AMA: Mixpanel Former Head of Product & Content Marketing, Jeff Beckham on Stakeholder Management

I’ve found that most companies want the most capable people doing the most important work. If you prove your value as a PMM by making the team and company successful, bigger and better projects will naturally come your way. When it comes to positioning the PMM team within marketing, it ultimately comes down to influencing the head of marketing. They want nothing more than for the marketing team to produce great work and achieve its goals. Whether marketing metrics are tied to pipeline, LTV, brand awareness, or all of the above, if the numbers aren’t going up, it reflects poorly on the whole marketing org – especially the person who runs it. For that reason, I’ve never met a marketing leader who won’t eagerly listen to helpful ideas about better ways to do things, and how product marketing can play a vital role – as long as your ideas are presented as solutions tied to team objectives and don’t come across as a personal agenda. The biggest challenge and frustration I’ve run into is feeling like the product marketing team is “back office” and not the face of their work. In siloed organizations, I’ve seen PMMs be responsible for messaging and positioning docs that they then ship to other teams to execute on. The content team writes the launch blog. The enablement team builds the sales collateral. And the corporate marketing team updates the website. There’s nothing “wrong” with this setup, but I don’t find it fulfilling, personally. The best way to avoid that issue is to join a company that provides end-to-end ownership to PMMs. That’s most common at small and mid-size companies, but also exists elsewhere. It really depends on company culture and org structure. It’s something worth asking about in any interview process. If you like your current company and want to drive change, the best thing to do is prove you’re the best person to do the work that matters (and that you care about). Focusing on quality in every deliverable is the best way to get there. Regardless of the org structure, I’ve found RACI matrixes to be essential on cross-functional projects like launches. If people are uncertain what they’re responsible for, there’s no way the launch will happen on time, and be high-quality. If there are disagreements about ownership, they’ll surely surface when you send out the “RACI Proposal” ;) From there, you can discuss each team's role and land on the ideal setup for success.

It’s a good question, but also a loaded one! Product management needs to prove their value to the company too, right? The dynamic you’re describing is common though, unfortunately. I’ve lived it many times. The best working relationship comes when both sides have shared goals. If that’s not reality, one thing I’ve advised PMMs on my team to do is figure out what the PMs they work with care about and are goaled on. What are their OKRs or objectives? Assuming it’s not something crazy and counterproductive for the business, get a quick win and help them improve the thing they’re measured on (adoption, revenue, etc) to earn their trust. In terms of how to be most helpful, each PM I’ve worked with has a unique skillset. PMMs are most valuable when they are complementary. For example, if the PM is technical but not a great writer, make them look good by doing the heavy lifting on the blog and slides for the new launch. If they’re business-savvy and just need more insights from the field to form their strategy, do some market research and collect insights from customers and sales. If I were to generalize from my experiences, working with the sales team is the most common thing that PMs appreciate help with. When you’re creating great collateral and running trainings that enable the field to sell the PM’s product, they’ll be ecstatic. Unless your company is overstaffed, there’s always going to be enough work for both Product and Product Marketing. The key is finding the balance where you’re “better together,” to use a corny phrase. When the product is being adopted and driving revenue, both sides look good.

The setup at my previous company, Mixpanel, is one that I’ve seen be more and more common at businesses scaling up. We have two arms of marketing: product / content and growth (the “campaign team”). When the head of growth and I need to explain who does what, we like to simplify things to: PMM builds messaging and content, and growth distributes those things everywhere in the world through ads, email, etc. I’ve personally found this setup to be much more efficient than more siloed organizations, but the right way to do things certainly varies by company, business objectives, and the relative strengths of the people within the marketing org. You asked about how collaboration varies by product maturity... In my experience working at B2B companies, mostly on fairly technical products, there is a natural need to collaborate across PMM and campaigns. Without PMM’s help, campaigns doesn’t know what the angle of the campaign should be or who they should target. And without the help of the campaigns team, the PMM team can’t drive awareness / adoption / purchase of the products they’re responsible for. Working together is a win-win. This is especially true when it comes to new products, where the market, message, and target audience are less familiar, PMM will need to play a bigger role in driving things end-to-end. There’s no precedent for what works and no starting point to iterate from for the campaigns team.

Product and Sales are always the biggest, at least at B2B companies. The one that matters more depends on whether you’re in a product-led or sales-led organization. There’s no circumstance in which you can neglect one of the two, but when you need to make hard tradeoffs about where to spend time, I recommend optimizing for how your company operates. Those are obvious, so I’ll give you two that have really helped me, but may be more unconventional. 1. Design. A product marketer is only half what they could be without a great designer. You need incredible visuals for your pitch deck narratives to shine and for the carefully-crafted messaging on your website to have maximum effect. I’m fortunate to have an incredible design team at Mixpanel that makes the PMM team’s work stand out (shout out to Mike and Alex!). To get this relationship right, design needs to be real partners in the vision for what you’re producing, and not just executors, or they won’t do their best work. 2. Your own management chain. This especially applies if your CMO / Head of Marketing came up on the demand gen or brand side of the house. Someone with that background may not intuitively understand the value product marketing provides, because they haven’t operated in the role. Compounding things, PMM work can be hard to measure at times, even though it’s essential. It’s easy to tie paid marketing to an ROI, but when PMM is done right, it’s not always that simple. If you want the head of marketing to advocate for you, it’s important to understand their priorities and how PMM can fit in. Is the head of product always breathing down their neck that the right things aren’t being marketed? Or is the bigger problem that the sales team doesn’t feel supported with the right collateral and talking points? If you help solve the problems that matter to your department head (and the company) they’ll forever be in your corner.

I’m glad you asked, because I love building presentations! I realize I’m a total slide nerd, but here’s my process: 1. Align on the outcome you want from the presentation. Who are you trying to convince, and about what? Whether the audience is the sales team at SKO or execs at a business review, if all stakeholders aren’t on the same page there, creating the content will be a mess. 2. Build an outline in a doc before creating any slides (GDocs, Notion, or any doc that supports group editing). If you don’t, you’ll waste tons of time on shapes and graphics when the storyline and key points aren’t decided. I’ve refined my outline process to be one main bullet per slide, with 2 sub-bullets – max. Slide takeaway(message, not copy) --> Evidence that supports the takeaway --> Idea for slide visual(s) If everyone isn’t in agreement on the outline, do not proceed or risk stepping into slide quicksand where your time disappears quickly! 3. Build out the wireframe deck and suggest owners for each slide via comments or text boxes. I tend to set a consistent format for the deck so it looks like all the slides go together. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube and people start editing slides, you can’t go back. I’ve found it best to let everyone own their slides or they won’t feel invested. 4. Once all the content is in, start making the slides look nice. Lots of people aren’t in love with presentations, so it can help to go the extra mile and tidy up the deck for everyone’s benefit.

In these types of situations, I’ve found that data can be a useful persuasion tool, because it’s objective. Have you considered surfacing win rate numbers? Or an even more granular metric in the sales funnel, like a lack of deal progression from early to mid/late stages? If execs are expected to take you at your word that the pitch isn’t working, based on anecdotal evidence, that can be a tough sell. Their thought process is likely, “how bad could it be? We’re doing well enough to merit an IPO.” But if the data is on your side (which I’m sure it is!), it may be obvious that there’s nothing to lose by changing things up. One trick that’s worked for me, whether I’m working off of data or a hunch, is to run an experiment with a small group of sales reps. If they aren’t winning deals, they aren’t making money, so they’ll be receptive to trying new things. Workshop a new deck with them and then have them use it during sales calls. If it works, you’ve found more people to support you in the case for change. You’ve also de-risked a broader rollout of a new deck. It sounds like you already have a pilot in motion, which is a great start.

Every enterprise sales rep wants to sell more, faster. The most valuable PMMs I’ve worked with are experts on their product, market, customers, and competition. Individual sales reps don’t have time to track these things at the level of detail PMMs do, but require smart talking points to be successful. On top of expertise, PMMs bring a macro view and can surface best practices from across the sales org. Ideally, you’re joining calls, talking to reps in different regions and segments, and even participating in pitches. That gives you a unique perspective. There are many ways this knowledge can be put to use, but here are two that have worked for me: 1. Pitches (decks, talk tracks, etc.). In enterprise sales, the money is made through conversations. The way you pitch the product matters a lot, and you have to constantly test and refine the angle since most markets change by the quarter, or even month. Everyone wants the pitch to work, but that requires going through the right process of testing and learning to make sure it does. PMMs are the best people to define this narrative (in partnership with Sales of course). They can apply their global view and drive the iterative process across the sales team. 2. Intelligence on best practices and competition. Every sales rep has a narrow view of the world, often by design. They sell into a specific territory, to a specific customer segment. PMMs can surface what’s working at the global level. What talking points are working? Which competitors should they be prepared to position against in deal cycles and how should they do it? I often share this type of information through Slack channels, training sessions, and even SKO presentations.

Whenever I join a new team, my first objective is to earn trust – both within my department and with cross-functional partners. Without trust, advice from “the new guy” about how things should be done is usually unwelcome. To do that, start by identifying problems you can solve to make everyone’s life easier. Not things you observe that are suboptimal compared to your last job, but things that are driving people at your new company crazy already. There’s always something, and if you can solve that, the team will be much more open-minded to your ideas. When it comes time to push your ideas, it’s important to frame them in terms of how they will help the team and company. Otherwise, they’ll come across like a power play. The biggest mistake I’ve seen new joiners make is trying to port over strategies from their last company without accounting for why they worked there, and whether the circumstances are the same and primed for success. Being transparent and detailed about that translation is essential. Ultimately, the best product marketing processes will depend on company goals, org structure, the strengths of each team, culture, and so much more. It’s definitely not one-size-fits-all.