Elizabeth Grossenbacher

Story time! I once worked at a small company where two stakeholders disagreed on the product roadmap. The CTO disagreed with the CPO. In that scenario, the CTO had the experience as the customer, so this person felt that the experience was valid and warranted a seat at the table in product development discussions. As the PMM on the product, I took extra care to understand why the CTO disagreed. I took an inquisitive approach and treated the conversation like an interview with a Key Opinion Leader. I continued to bring the interview back to how this would impact the customer (current and future). Ultimately, we were able to come to an agreement and made timeline adjustments which accommodated the CPO’s vision as well as the CTO’s insights. When you have a disagreement, step one should be to have an open conversation with the customer’s best interest at heart. More often than not, the PM will have a good reason for their thinking. It’s possible that one of us has different information that maybe neither of us shared or didn’t explain thoroughly. If you still disagree after this conversation, bring it back to the customer and the customer’s priorities. More importantly, explaining WHY this is critical for delivering outstanding customer experience. Bring it back to both qualitative and quantitative information: * Use customer quotes * % or # of customers requesting the feature * Call out specific logos for customers who have credibility (champions or big logos have worked well for me) * Explain how the feature impacts buyer requirements * Provide win/loss data based on the feature * Share dollar amounts around opportunity costs from not having the feature

First I try to understand why it isn’t a priority. I’ve seen this happen a lot. Many times, it’s because our brilliant product managers are trying to build a better way to “do it.” Other times, it’s because the feature doesn’t really make sense for the market, and it’s just a marketing ploy. For example, imagine that your company offers cellular connectivity to non-phone devices (think, a water meter in middle-America). In the telecom world, 5G is a really hot topic. And it’s a great technology for smartphones. But, for most of the low-data-use connected devices (like a water meter in middle-America), it’s completely overkill. Low-data devices like this are by far the bulk of connected devices in the world. Thus, 5G would only be a more expensive technology – both to build and for the customer to use. It simply doesn't make sense to put it on the product roadmap given the current market landscape. Yet, other vendors are claiming to offer it and some customers are asking about it. In scenarios like this, you have to be prepared with a thoughtful response to the customer that illustrates your expertise in the market. Still, you should have a discussion with your PM to determine why a certain feature isn’t a priority. Here are some tips that worked for me when I have conversations with PM: * Always bring it back to the customer and what the customer is trying to do. * Make sure that the competitor feature isn’t just market hype or marketing jargon. * Have a conversation with the PM about whether the feature will soon become obsolete as the product advances. * Ask the question, “Under what circumstances would this feature be a priority in your opinion?”

I view these as two different things: (1) informing the future vision of the product roadmap and (2) impacting the roadmap in the short term to meet current customer requirements. An example for #1: A few years ago, I partnered with a PM to dream up a product that was unlike anything else on the market. Once we had a few big ideas, we did some market research with secondary data from analysts. From there, we put together a focus group to get customer feedback and validate the secondary research. We had discussions around a specific problem. We got granular when diving into these pain points and exploring the current attempt to ease the pains. These insights shaped how the roadmap looked for this futuristic vision of the product. An example for #2: I conducted a win-loss analysis that consisted of interviews and sales data. The results revealed which features were table stakes and preventing us from winning deals. I was able to quantify the losses and put a dollar amount on the features we lacked. An analysis like this helps the PM team see how the features impact sales. Bonus points if you can pair the win-loss analysis with the buy team’s requirements, especially with explanation for WHY each feature is required and explain what the customer expects to solve with the feature. A few things to consider: * Seek feedback from high value customers. Winning or keeping those high value customers is critical for business health, and compliments customer retention efforts. * Your PM is your partner. Set up a regular cadence to learn how they’re dreaming up the product. Get their buyin on your research topics. Having their support from the start will make them more receptive to hearing your ideas later. * Quantify the feature in dollar amounts. Pair this with a customer anecdote or quote. * Go deep on customer pain points. Try as hard as you can to know what it’s like to be your customer and face the problem at hand. Understand WHAT the pain is, WHY it hurts, and WHY the current methods to solve the problem don’t work. Knowing their pain points will help you better articulate your ideas to influence the product roadmap.

This will depend on how your organization defines the PMM vs PM role. While I’ve never seen PMM “owning” product-specific analytics, I’ve also never seen PMM function without utilizing these metrics for analysis. Whoever “owns” these metrics will vary by organization. I would start by having a frank conversation about what datapoints the PMM can easily gather, and which ones you need to complete your analysis. Just because you need a datapoint doesn’t mean you “own” its gathering. In our business unit at Twilio, our operations team gathers usage data and makes reports available to many other teams. I use that data to inform my strategies and quarterly customer insights analysis. As another example, PMMs don’t monitor customer support metrics, but I’ve found that sifting through these on a regular basis can provide some insightful insights on how customers are using your products and where your weak points are (bonus tip: think about reverse competitive analysis with this info). Most PM teams are monitoring their own usage metrics. It’s worth your time as a PMM to look through those metrics on a regular basis and see who they fit into your market or customer analysis.

Anyone can lead a Customer Advisory Board (CAB). But when you put together the goals of the CAB, you’ll see that it’s more efficient for it to sit under PMM. Here are two main reasons for this: 1. It’s part of our job. 😉 PMMs are uniquley positioned to lead the CAB because we already aim to inform the product roadmap, create the GTM strategy, and influence the way we do business. We acheve these by delivering market and customer insights, which fits so naturally with a CAB. 2. PMMs are trained to understand the entire buyer team, while PM and CS may only be accustomed to the practitioner personas. This may come in handy when you're establishing the criteria for customers selected to be on the CAB. The first time I launched a CAB I, I had two different tracks: one for executives and one for practitioners. This made it easier for us to discuss topics relevant to these groups, while also making personas feel as though they were among peers. When you put together your CAB, I encourage you to define roles for internal stakeholders. For me, it looked like this: * PMM leads the CAB. * PM serves as the main partner to help define goals, participants, and topics. PM will also be in the room for live discussions with the CAB. * CS will contribute to the topics and provide insights or suggestions for which customers to select for the CAB. It’s important to note that the key findings of the CAB were shared with the entire company in an executive summary report. A detailed report was shared with the GTM team and PMs.

One of my favorite quotes in marketing is: “sell the hole, not the drill.” A marketing professor at Harvard, Theodore Levitt, lectured about this and would argue that people don’t want to buy a drill; they want a hole. The drill is just the tool used to create the hole. This is where I’ve seen some PMMs get it wrong; they focus on the benefits of their product before the outcome the customer is looking to achieve. Here’s what we know from human psychology: in both B2B and B2C settings, buyers purchase to achieve an outcome. That outcome could stem from a range of needs, including emotional and functional. As PMMs, we can use this insight to better articulate how our products help buyers achieve those outcomes. At Cisco, we focus on customer outcomes in all of our narratives, which is a key component of the GTM strategy. At the end of the day, our customers are looking to solve a problem or to achieve an outcome. For example, they want to simplify their IT operations or reduce operating expenses. Through our narratives, we want our customers to walk away with the impression that Cisco understands these outcomes, and thus have engineered products that help them achieve those outcomes. In the GTM strategy consulting work I’ve done for some of the biggest tech brands in the world, I always started with identifying and researching the outcomes/pains the target audience is trying to achieve. Winning GTM strategies are those that best align customer outcomes to how the product or portfolio helps the target audience achieve those outcomes.

My experience at Gartner taught me that analysts are deeply passionate about the areas they cover. It is in a company’s best interest to see analysts (such as the ones at Gartner as well as other firms) as partners in the creation of a GTM strategy. These analysts are out talking to our customers and learning about the industry every single day. They have more exposure to the changes and nuances, and thus can help shape the research phase of the GTM strategy. Since working at Gartner, my approach to GTM has shifted only in that I put an exuberant amount of time into research as an input to the GTM strategy. This includes researching with customers, analyst firms, as well as leveraging internal subject matter experts. You don’t have to (and you should not) only use research from analysts to inform your GTM strategy. In fact, while at Gartner, when we advised enterprises on GTM strategy, we very often conducted Voice of Customer interviews, analyst interviews, and external surveys to help the client (the large enterprise) better understand their landscape. As a Gartner Market Strategy Consultant, we sourced the analysis from many inputs, not just Gartner research. My advice for PMMs who want to up-level their exposure to analysts relations (AR) is to start a regular conversation with your internal AR team. At Cisco, I meet with our AR team on a bi-weekly basis to ensure alignment on (1) how we are best leveraging analysts for our GTM strategy and (2) the narratives we want to tell them which may ultimately impact positions in vendor rankings. Even if there is not an existing open questionnaire for a vendor ranking, you should be partnering with the AR team to create a long-tailed approach leading up to the start of the next vendor ranking. Remember, the analyst firm should be thought of as a partner. Let them tell you what they are seeing in the market, then (later on) show them how you included their feedback into your GTM and Product strategies. 

If you’re not seeing the expected results, do this immediately: dig into why you’re not seeing results. Investigate the data to better understand why your GTM strategy isn’t working. Whatever metric is “down”, you need to know why. Look at the data again, and talk to customers to supplement with qualitative data. Is the problem really with the strategy or is there a misalignment of expectations vs reality? This is a key question to explore with the GTM team (PM+PMM+Sales). Personal example: I once worked at a small company that was the incumbent in an industry. For years, we were the market leaders. But then things changed. More competitors popped up. We started losing deals. Revenue was slipping. We needed to pivot our GTM strategy. Historically, we relied upon direct selling and selling through consultants. After doing a thorough analysis (leveraging market research, customer research, and sales data), we found that selling through a distribution channel (partners!) would yield greater results. In our case, the market changed (more competition) and previous methods for delivering the product to the world were not working. Once we realized this, here’s how we made the pivot: 1. Data! Research! Both quantitative and qualitative. We spoke with customers and analysts to better understand customer needs and buying behaviors. 2. Leadership buy-in! Once we had the analysis, we shared it with our company leaders and stakeholders. We let the analysis lead to an open discussion, centered around our recommendation. A major point to make here is that, while we had an analysis and final recommendation, we made it a discussion so that everyone played a role in finalizing the GTM strategy pivot. This is more likely to lead to buy-in and support. 3. Socialize! Once everyone was aligned in the new GTM strategy, we followed the same path as before; we socialized the strategy and made it accessible to everyone else who needed to see it. Pro-tip: Embrace transparency! When something isn’t working and you’re not seeing the results you expected, let your stakeholders know. Your sales and marketing partners will appreciate knowing that you’re keeping a finger on the pulse and that you’re taking action to improve. When the GTM strategy is strong, their work will also be strong. If they know you’re on-it to make the GTM strategy even stronger, it will increase their trust in you.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had internal sponsors both as my direct manager as well as stakeholders. These sponsors would go to bat for me to help me progress in my career. But there are things I did to make it easy for them to do it, and it makes all the difference in getting recognized for your impact. As awkward as it is, you have to advocate for your work and career progression. Here are some exercises that have worked for me to get my work seen by stakeholders and superiors: * Operationalize your passion: If there is something you are really passionate about, create a program around it and find a way to tie it back to business goals. When I was at Twilio, I cared deeply about customer insights (my passion). As part of my role, I created programs that helped our team get a deep understanding of our customers. We needed this to inform our product roadmap, marketing strategy, and product messaging. On a quarterly basis, I would host a Customer Insights Read-Out, and share everything we learned from customer interviews, surveys, sales data, etc., and presented it out to my stakeholders across sales and product. This helped both my manager and superiors across the business see the value of my work. Pro-tip: make sure your stakeholders will get value out of whatever you’re presenting to them. The goal is to impact the business; the positive influence it has on your career is secondary but valuable. * Leverage the internal “road show”: When you complete a project that works really well, put together a brief 10-min presentation explaining the problem you solved, how you did it, impact on the business, and next steps or recommendations. Pro-tip: Quantify the outcomes! Take the same presentation and pick a few relevant teams that would benefit from hearing your message. * Share regular “proud moments”: Select key people across the organization and keep them updated on projects you're working on. When you get a win, even a small one, share it! You have to do this on a regular basis. I suggest bi-weekly. Mentors and managers are great for this one! There are other ways you can accomplish this, for example, via weekly/by-weekly email progress updates or asking to be on the agenda of stakeholder meetings to update status on your work if it’s relevant. * Write your “next job” description: Write out your dream “next job” (not necessarily your ultimate career goal, but the next step in your path) and share it with your manager and any internal mentors. Be direct and ask for their help in identifying opportunities that will help you get there. 

I think of a GTM strategy as the document to get everyone aligned. As a fun analogy, imagine you’re all on one of those ancient Viking ships. Each person has an oar, and you all need to be rowing in the same direction and at the same pace. The GTM strategy is the charted path on a map that the captain uses to give appropriate instructions for direction and pace. Coming back to present-day, the GTM strategy should have the following components. (1) North-star goal: What are you trying to achieve? What have business leaders determined as the goal for the product or portfolio? By when do you need to achieve this goal (12 months? 5 years? etc.)? In our Viking ship scenario, the north-star goal is your final destination on the map. (2) Research: Research should address three major areas: Customer Insights, Market Insights, and Sales Date. Think back to our Viking ship scenario; you need all three to create the map itself. Customer Insights, Market Insights, and Sales Data are all inputs to help you better understand the landscape in which you are bringing your product or portfolio to market, and thus, inform your GTM strategy. Below are some key questions you need to answer for each of these research areas. * Customer Insights: What pains are customers facing? What do they care about? What are they trying to achieve with your product/portfolio? * Market Insights: How are competitors currently trying to address the customer’s pains? What works or does not work with their methods? What does the analyst community advise for your customers as they seek to address their pains, and how does your product/portfolio fit into that advice? What are analysts saying about market size and how customers are spending their dollars relative to your offerings? * Sales data: Where are you successful today? What regions are most successful? Which products are selling into which industries? You should evaluate metrics such as pipeline and number of opportunities across regions and industries. What segments are most successful (small business vs enterprise, for example)? The final outputs of your research should be synthesized into a single analysis that illustrates implications for the GTM strategy. Key questions to consider here should be: Where are you seeing low hanging fruit? Where do you have the strongest ability to execute? Which industries/regions do you have the biggest deals or largest number of deals? Are there certain markets where your product could have a first-mover advantage? Pro-tip: Quantify as much as the research as you can and try to plot it on a graph, where the X-axis is your ability to execute (strength in pipeline) and the Y-axis is the market size (could be market size by region, industry, or segment). (3) Narrative: This is the messaging and positioning for the product or portfolio. It’s the story that’s told through your sales and marketing channels. Back in our Viking ship analogy, this is the chant the Vikings would sing as they made their way through the journey - everyone singing the same tune at the same time, rowing their oars in the same direction, at the same pace.