Chris Haberle

Earn exec trust and alignment. If an organization has never had product marketing before, they still have been doing some of the core product marketing activities. They have words to describe the offering, there are pricing tiers established, etc. This also means that they may feel like their messaging is great because they did it. You coming in and saying "here is why your messaging is broken..." may not land the way hope it will. Before you join: * Figure out why they haven't had PMM thus far. The work has probably been done by a co-founder. Really ask difficult questions in the interview process that help you parse whether the exec team understands PMM and wants to level-up, or if they are looking to just offload work and will want to review everything. * Understand who has built trust and how. Does the CMO have a long tenure and believe strongly in the PMM function? You're probably in good stead. Is there a new (or no) CMO? Ask deeper questions to others in the interview process that have a long tenure and how they built trust. First 30 days: * In many cases, the quickest way to put points on the board is to help sales. If the company has lacked a PMM function, you can probably bet that enablement is the wild west. Doing something as simple as organizing enablement into a single structured repo will earn you some sales friends. Go talk to them as much as possible...they will happily tell you all the enablement things that need fixing. Prioritize those and fix the most impactful. * Be quick to show a strategic plan on what you are doing, why, and some estimated timelines. Ask for feedback from sales and product and overcommunicate to the exec team. You need to show them that you recognize the issues, that you know how to fix them, and (VERY IMPORTANT) that they cannot be fixed overnight. 30-90 days * Ship ship ship. Execute against that plan, particularly on the tactical sales help. * For big high level messaging, do not do this alone or it will fail. Gather data through customer, sales, and exec conversations. Walk the exec team through the data and reasons for any new messaging options you are choosing. Give them a chance to absorb that and give feedback. While getting messaging right is incredibly important, it is probably even more important at this point to continue to earn exec trust and alignment to give future you permission to operate more boldly and autonomously.