(This article is cross-posted as a guest post at onproductmanagement.net)
Do you work in product marketing? Have you ever tried to explain what you do, to someone who isn’t familiar with product development and management? Ever want to pull your hair out after the conversation? It probably goes like this:
(This article is cross-posted as a guest post at onproductmanagement.net)
As product marketing professionals, we are tasked by senior leadership with understanding the buyer persona and directing the creation of marketing materials that tout the benefits of our product to those specific personas, benefits that solve the buying problems of the market. We are tasked with understanding the voice of the customer. We are tasked with win/loss analysis, competitor analysis, branding and sales psychology. Strategic stuff. Big picture stuff. Important stuff that makes sales more efficient and ultimately brings revenue in the door.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is fairest… is that how your typical presentations start? Sounds a bit ego-driven, doesn’t it?
How about when you are networking? Do you introduce yourself with a simple handshake and a pleasant comment or two? Or, do you go into a long dialogue on who you are, what you think, how you act, what matters to you? A few people do this, but does it make for a good networking introduction?
Of course not. Most of us acknowledge ourselves and move on in the conversation with the person we have just met. We try to learn as much as we can about them, trying to establish a relationship that is mutual.
It’s easier to focus on the activities that justify the existence of product marketing in your organization. In the post “Justifing product marketing in your organization” I explain that it comes down to a simplistic role of “injecting the market voice in a balanced way in a method where the buyer can understand, relate and be motivated to take action.” Yet, we then proceed to do things that discount our own value. So why do we shoot ourselves in the foot so often?
In a recent blog post, Forrester CEO George Colony wrote that CEO’s want better sales forces. As the sales enablement arm of the organization, how do product marketing professionals, ensure that our sales team is effective and ready to sell our new products and have well designed sales tools aligned to the ever-changing sales cycle?
