AMA: Demandbase VP Product and Industry Marketing, Jackie Palmer on Stakeholder Management

As I've answered on a few other questions, I have a set of things I like to do to build meaningful relationships with key stakeholders. These are key whether you are just getting started in product marketing or if you're the most senior team member. My 7 relationship building "secrets" are: 1. Understand strengths and weaknesses: Figure out who in your organization has the skills that can help you. And think about what you're able to give in return. You should know what you bring to the table and where you need support from others. 2. Listen first: I think we all know this in our hearts but it’s often hard in practice. Listening is one of the greatest relationship building skills you can have. I’m as guilty as the next person on jumping in but it truly is better to listen first. 3. Be proactive: Most other teams are focused on their own work and deliverables, you’ll likely need to offer your services first rather than waiting for people to ask you to participate. 4. Make yourself available: It’s easy to get stuck in your own little world. I’m a big fan of 1:1s both with your manager or other managers but even better with people you work closely with day to day. It doesn’t have to be long but offering to have a chat even on zoom can go a long way. 5. Follow through: Nothing is worse than someone who fails to deliver. It’s better to over-communicate on progress than to not reply at all. Same for if you are waiting for someone to deliver something to you, make any deadlines known ahead of time and follow up. 6. Know when to ask for help: This is the hardest relationship skill to learn and where managers can really help their team the most. You need to try to be aware of when you need help and don’t be afraid to ask for assistance. And as a manager, keep an eye out for when someone is struggling and offer to help knock down any boundaries in the way. 7. Start small: I know it’s a cliche but crawl walk run is truly the best mantra to absorb. It applies to work but it also applies to relationships. Try something small at first, whether it’s a short slack message or a small task and then add on from there. As a junior member of the team, you might be scared to speak up and bring up your ideas but by following some of these key relationship building ideas first, you'll build up a rapport and make things easier for yourself when you do want to try to gain influence. Good luck!!

Getting a variety of feedback from a variety of people is the best thing you can do to influence and persuade teams. I always like to poll multiple teams and different levels of people to ensure that I have as many examples as possible. Make sure you ask internal teams - sales (including pre-sales and SDRs if you have them), post-sales like customer success and account management, other marketers even - for their input. Even better try to gather external feedback too if possible. Reach out to friendly customers, ask some of your friends from other companies, schedule an inquiry with a friendly analyst or influencer, the more the merrier! This is especially important for vetting and getting buy in on things like new pricing, messaging for a new product, or a brand new pitch or first call deck. Once you have some of the feedback documented, you can bring it to the team you are trying to influence and use it to show that you've done your due diligence and truly have something worth considering!

Whether PMM is new or established, the relationship with Product is key! I'll repeat my response from one of the other questions as I think it applies here as well: The relationship between Product Marketing and Product Management is often the most important relationship you can have as a product marketer. The best thing to do here is build up a buddy system and make sure you are bringing value to the relationship. I like to have my PMMs partner up with PMs 1:1 as much as possible. And I like to do the same myself with the head of Product. Having regular check ins helps but even better is having regular check ins where you are delivering value and proving that you can add something vs always taking. I have a set of things I like to do to build meaningful relationships with key stakeholders and building the relationship with Product Management is no different. My 7 relationship building "secrets" are: 1. Understand strengths and weaknesses: Figure out who in your organization has the skills that can help you. And think about what you're able to give in return. You should know what you bring to the table and where you need support from others. 2. Listen first: I think we all know this in our hearts but it’s often hard in practice. Listening is one of the greatest relationship building skills you can have. I’m as guilty as the next person on jumping in but it truly is better to listen first. 3. Be proactive: Most other teams are focused on their own work and deliverables, you’ll likely need to offer your services first rather than waiting for people to ask you to participate. 4. Make yourself available: It’s easy to get stuck in your own little world. I’m a big fan of 1:1s both with your manager or other managers but even better with people you work closely with day to day. It doesn’t have to be long but offering to have a chat even on zoom can go a long way. 5. Follow through: Nothing is worse than someone who fails to deliver. It’s better to over-communicate on progress than to not reply at all. Same for if you are waiting for someone to deliver something to you, make any deadlines known ahead of time and follow up. 6. Know when to ask for help: This is the hardest relationship skill to learn and where managers can really help their team the most. You need to try to be aware of when you need help and don’t be afraid to ask for assistance. And as a manager, keep an eye out for when someone is struggling and offer to help knock down any boundaries in the way. 7. Start small: I know it’s a cliche but crawl walk run is truly the best mantra to absorb. It applies to work but it also applies to relationships. Try something small at first, whether it’s a short slack message or a small task and then add on from there. Leveraging these ideas can help ensure healthy and aligned relationships with Product Management!

This is a tough situation because if you are at the design phase, you probably already have an idea of how you want something to look. The designer however can bring a different viewpoint to the discussion. They often know how someone will interact with something visually and may end up creating something magical if given more free rein. That said, in this scenario you are the customer - and the customer is usually right! If there's truly a disagreement then make sure you've got your data and research. Show the design to others in your team and also some outside of your team. Show it to a few people outside of marketing completely as sometimes marketers will not see things as differently as non-marketers. Show it to friends outside of your industry. If it resonates with them without having to come with detailed explanations then you know the visual will be more likely to work. I've always been pleasantly surprised by what the creative teams I've worked with come up with. They usually work best given less instructions but if you can't agree then definitely make sure you've done the research and have the data to back up your ideas!

I always say that Product and Sales should be the two best friends of Product Marketing! And I would say they both have their times when they are hard to work with or need more care. For both groups though, the most important thing is to listen and bring value. Come to them with ideas and ask for feedback early and often. Listen to their pains and challenges and come back to them with value add (assets, ideas, etc). With either group you want to help avoid or break down silos. Some tips for doing that are: * Encourage collaboration and cross-team communication * Use a buddy system * Ask for feedback * Hold post-mortems Listening and learning from mistakes or looking for ways to improve are the key skills here for working with either group.

Some types of questions I like to ask to gain insight and feedback from internal stakeholders are: * Where would you use something like this? * Who could you see benefitting from this asset/collateral/launch/etc? * Is there anything you've used in the past that is similar to this that resonated well? * What do you think is missing? * What could we add to improve this? * Is there anyone else you think we should be asking for feedback? Those are just some ideas and obviously it depends on what you're trying to get feedback on but those are the ones that have worked consistently no matter the thing I'm asking about!

If you're trying to assess whether you need multiple versions of an asset like a first call deck or pitch deck, the best thing to do is to sit with the different groups of people you're trying to build for and see if they actually do present the same content differently. Maybe the CEO uses the more visual slides and skips the slides with bullets on them or maybe an experienced sales person shows a slide with bullets but says different words compared to a new sales rep who "reads" the script closer to verbatim. Either way, it is valuable to gather as many examples as you can. Ideally you have a conversation intelligence solution like Gong or equivalent so you can review multiple recordings. If you decide that the various different people or groups are using the same deck differently, then it makes sense to create multiple versions. You might have one version for the CEO or execs and another for sales. But the best thing to do is to gather the info by being in the room or at least listening to the recordings! Another thing you might learn by doing that research is that even the same person delivering a deck to different audiences changes how they use it. For example, maybe a salesperson uses the deck differently when they are selling to a greenfield opportunity vs. one where they are trying to displace a competitor. Again, research research research!!

Managing up and managing down require the same key ingredient for success - communication! If your direct reports are under-performing, it is best to alert upper management right away and come with a plan that you will implement to ensure issue doesn't happen again. For the direct report, it is also best not to delay your feedback. Make sure you give feedback as close to the time of the issue as possible so they don't think it was an ok thing to do. Ask them for ideas on how they can ensure it doesn't happen again but also come with your own plan in case they don't or can't see the right approach. Then make sure to follow up on progress, both with upper management and with the direct, so everyone is aligned. The early identification and the follow up will help ensure you don't get blamed for someone else's poor work.

The relationship between Product Marketing and Product Management is often the most important relationship you can have as a product marketer. The best thing to do here is build up a buddy system and make sure you are bringing value to the relationship. I like to have my PMMs partner up with PMs 1:1 as much as possible. And I like to do the same myself with the head of Product. Having regular check ins helps but even better is having regular check ins where you are delivering value and proving that you can add something vs always taking. I have a set of things I like to do to build meaningful relationships with key stakeholders and building the relationship with Product Management is no different. My 7 relationship building "secrets" are: 1. Understand strengths and weaknesses: Figure out who in your organization has the skills that can help you. And think about what you're able to give in return. You should know what you bring to the table and where you need support from others. 2. Listen first: I think we all know this in our hearts but it’s often hard in practice. Listening is one of the greatest relationship building skills you can have. I’m as guilty as the next person on jumping in but it truly is better to listen first. 3. Be proactive: Most other teams are focused on their own work and deliverables, you’ll likely need to offer your services first rather than waiting for people to ask you to participate. 4. Make yourself available: It’s easy to get stuck in your own little world. I’m a big fan of 1:1s both with your manager or other managers but even better with people you work closely with day to day. It doesn’t have to be long but offering to have a chat even on zoom can go a long way. 5. Follow through: Nothing is worse than someone who fails to deliver. It’s better to over-communicate on progress than to not reply at all. Same for if you are waiting for someone to deliver something to you, make any deadlines known ahead of time and follow up. 6. Know when to ask for help: This is the hardest relationship skill to learn and where managers can really help their team the most. You need to try to be aware of when you need help and don’t be afraid to ask for assistance. And as a manager, keep an eye out for when someone is struggling and offer to help knock down any boundaries in the way. 7. Start small: I know it’s a cliche but crawl walk run is truly the best mantra to absorb. It applies to work but it also applies to relationships. Try something small at first, whether it’s a short slack message or a small task and then add on from there. Leveraging these ideas can help ensure healthy and aligned relationships with Product Management!

A delayed product release is sometimes the most difficult thing for a product marketer to deal with as you've likely (ideally) started a product launch process early and a late minute change can throw a wrench into that process! Change is obviously easier if you are not working with a fixed launch date like an event or other live activity but change is never easy for stakeholders even if a launch date is not fixed. One way to handle this is to orient launches around themes rather than specific features. That way you can launch regardless of when the actual product release date is by talking about multiple product features or products regardless of release status. This is not for everyone as it does require letting go of a certain amount of control but it does make it easier if dates slip. Another option is of course to delay the launch. In that case, you should have a solid reason or set of reasons for doing so and build out a communication plan for both internal and external stakeholders. The more communication you can do - early and often - the better! Make sure you are keeping executives and other stakeholders apprised as you go and don't try to hide something in hopes of it magically getting back on track. It's better to come clean about the delay and provide as much info as possible. Usually there won't be issues if you over communicate!

It's important to build up a cross-functional product launch team and follow a consistent launch process as much as possible. While you're right, the stakeholders and process certainly can change slightly depending on the launch, I've found there usually more consistency between launches than not. At my current company, we've implemented a launch process that leverages what we call a gold/silver/bronze approach. We do the fewest things for a bronze feature and the most things for a gold feature or launch but we still include the same things as for the bronze. Even when a launch is more customer-centric than prospect-centric, we're still going through the same checklist. A tight launch process and associated checklist will ensure that you're not missing steps or stakeholders. Some stakeholders might come in later in the process but having that set launch checklist gives them visibility into that and helps them know what is expected from them and when.

A difficult or opinionated stakeholder is sometimes the hardest thing but something you all likely encounter in your product marketing career. If you have the luxury of time to observe their working style you can try to adjust your approach on your own. If you don't have that time, make sure you ask others for feedback on how best to work with this person. I once held an important meeting with one of the executive team and thought I had everything prepared. I had asked for topic ideas ahead of time from this exec and the rest of the group and brought my own topics up as well. But when we got into the meeting, it went upside down. The exec wanted to focus on one topic and we never made it to any of the other topics I had on the agenda. After the meeting I reached out to someone who had been at the company a long time to ask what they thought had gone wrong and how I could do better the next time and that's when I learned this exec only likes to deep dive into meaty topics live and prefers to keep the smaller, more numerous topics to slack or email. The next meeting I had with this exec went much better because I had done my research on their style ahead of time!

It's never an easy task to get buy in from stakeholders if you are still working on building up authority and respect but what goes a long way is having an open mind and listening to stakeholders' input. I've found that sitting down with people, maybe interviewing them about their opinions and ideas, will help you build a rapport that might help secure buy in in the future. Asking for their input and feedback even before you need it gives them the confidence that they can trust you in the future! There's a lot of value to the mantra of paying your dues early to reap benefits later on! I would also be remiss if I didn't mention bringing data to the table as well. The more you can bring in terms of proof or support the better chance you'll have of gaining their buy in. See if you can do a survey or gather input from other team members you know the person or team you are trying to influence respect and value. If you come with already valuable data, you'll have a better chance of getting buy in either on this project or on future projects. Build that trust early and try to come prepared with as much data as possible and getting buy in will go smoother!

Getting feedback on assets and collateral from stakeholders is a key part of Product Marketing's job. What I like to do is create a tiger team of people you can count on. This could differ of course depending on the asset but should likely include a mix of salespeople (pre-sales, AEs/reps, SDRs, etc.) and probably some of the post-sales teams as well (CSMs, PS, Account Managers, etc.). Many times you will know the people to include but sometimes you'll need to ask managers for nominations. It's important to get feedback before you finish an asset especially if this is an important one like a pitch or first call deck. In that case I like to make an outline first and vet that even before creating any slides or getting the creative team involved. Then once you have a draft that looks semi-close to done, vet it as well with the tiger team. Maybe even have them use it a few times with prospects or customers to get feedback. Things like demo videos or product tours would also benefit from a feedback review from an outline before you put the work in to build them. For smaller impact assets like solution sheets or data sheets, you can likely show the draft text rather than an outline. But either way I feel that it's important to get feedback before you involve other teams or certainly before you spend money with external agencies. Don't forget to always gather continual feedback as well! Make sure you go back to your tiger team (and reassess who's on your tiger team periodically) to make sure the asset is still having the impact you want. Periodic review is an important step to make sure your collateral is meeting the changing needs of your teams!