Back in December, I wrote a blog post about the need to listen to the market – not just existing customers, but more specifically the non-buyers and lost sales. After reviewing some of the comments, I felt it was important to explicitly discuss the next step – - namely, what to do with everything that you’ve heard.
Product Marketing is often stuck in the unenviable position of defending its value within the organization. Too often, time is spent justifying not only the headcount, but also the work products. When you do get a chance to defend your time, you spend it talking about why the market voice is necessary – the buyer personas.
In this week’s #prodmgmttalk (a weekly virtual twitter discussion/gathering of people who identify as professional product managers and product marketing managers, globally, held on Mondays) I contributed through a comment that said “trust can be earned after credibility is established”. I applaud Jim Holland for leading this discussion amongst the community following his blog on the subject. And, I wanted to explain my contribution in a bit more detail.
Hmm. We all deal with egos in our work worlds. Everyone has them to some extent. We talk about certain personalities – and people – negatively who put on great dog & pony shows in front of management and audiences that are perceived as being more important. We recognize the individual, usually behind their back, as adding negative elements to our teams. On a certain level, many would argue that this may be healthy. Really?
In the post World War II industrial era, a very distinctive management style emerged. It featured such aspects as defined start and stop times to the work day, a tall hierarchy style chain of command, numerous meetings, few decisions made, prevalent fear of failure, lack of innovation and huge internal silos leading to a general lack of teamwork and collaboration.
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We have all been in situations where the prospect requests a product demo from the sales rep. For some of us, sales thinks that our role in the company is to provide demos to their prospects because we are the product experts. Usually, sales is left to fend for themselves and muddle through a product demo on their own. How do we, as good product managers or product marketing managers, ensure that the demo is ready for prime time?
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I have seldom ranted about service I have received, but I feel compelled to point this one out. And, better yet, it’s relevant to the topic of product management/marketing. (more…)
I am working with a small business client – a very small business and we had an interesting discussion around marketing her services. After getting past the concept of the product is a service… we talked about building trust and relationships with prospects and customers. I broke down the discussion into some simple non-marketing language that might help you in explaining all of this as well. I told it was like making a great sandwich. (more…)
