Can everyone see my screen?
Subway notes from a product marketer
Editor’s note: A sudden thought hit me when I was on the subway commuting to work last week—it’s been more than a month since I published a piece here. As I edged through the crowds and settled myself into a rare seat on the train, I began to ruminate on why I’ve been terrible at writing as frequently as I should. I launched Firstdraft with starry-eyed optimism last year, convincing myself that a bi-weekly writing cadence was within reach. Life happens, and I soon realized that my unrealistic expectations of myself inadvertently led to complete and total procrastination.
Part of my diagnosis was that my older pieces tended to lean toward long form, technical breakdowns that demanded deep thought before I could publish them. It’s hard to do that with speed, when weeks are so busy.
Yet I have so many unrefined thoughts—ponderings of daily events and learnings—that often consume me in still moments. These could go somewhere as an outlet—so why not here?
That was my aha moment. I hopped off the train having more clarity than when I entered it. I’m changing the format of this newsletter to serve as a diary of career notes that my future self could use as a reference. Firstdrafts that I’ll likely cringe at, as the years go by. I hope they’re helpful for you.
Product marketing is possibly one of the most challenging—and exciting—roles in tech right now. The stakes are high when products are easy to build and new competitors enter the market every day.
As a PMM, you own market differentiation and narrative in this noisy landscape, and importantly, the operations of getting that POV out into the market. It’s a role that calls for creativity and execution chops, and the ability to lead with influence and get things done.
Here are some thoughts on navigating this role in a demanding environment:
1. You need to bring people together
Sounds basic—it’s not. A critical part of the role is getting your stakeholders in product, marketing, and sales aligned in a common direction. When should you launch a product? How should it be priced? What’s the GTM motion and core narrative? These are decisions you ultimately own, but shouldn’t be making in a silo.
Each team may have varying opinions on these questions, driven by the unique operating mechanics, objectives, and needs of their functions. It’s your job to get them all moving towards a common path.
The important thing is to enter alignment conversations with an opinion—one that’s shaped by your knowledge and facts on the product, GTM motion, and the market. Go in knowing and documenting the outcome you want to drive → e.g. launch your product on X date vs Y, bundle product X with feature Y, monetize X with Y pricing model and GTM motion.
Your job is to get people to understand your plan, guide them towards agreement, or suggest a rational alternative if they disagree. Caveat: know that the chances of all your stakeholders working in agreement are low, especially as the company scales and rooms get bigger. Aim to get the majority aligned, even if the rest disagree and commit. Another caveat: this whole process may feel tougher if you’re a first-gen immigrant who doesn’t like rolling her R’s (note to self: 👏never 👏give 👏up).
Two tips that have helped me here:
Understand each function well: for example, what are product’s top priorities and current frustrations, and how does that differ from sales, and marketing? Taking the effort to understand how each function works will help you relate better and propose unbiased solutions that don’t feel isolating to one team versus the other. For example, if you’re launching a product that’s better suited for a PLG motion, you should justify and highlight why enablement will be lesser-resourced, and plan workarounds for sales reps → e.g light-weight async assets vs deep enablement sessions.
Limit the number of stakeholders: identify the 2-3 core people that are critical to decision making. “Decision by committee” makes me want to rip my hair out, especially when there are too many cooks in the kitchen. The key here is to swiftly communicate key decisions taken with the rest of your org (on slack/email etc.) so people can read it and speak up if they have any major objections. Remember that too many stakeholders affects fast decision making, and fast decision making is table stakes today.
2. You need to talk to sales
A lot. This has personally been a tricky one for me; as someone with a high workload who values being scrappy and quick, here are some thoughts and biases that have frequented my mind on this topic:
‘‘Why spend time on conversations when I can just focus on shipping fast and moving on to the next thing? Deadlines are looming!”
“Each rep has their own unique approach to selling: what if I get competing feedback from multiple people who don’t agree on a common path? That’ll slow me down!”
“I just spent X hours prepping these slides for a launch that needs to go out in two days. What if Y has competing opinions on the messaging? There’s no time to incorporate their feedback and my work has already been reviewed by other stakeholders!”
“Meetings aren’t measurable, output is! I can’t justify all this time spent simply having conversations”
I’ve come to learn that getting feedback from sales is non-negotiable in scaling companies; it’s a core part of the PMM role. Automated call transcripts and recordings can’t replicate real conversations (convince me otherwise, AI influencer gods) where reps reveal the real deal.
The art and skill here lies in knowing what feedback to prioritize. Identify trends and patterns across conversations vs over-indexing on one or two opinions.
3. You need to execute without losing sight of the forest
In today’s environment, everyone needs to be shipping constantly. There’s no room to simply be a ‘strategy expert’ without execution to back you up. Yet in PMM, it’s still important to take a step back from the weeds to think about the bigger picture. How does the narrative of the feature you’re working on tie to the larger product vision? What are customers actually saying about your product? How can some of your learnings help influence the roadmap? Attend events, talk to customers, and keep sight of the bigger picture without compromising your ability to execute with speed. The biggest risk to success in PMM is getting so in the weeds that your job is defined by asset creation and servicing one off requests, with no seat at the table in influencing creative campaigns and important GTM decisions.
More on all this in a future piece. Let’s see how quickly I can write my next one.
🫶