Linda Su

Product marketing gets a ton of requests from other teams -- it's because we're very cross functional and on the positive side, valuable! However, you should always be prioritizing impact and quality over ad hoc work and quantity. Your time and skill set are valuable, so always protect it. Here are some ways to manage unrealistic expectations, move aways from ad hoc work, and get comfortable saying no: * Managing unrealistic expectations: This depends on the situation and whether it's because the stakeholder doesn't understand your role/responsibilities or doesn't respect them. In the first case, whenever you start a new role or even if you've been at a org for a while, it's always good to remind people your goals and priorities. Set up a call and walk them through your plan (do it annually or quarterly if needed). Welcome their feedback and share how what you're working on will support their goals and team. If it's the second case, remind them what you're focused on and why. Tie your work to corporate objectives. Be willing to flex, if based on the conversation you decide something else should take priority. But also stand your ground if you know your priorities are right. Communicate to your stakeholders on why these are top priorities and bring qualitative and quantitative data to help back it up. * Moving away from ad hoc work: The endless Slack messages and requests can eat away at focus time and projects with larger impact. Several ways my team and I manage this are -- if it's an ask that we have current content for, I direct them to Seismic, our enablement/content platform that hosts everything. There's not reason you need to find it for them if it's there. If it's a piece of content we don't have or needs updating -- we direct them to our PMM Request Form, where they fill out the request, reason, and impact and we determine whether we execute on it or not based on current priorities. * Get comfortable with saying no: This is where having goals and priorities outlined upfront is helpful because you can always point them back to that. If you're uncomfortable telling them why you need to prioritize other work at the moment, you can say something along the lines of "I have several urgent priorities I'm working on at the moment for ___, let me see if this aligns with one of those" or "I will need to align with my manager on whether we should shift priorities for this request, and I will get back to you." This gives you some time to think about how to approach it without coming off curt. In addition, if you have a PMM Request Form, direct them to that form.

You should always feel compelled and empowered to take ownership over your role, work, and the impact you make. At more senior levels, there may be more opportunities presented to you, however, no matter your level, there are many ways you can control and increase your own visibility. Here are several ways to increase your visibility and show your impact: Internal roadshow and feedback: Whether you're just starting at a company or have been there for a while, it's always a good idea to walkthrough your vision, role, goals / OKRs, upcoming projects, and how you can support cross-functional teams. For example, sharing your upcoming projects for Q2 and getting feedback from sales, customer success, product, marketing. You can do this by setting up meetings with groups of stakeholders, and frame it as an opportunity to discuss how you can support them and where your work intersects. Project look back and results: It's always a good idea to do a look back and review of your short-term and long-term OKRs and goals. If it's a longer-term initiative such as an integrated campaign it could be a quarterly cadence and share-out, if it's shorter-term such as a sales play, weekly or bi -weekly, or if you just had an event or product launch - keep folks updated on the performance and any learnings. You can share these via email, Slack, an All Hands call, or a meeting. Personal brand: Another way to bring visibility to your work is to post about it on your social media such as LinkedIn. Talk about a project you're proud of or something you learned. Not only do you show colleagues and leadership the work you've done, but you also build your personal brand. Mentors and sponsors: Having a strong network of mentors and sponsors at your company is critical. These are people who can help bring you into more visible projects and conversations. If you want work that has higher visibility or greater impact, ask for it. Then apply the approaches above to make sure your goals, successes, and learnings are known.

Your messaging should always aim to influence and shape the market's perception of your product. Good messaging accelerates trust between your company / product and your buyer, which in turn leads to demand, adoption, revenue, etc. Your audience is multi-faceted and so your messaging should be as well. Strong messaging addresses the following points in a clear and compelling way: * Persona: Who is the target audience? * Job to be done: What is their "job to be done"? * Pain points: What's their challenge to accomplishing that? * Differentiated solution: How can you help them solve that problem in a unique and better way than anyone else? * Features: What technical features prove that solution? * Benefits: What's the value they get? As your go-to-market evolves and matures, you can layer on additional lenses such as regional nuances, business size, and industry. The more personal and relevant your messaging is, the more impact it will have on your buyer.

There are different ways to set up your messaging framework, and you want to make sure it's tailored to your buyer, company, product, and goals. That will help determine which sections you need. For example for product messaging, we use the following sections: * Value proposition * Differentiators * Capability/Use Case * Feature * Benefit * Proof points For solution or persona messaging, we use the following sections: * Solution Outcome or Persona Value Prop * Driver (what we call Capability/Use Case) * Product Proof (Supporting Features and Value Prop) * KPIs (what are the tangible results as our product is directly connected to revenue metrics) * Customer proof (customer stories, testimonials, results) These messaging frameworks are typically in Google Docs or Google Slide format.

Your messaging should always aim to influence and shape the market's perception of your product. Good messaging accelerates trust between your company / product and your buyer, which in turn leads to demand, adoption, revenue, etc. Your audience is multi-faceted and so your messaging should be as well. Strong messaging addresses the following points in a clear and compelling way: * Persona: Who is the target audience? * Job to be done: What is their "job to be done"? * Pain points: What's their challenge to accomplishing that? * Differentiated solution: How can you help them solve that problem in a unique and better way than anyone else? * Features: What technical features prove that solution? * Benefits: What's the value they get? As your go-to-market evolves and matures, you can layer on additional lenses such as regional nuances, business size, and industry. The more personal and relevant your messaging is, the more impact it will have on your buyer.

Keeping your messaging up to date is so critical both to ensure you stay relevant in the market and so your internal stakeholders like sales, success, and marketing are using the latest and greatest. Often times, there will be natural points for you to review messaging for example, if you're preparing any enablement/training, there's a big event or campaign launching, or you're doing message testing. If these don't naturally come up, a good benchmark to set is to review your messaging quarterly and then after any big milestone such as a product launch, business event, or market trend. For example: * Product launch: Update messaging to reflect any new personas, features, and value. * Competitors: If you notice a new competitor that is affecting deals or your current competitors are taking a bigger chunk of your opportunities, it's a good time to look at your differentiation and messaging. * Company acquisition or merger: Update messaging to tell the "better together" story and expanded set of use cases, personas, features, and value. * Market trends: New technology such as AI or global shifts such as recession / COVID which may impact buyer priorities. Or the product category you're in shifts -- such as consolidation of vendors. The best way to remind yourself is to put a block on your calendar to do this. And then make sure you communicate to all your stakeholders the updated messaging.

Product marketing is one of the most cross-functional roles in a business, and whether you're an individual contributor or people manager, you will need to be able to influence, lead, and manage others. I recently read "5 Dysfunctions of a Team" and its concepts translate quite well to managing project teams and cross-functional stakeholders as well. Based on my experience, here's how you can drive successful cross-functional projects: 1. Build trust and strong relationships: Before diving into a project, first get to know the people you're working with. If you haven't worked with them before, set up some 1:1s and get to know them both personally and professionally. Investing the time up front will help immensely when you get to collaborating, overcoming conflicts, accountability, etc. 2. Align on high-level goals, timeline, and roles/responsibilities: Whether you're leading a new project or looking to collaborate with other teams, alignment on objectives and having joint goals is critical. This way everyone has stake in the game and understands the value and impact of the project. Once that's decided, creating a roles/responsibilities matrix and work back plan will set clear expectations. 3. Continuous communication, feedback, and reflection: As you move through the project or partnership, set up recurring meetings to review project plans and progress, drive accountability, openly discuss any obstacles or objections, and address new opportunities. Also know that plans can change based on business priorities or other factors, so be flexible to adjust accordingly and help others understand why as well. It's always important to bring those your working with on the journey of change, so they understand why their work is important.

You should always feel compelled and empowered to take ownership over your role, work, and the impact you make. At more senior levels, there may be more opportunities presented to you, however, no matter your level, there are many ways you can control and increase your own visibility. Here are several ways to increase your visibility and show your impact: Internal roadshow and feedback: Whether you're just starting at a company or have been there for a while, it's always a good idea to walkthrough your vision, role, goals / OKRs, upcoming projects, and how you can support cross-functional teams. For example, sharing your upcoming projects for Q2 and getting feedback from sales, customer success, product, marketing. You can do this by setting up meetings with groups of stakeholders, and frame it as an opportunity to discuss how you can support them and where your work intersects. Project look back and results: It's always a good idea to do a look back and review of your short-term and long-term OKRs and goals. If it's a longer-term initiative such as an integrated campaign it could be a quarterly cadence and share-out, if it's shorter-term such as a sales play, weekly or bi -weekly, or if you just had an event or product launch - keep folks updated on the performance and any learnings. You can share these via email, Slack, an All Hands call, or a meeting. Personal brand: Another way to bring visibility to your work is to post about it on your social media such as LinkedIn. Talk about a project you're proud of or something you learned. Not only do you show colleagues and leadership the work you've done, but you also build your personal brand. Mentors and sponsors: Having a strong network of mentors and sponsors at your company is critical. These are people who can help bring you into more visible projects and conversations. If you want work that has higher visibility or greater impact, ask for it. Then apply the approaches above to make sure your goals, successes, and learnings are known.

A clear and simple way to format your messaging is with a message hierarchy or message house. As part of the message house, strong messaging addresses the following points in a clear and compelling way: * Persona: Who is the target audience? * Job to be done: What is their "job to be done"? * Pain points: What's their challenge to accomplishing that? * Differentiated solution: How can you help them solve that problem in a unique and better way than anyone else? * Features: What technical features prove that solution? * Benefits: What's the value they get? These sections could differ and be formatted in different ways depending on whether your messaging is focused on product, use case, persona, segment, or industry. Typically these are in a Google Document or Google Slides format. When sharing with stakeholders, you should have a clear objective in mind on why you're sharing it, is it to: * Get feedback: If you want to test your messaging with internal stakeholders and get their feedback, schedule a meeting to walk through the messaging and what you'd like them to evaluate. * Inform: If the purpose is to let folks know there's been an update in messaging. Share the updated messaging in team channels, emails, etc so sales, marketing, and let the rest of the company know where to get the latest and greatest. You should also include a call to action to tell folks to start using the latest messaging and point to any resources they can use. * Educate / train: If you're launching new messaging or messaging that has changed due to a shift in positioning, product, or market, it's a good idea to enable sellers, marketers, and other cross-functional teams. You can do this through a self-guided training, recorded video on how to use it, or a call. * Activate: If you want sellers to start using your messaging with buyers, the best way is to provide them with resources such as example email templates they can use, slides, demos, etc. A great way to drive adoption is to have a small group of sellers start using the messaging first and then share clips of their calls and good examples.

As a product marketer, the best piece of career advice I received was "to be kind, not nice." Let me give some context to this. For me personally, and for many PMMs I know, a strength of ours is empathy. And empathy is a critical and extremely valuable skill to have as a PMM when building strong cross-functional relationships, collaborating with other teams, and ensuring voice of the customer and the needs of your buyers are integrated in everything you do. However, sometimes being a very empathetic person can mean that you're afraid of hurting someone's feelings when providing critical feedback or you see an area the business could be doing better but you don't want to step on someone else's toes because it's not in your scope. I've certainly faced these situations, and when you're earlier on in your PMM career, you don't feel as confident expressing your opinions and giving others who don't report to you feedback. However, a great manager of mine, changed my perception completely on this and so did the book "5 Dysfunctions of a Team." Always remember you were hired for a reason, and that reason is because the business believes your experiences and perspectives are valuable. If you see an opportunity where something or someone could improve, call it out, even if that person is leadership level or someone on another team. Always be respectful and kind, but don't sugarcoat, be less clear, or stay silent because you're afraid of what they might think. Giving feedback and helping people get better is being kind.