David Bressler

I have a couple of points to make, as this is an area I've done a lot of work. 1. Number one challenge is the logistics of travel. Cost. Time. Personal commitment. The best way to teach people to sell is to go out on calls with them. This obviously doesn't scale, but you use the activity to drive content and training. You make sure you're at 10 customers a day if you travel, so it's a good use of time. Good sales leaders will make sure their teams keep you busy when in region. In those calls, you're training sales and presales... out of those calls, you're using the people you've trained to explore field marketing opportunities, etc. Most companies won't make this investment over the length of time needed. 2. Enablement teams often things everything needs to be perfect to start training. No. You need to know your USPs and go. Hammer them home. Hammer home personas. Customer stories and measurable results. Use your USPs to drive competitive differentiation and POC use cases. 3. Figure out a way (systems, processes, and culture) to do JIT, just-in-time, enablement. Sitting in a classroom and going over everything doesn't stick. Everyone's distracted. I once had a manager who had a monthly enablement call, and an item four months out was "complete" (or could have been, we knew all we needed) but it wasn't on the schedule for FOUR MONTHS! Build it, launch it, make it self-serve, and then get on the phone. And, enablement calls... materials ahead of time, track who's doing the materials, and get together to discuss (not present them). There's more, of course, but each of these challenges the normal way of doing things in ways that make leadership uncomfortable, and as such, have the potential for outsized results.

Here are a three strategies I use to make my case studies better: 1. Keep in mind you have two audiences. First, it's the prospect that reads the case study to find out more about what's in it for them. Second, it's the sales team who you might be educating on the outcomes of using your product through storytelling. 2. Start the case study earlier in time than you're thinking. Start with when the customer realized they had a problem. During the interview, ask them to talk about when they realized they had a need. What was their decision process like between realizing they had a need and making a purchase? This focuses on their selection of your product as their solution, which is important information for sales to use when guiding a prospect through the buying-lifecycle. 3. Make the case study compelling using relevant news that helps highlight the urgency of the solution. Some buyers recognize a need, but don't have a sense of urgency. Putting it in the case study will help move the project along the buying-cycle.

Part of starting a new role and establishing a new function is adding value. They hired you with specific needs in mind, but you should develop your own with a 30/60/90 day of getting deeper in the company. 1. Do what they hired you for which involves listening and understanding the various teams and priorities. 2. Develop an opinion on what's needed. I'd suggest that at a company without product marketing there are three consistent problems: 1. The website messaging is unclear 2. Sales people each have developed their own version of the company story / solution 3. Demand gen is a bunch of disconnected (from each other) activities, so there's no momentum building on top of a common messaging framework 3. Start to prioritize from the above list, and deliver some value - maybe it's clarified messaging. Maybe it's unifying the sales team. But, deliver something that brings people together around where you (and the executives) believe the company is going. This is the playbook I used as a founding product marketer in my current role, and it was amazing how quickly things could get done when there was focus on a few key objectives. I was hired specifically with content generation in mind and an emphasis on sales enablement. That meant I developed a framework for the content, looking for gaps on what already existed, and had ready access to sales (because that's what they hired me for). Over the following months, the content framework evolved into a full-on messaging framework for the company, and at least now when people go to our website they know what we do! On top of that, the content and messaging have been executed not only through direct sales and partners, but also through our PR efforts and analyst relations (which both also fall under my responsibilities). So we have built a lot of momentum through sales, PR, and analysts. Finally, on thing I wish I'd done sooner... I wish I had more "launches". Meaning, I wish I had taken the product releases and turned them into larger messaging initiatives and aligned that with PR and demand gen sooner.

As I read a lot of these responses (and similar ones on other questions) I see that GTM and "product launches" seem to be conflated into a single thing. And, while some highlight small launches vs big launches, they're still making GTM all about launching, and I think that's missing something important. A launch might be a GTM activity, but GTM is bigger than just launches (big and small). At least, or obviously, in my mind. Anything you want to get into the hands of sales needs a "go to market" motion. Whether it rises to the level of a launch or not. Here's an example, from earlier today. I have a point of view on how my company helps with ransomware. It's a page long set of ideas and lists four capabilities of my offering that helps mitigate ransomware (even though we don't directly protect against it). I saw a new story come out, about how an MSP (Managed Service Provider) is being sued by one of their customers (not surprisingly, a law firm customer) for exposing the law firm to ransomware. So, I took the news story, and my point of view, and reached out to the sales person who covers service providers. Together, we can use that story plus my point of view to craft a few emails to cold prospects of hers to try to get them interested in our offering. So, what's involved? I like to think of a "minimum viable sales motion"... it includes a point of view, a recent news story (for relevancy and something to compel action), and if I have them, some stats or a customer story that supports my point of view on the topic. That's it... as an MVP. If it resonates, and we start to build pipeline on the topic... then it's time to create more down-funnel content. Doing a proof-of-concept - you might need some specific use cases to show (in this case) about ransomware mitigation. Might need some competitive information against other players/solution-approaches. Maybe we do a webinar on the topic to get something more middle-of-funnel, an explainer that can be sent to really help people visualize the problem and the offering. But these later pieces can be created "just in time". If you create them ahead of time, you've potentially wasted time. Start with the Minimum Viable Sales Motion and and create from there. The one thing you do need is a close relationship with the sellers (and their technical counterparts) to give them talking points, and an ability to create content quickly if needed. The advantage of doing this, vs a full launch is that you can move quickly. Try things out, if they work, double down and do more. If they don't, move on to the next idea. By the way, eventually you build a library of these Minimum Viable Sales Motions... that can be used to train new team members, or again in the future if a similar trigger happens. Also, keep in mind, while it's the motion that gets you in the door, that may not be what you sell. Get in the door with a ransomware message... you're just selling "backups" (for example), so maybe you just needed a new way to get someone's attention about the importance of backups. As for full launches, there's plenty of good advice in the other answers. Not sure I can add much value there... but full launches are a thing too!

Where is the strategy coming from? Leadership? The field? Your own idea? That dictates how you start. If it's your own idea, you may need KPIs up front to set goals and get leadership buy-in. If it's field-driven, you already have a champion, you just need to deliver on their ideas (with your own influence and expertise). In that case, if the champion is successful others will follow. Other thoughts: Field Driven GTM Campaign * Is it repeatable? * Is is regional? * How can you use your champion to be most effective? Leadership Driven GTM Campaign * You may have to do some research and develop some analysis on their targets / ideas * You may have more "finesse required" to influence their ideas... I just had one where an exec came up with a great idea... it just didn't apply to our product (directly) and I had to pivot what they wanted so it was relevant. * Pick a channel to execute through; they often see the big picture, but GTM campaigns (at least at smaller companies) might be most effective when focused more specifically. Your own Idea for a Campaign * Get peer buy-in; I'm in product marketing, so I definitely want demand gen on board before I start to run an idea * Socialize it! Work the phones like you're running for an election. * Put a stake in the ground when it comes to results. And results should align with other's objectives so it's a real team effort. One final idea... I've worked at big companies where they'd take months to develop a GTM idea into a strategy and campaign. That's too slow (IMO). I came up with this idea of MVP - minimum viable play, where similar to how it works on the engineering side, you do the minimum possible to test the GTM approach and if it resonates, you double down. You only need to start with the top of the sales funnel - get a prospect from zero to stage 1... anything more, likely shouldn't be part of the MVP. If you see that it's working, gets people to stage 1, then you need to get ahead of the opportunity in the funnel with more content / ideas, and maybe need to tweak the first part to optimize.

When I think of GTM, I think of the sales cycle stages (often as defined in Salesforce) and what I can do to contribute at each stage in order to accelerate, differentiate, and create relevance. That's a short answer, but sums it up completely. Let me give some examples. * You want to get more leads in a particular vertical, so demand gen is tasked with a campaign. This can be stage 0 of the sale cycle (just get 'em in the door). Owning GTM, I want to assemble case studies. Do research on the vertical for stats that highlight the need for a solution. Find existing customers that, even if we can't do a formal case study, help us understand the solution space for that vertical. With those customers, I talk to the sales people who closed them for color. This early in the cycle little is needed. Differentiation, some key industry stats that create relevance, and a case study or two to describe the solution in context. * You want to improve the POC win-rate. This is deeper in the cycle, maybe stage 3 or 4. This is going to require some competitive analysis. Understand your unique value prop vs what competitors think are theirs. Understand your approach to the problem being solved vs theirs. Then, using past POC nuggets, create "off the shelf" POC use cases that you know differentiate you vs the competition. Help sales integrate those as talking points earlier in the sales cycle so they become use cases in the POC. * You want to improve the demo to POC conversion (to get more POC at-bats). That involves doing training for the team on how to do discovery, and how to tie discovery to the product and its differentiating features. How to express the problem in ways that make it compelling to customers. Also, I'd do some training for the team on how to demo better. Perhaps I'd do "debate" training, teaching them how to craft a position statement and an "argument" and to argue their position. There are many things that can be done to accelerate the sales cycle from a "product marketing perspective". Partnerships. Case studies. Topical Relevance. Differentiation. The key thing is to understand the sales cycle and talk to sales about where they get stuck. What content is needed? What messaging is required? What speed bumps do they hit that slow them down?

You've gotta get the external messaging correct. Anything else can be changed as you go... but the messaging infuses everything you do. In particular, any press you're going to get... you can't change the messaging you use to develop the public facing press elements once you've socialized them to the press.

At the small companies I've been in... it's usually demand gen that owns the website with PMM contributing heavily in terms of content ownership (that includes creating structure, creating content for pages, and blogging). This works really well, though the design part could be owned by any part of marketing equally well. Working with an outside agency, design is more about project management than it is about having creative people on the team directly. Demand gen and PMM parter on SEO. At larger companies, much of design is in-house and there's a team that owns the site itself. Brand has a large part to do with it, often owning the entire site. In that case, demand gen is more of a customer of the brand team / website team. PMM provides content, but the content provisioning is "less intense" because the brand team owns SEO.

I think there are a few key things that help get sales more engaged during enablement sessions: 1. Involve sales before the session for input on topics and content. 2. Use real-world examples, and give public credit to the people they come from. 3. Recognize that sales is "coin operated", and perhaps they don't need what you have to tell them in that moment... make the sessions available asynchronously so they can come back for the details when they need them. Use a chat tool for asynchronous interaction over time. 4. Keep your own energy high. Especially over remote sessions, if you come across as disinterested or "flat" people will wander back to doing their emails while listening. 5. Be a facilitator between the content and your audience as much as a presenter of the content to your audience. Keep it interactive, ask questions, put people on the spot in a kind way.