing team. I was tapped for the role as I delivered strong strategy-driven work (e.g., new opportunity assessments/business case, competitive intel program, growth strategy) and had solid sponsorship on these projects from senior leadership who shared my work (and my name) proactively with the rest of ...Read More

Being a great writer is not a critical skill for being a great PMM. I would focus your attention on getting good at "positioning", identifying what truly matters to customers (pain point, benefits), and knowing how to identify great copywriting that conveys this. You can partner with copywriters, or even get this through contracting sites like Fiverr / Upwork (if no copywriting resource exists and your organization is low on resources).There are other competencies as a PMM (see below). I would f ...Read More

A GTM typically includes risks around how certain groups of customers may react to the change in experience, be it the product, service, or pricing. Generally, these negative reactions manifest into risks across these business areas: Revenue Drop: churn in existing customers, erosion of conversion in new customers. Operational Overwhelm: customer backlash or confusion, inundating internal support teams' capacity to deal with the amount of inquiries incoming. Negative Press: customer backlash esc ...Read More

Collect insights through customer research. Research should be done regularly to get feedback from prospects or existing customers to find out what their needs are, and how to best position yourself during each point in their discovery journey (sales being a touchpoint in that journey). You can also ask them to evaluate the various types of materials and give feedback on which ones are compelling in their decision journey Set up any new enablement materials as a test - with clear metrics to meas ...Read More

Generally, GTMs accomplish one or of more of the following goals: Increase market share in a new, strategic market Increase market share in an existing market Increase revenue through updated pricing or add-on adjacent products Increase conversion through features that capture customers' interest more quickly Increase retention through features that keep customers engaged Shift the brand perception of your target customers You should orient KPIs around each goal. Typically, large product release ...Read More