In several online forums/blogs recently, there has been a lot of talk and discussion about “how often do I update this?” “Change that?” “Do this?” There was a specific thread that was related to a question about a product roadmap, but I’ve also seen the same question about web content, marketing communication pieces, customer visits and other outward facing activities. Our product professional peers are looking for some schedule so they can plug the activity into their calendar and update x, y or z regularly.

But, a calendar appointment is not what is needed to address the challenge.

The only way you know how often product management and marketing artifacts should be updated, and how to share the information, is to know both your organizational culture and your market. You need to understand the beat and rhythm of your business.

Let me try and explain. Beat is part of rhythm. When you clap to music or tap your foot on the floor, you are following the beat. The beat is steady.  Rhythm is the pattern of the notes, which make up the melody. Rhythm is made up of patterns of sounds (notes) and silences (rests); it can vary throughout a melody.

To effectively develop and present a roadmap, it needs to be collaborative. But, how often do you update? How often do you share? The answer lies in the beat of your business.

So, you ask, how do I actually determine the beat of the business?

Try looking at some of these questions:

• When does your organization do strategic planning?
• When are goals developed and shared?
• Who looks at the product goals to ensure that they are aligned to the new business goals? When?
• Are goals periodically updated? When?
• Are there any patterns emerging?

This will be different in every organization and sometimes even by the different markets served by the products and business. By understanding when planning happens and when goals are set, you can then confidently check your existing roadmap, and other plans, against the updated information and goals.

Know that different stakeholders have different needs and views of the business. Sales might want the road map updated frequently and only really care about next quarter. Investors might be more interested in a 5 year view. Marketing may need to change their schedule for planned campaigns quarterly. It’s about knowing the beat of the stakeholder within the rhythm of
the business.

Looking in from the outside, the key to successfully updating the information, in a way that meets the needs of each stakeholder, is to communicate the right what to right whom, at the right time to enable their beat so it works in the greater rhythm. Successfully done, this will have everyone playing the same tune.

Try this exercise.

Go to your marketing collateral closet and pull a sales packet of information out. These are the same data/sell sheets, white papers and pretty pictures that you would pull if you are preparing to speak with a potential buyer. (You can leave the pretty folder in the closet – they cost extra money to produce.) If you don’t have a marketing closet, go to your Web site and print out the packet of material.

Now, go through each of the pieces you have pulled together and circle these words (a big red marker works best):

• if you work with a hardware product: reliable, scalable, “stronger performance”
• if you work with a software product:  faster, easier, “more productive”

How many occurrences did you find? 5? 10? More? On every sheet or every other? Did you just offer a face palm because you see where this is going?

The sales collateral, marketing artifacts, you use need to speak to the buyer. Words like “reliable, scalable, stronger performance,” and “faster, easier, more productive” speak to your product. They are adjectives that are marketing-speak for how you are trying to illustrate why your product is “different, better, cheaper.” They, however, fail. These words speak to
descriptions of features, not the problems your market is trying to solve.

It’s not the words’ fault

Instead of pulling out a thesaurus and trying again with different words, it would be best if you step back and look at your whole product messaging. Stepping back to look at your messaging begins with stepping back to look at your market’s problems, and that begins with taking a look at your market. Do you really know them? How well do you know them?

If you know your buying market, really know them, you will know what words will matter to them when they read your marketing and sales material. A word like “reliable” don’t resonate the way they used to – in today’s technology world, we all expect and assume that the systems and software we buy are reliable. Software that says “more productive” often has no value to a buyer – doesn’t all business software make you more productive?

Go find out what the real problems are that your buying market is facing every day. Listen to how they describe their problems. Ask why they are seeking new solutions and what are the important elements for them to consider. Listen to their words. Write the specific words down.

When you return to your office, share the notes from the visit with your marketing communication team. Let them know the real words that matter to the buyer. Tell them the emotions you saw, the non-verbal body language that was displayed during your visit. Tell them about the person, and not in generic terms.

Changing the words you use may be subtle difference; but to the buyer, when you understand their problems and speak their language, that may be all the difference you need to gain the trust and credibility – to gain the sale.

Congratulations on creating the product marketing roadmap. Congratulations on discovering and creating metrics that show how you are progressing on that roadmap. But, now you have to communicate this information. The roadmap has no value if it is not shared.

The delivery of the roadmap is a critical element to illustrating the value that product marketing brings to the table. But, if you deliver this “document” by email, hoping that the various readers will a) take the time to read it thoroughly and b) understand the content without expectation, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

Communicating your roadmap requires collaboration. Your roadmap first needs to be shared with the product management and marketing teams. If the product marketing roadmap is the bridge between the directions developed by these groups, start by sharing your guide here. Look to these teams to validate your information and challenge your metrics. If one team has made changes on their plans, this is when it may first surface to you and you should make the adjustments. These two teams are your friends, their approval and support will go far.

Once you have the support of product management and marketing, take it to your leaders. But, don’t send it over email. Email is not a good communication method for sharing and discussing strategy.  Since the concept of a product marketing roadmap is new and may require some background information presented, email is definitely not the right tool.

The best way to introduce this new item is to do so through a regularly scheduled leadership meeting, whatever it may be called. Ask to get on the agenda for 30 minutes. Request the time on the agenda so that you may “share the value of product marketing” with the leadership. Since this is not a typical item on the agenda you will most likely get the time requested – if not for any other reason than curiosity. Whatever the reason, when it is accepted, take the time!

During the meeting, start your leadership presentation by explaining what the product marketing roadmap is and how it was created (briefly and not in detail) through using the product roadmap and the marketing plans. Then proceed to show the dashboard you have created which illustrates the movement of the items on the roadmap. Finally, close with the commitment that you will update your dashboard on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly) and would like to come back to the meeting to share the updated information. Ask for feedback on the dashboard. Are these meaningful metrics? Any additional metrics that they would like tracked? By including them and asking for input, they are accepting your roadmap.

If product marketing doesn’t stand at the table and show strategic value, no one else will do it for us. Strategy is difficult enough for organizations to see and touch. Through developing a product marketing roadmap, you have delivered a strategic tool. Looking in from the outside, if you don’t share this tool properly, disappointment will set in when you don’t have successful adoption of what you shared. If that happens, your commitment to making this a strategic asset will fail.

Lately though, I have noticed more and more retailers and restaurants are spewing out prizes (dare I say bribes) for completing their “short” survey… in some cases garnering you the chance to win $5000 or maybe 10% off your next visit all in search of gathering customer opinions and measuring customer satisfaction.

Recently I had the opportunity to acquire a new car. We all know how competitive the auto industry is, and the fight for customers is featured in every ad placed online, on television and in print. After making my decision, not based on the ads by the way, my car salesman asked me to fill out a manufacturer satisfaction survey. He further asked me to speak with him first if there were any questions on the survey where I could not give him or the dealership a perfect score of ten out of ten. He said that his manufacturer would view a nine as failure. How accurate would you expect the survey results to be after this bias was introduced? How accurate do you think the manufacturer’s survey was three days later when they called to ask me the questions about the experience?

Worse yet was my experience yesterday at a retail store. I completed my purchase and the cashier said “Oh, lucky you. You were randomly selected to complete a survey.” Okay, lucky me. She printed her name in large letters across the top of the receipt tape and gave me the following instruction. “Call this phone number and answer the few quick questions. Be sure to give me 9’s or 10’s for everything because my manager considers eight as failing.” I considered two possible outcomes – complete the survey and lie or not complete the survey. Which do you suppose the company would prefer?

Customer satisfaction surveys are only good if you are collecting valid data. If I simply wanted to see all tens on my survey results, I would just call someone who would give me only tens. How do we as marketers effect change or improvement if don’t seek out the truth from our customers? Do the numbers matter when they aren’t real?

Looking in from the outside, if you want validation that you are a nice person, call your mom. If you want validation your product is the best thing since sliced bread, call your best customer. But, if you want the truth, be ready to listen without skewing or asking for it.

The couple is planning their vacation, and decided to take a car on this trip. They were looking forward to the adventures they could encounter along the way and the side diversions that would present as opportunities for exploration. Then it happened. They got lost. She was looking at the GPS but it offered no help for getting them back on track, there were missing roads and turns that they were passing were not present on the screen. Soon enough they saw a sign for the gas station up ahead. And, as you would expect, he didn’t want to stop. “Real men don’t ask for directions,” was his reply.

True, this a notorious stereotype; but, it is based in many stories (and some real research) of the same situation happening over and over. Yet, somehow we keep expecting a different result.

That night, when they were safely in their hotel room (and the anger subdued,) the couple pulled their resources together and re-evaluated where they were and where they wanted to go. What was their goal? How were they going to get there?

What does this have to do with product marketing? EVERYTHING!

If others follow a map, why not Product Marketing?

When our product management peers are planning our product lifecycle, they follow a plan, a roadmap. When our marketing service peers are planning their programs, they follow a plan, a roadmap. So, why don’t we follow a roadmap when we look at our product marketing activities?

The most common reason I hear for why a product marketing roadmap is not being used or followed is that most teams have never heard of one. This is a travesty. It is truly a disservice to yourself, your peers and your product. Worse yet, the lack of a roadmap for the product marketing activities will hurt your business.

A product marketing roadmap is the bridge between the product roadmap and the marketing plan. It gathers information from the product roadmap, and translates these attributes, features and abilities into actions that support the marketing activities needed to enable sales.

Getting Started

Getting started in building a roadmap for product marketing can seem overwhelming. (Taking the first step is often viewed that way.) Try this exercise:

1. Obtain a copy of your product roadmap for the next 4-8 quarters. (You do have one, right?)
2. Obtain your marketing team plans – demand generation, web, social media, events, papers, etc. (Hopefully your marketing group has this organized in one place, in a common format and somewhere that is stored in an location that is easy to share.)
3. Arrange an off-site meeting day – It doesn’t have to be at an extravagant location but you need room for walls, whiteboards, etc. It is best to avoid a home (unless everyone on the team is comfortable there, and it would be totally free of distractions.)
4. Arrange for an outside facilitator. This is someone who does not have a vested interest in the outcome, only that the process flows and all persons involved are listened to, engaged and valued. Companies that run agile product management processes often have coaches and/or trainers you can tap for this resource.
5. Put the product marketing team in the room. Bring in post-it notes, paper, white boards and copies of the roadmaps and plans you collected, copies of your marketing artifacts (sales sheets, etc.) but LEAVE THE COMPUTER OUTSIDE! and TURN OFF PHONES! When we are in brainstorming sessions, technology can inhibit or distract one – or more – person. And, that distracted person is all it takes to lose rhythm and collaboration.
6. Plot out the product roadmap against the marketing plans. Now, look at the gap between the two plans you have plotted. How are you going to bridge the conversation? How do you bring the product, brought to life from the product roadmap, to returning sales, from the leads generated through the marketing plans? This is the content for the product marketing roadmap.
7. Once you have the content of the product marketing roadmap identified, you need to look at your resources and priorities. Then, start plotting out where these content/task areas fit in the new besieged area to accomplish the business, unit and team goals. Fill all this in and you are building your own product marketing roadmap.

It’s not that easy

This exercise is not meant to be viewed as simplistic. While it sounds easy enough to accomplish, it requires a strong cohesive team who have the skills and abilities to think strategically yet understand the practicality of the tactics involved. It is not about simply writing a post-it note for an idea; it is about HAVING the idea to write it.

Like a product roadmap, a product marketing roadmap is one that should be revisited, re-evaluated, and re-engineered as plans, products and priorities shift. It’s like a persona in that regard: never think it is done since it has to have a real life that is based on real and evolving dependencies to be useful.

Creating a product marketing roadmap requires commitment, cooperation and patience. It is like a brainstorming session on steroids, and with more at stake since it will affect actions that impact the business’ bottom line. It will leave you exhausted when you do it right. But, it will leave you exhilarated and excited more importantly. You will clearly be able to see a vision of how to make your vision real. You will have a guide to discuss and share. You will have a focal point for when your GPS steers you off track.

Add one for a bonus

Looking in from the outside, in the end, not only will you have the roadmap to help, but you will enhance the value of product marketing in your organization.

(If you or your organization need help to implement this concept, let me know.)

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:

“What do you do?”

“I’m in product marketing.”

“Oh, so you develop those flashy ads we see all over?”

“No. Product marketing, not advertising or marketing communications.”

“Oh. So what do you do?”

“I make sure that the messaging of my product is something the market will understand, and then work to communicate that to people who want to buy my product.”

“Oh. So you create the sales leads?”

“No. I create the product positioning, work on the launch strategy and help the rest of the marketing teams do their job better.”

“I get it. You’re in marketing.”

“No. I am on the product team.”

“Oh.”

It is established that product marketing is a vital and necessary role within any product organization. (I’d go as far as to defend that means that it is necessary in EVERY organization since every company is selling some sort of product.) Yet, too often, product marketing is forced to explain its own value. And, this starts with needing to justify its role and what it is that you do.

Start with understanding what you do

Taken at its core, the basic level, product marketing is about the work required to get the “products off the shelf.” … The role works with product management who are about getting the product on the shelf, with all of its features. And, it is a partner to marketing services, who drive the lead generation and marketing communication who design the various artifacts that support the product. Yes, these are very basic definitions, but they do separate the responsibilities. There are defined lines that are distinct.

Here is where the challenge comes though. It makes sense, in the majority of organizations, to have the marketing services and marketing communication in the same organization. They are dependent upon each other. And product marketing? Both of these teams depend on the product marketing team effort to do their jobs. So, some put the product marketing team within the marketing organization.

Bad idea. When you put the product marketing team with the marketing team, the role is challenged to deliver on its true value. Instead, the role becomes one of a tactical delivery vehicle responsible for data sheets, webinars and sales training.

It’s about adding the right value

In an ideal world, the role of product marketing should be aligned in the same team as the role of product management. The two are inseparable since they are both about the product first. Both of the product roles require an outward view to the market at large. Both roles need to work together on the product roadmap. There are differences too. Product management listens to the market. Product marketing talks to the market. Product management is about getting products ready to be available to the market. Product marketing needs to understand how to position the product so that the buyer is interested. Both teams add significant value to the product. Both teams are necessary to the success of the product. True, together, the work they perform flows to the partnership formed with their marketing brethren. But, separation from product management means splitting the product’s market voice.

Looking in from the outside, where product marketing sits as a role within the organization matters. It matters a lot! If you are seeking to add product value, then align the role to where it has a fighting chance. If you are depending upon the role to deliver a market voice about the product, then align it with the product.

(This article is cross-posted as a guest post at onproductmanagement.net)

Aren’t the marketing automation tools great?

They help you develop target lead campaigns that automatically respond to a “visitor’s” action depending on what they do. This is done without human interference or effort, moving the potential buyer through the elements that have been pre-determined to be the right marketing piece of collateral or action at the time. How did business ever do this before, given how time and labor consuming these efforts can be?

But there is a flaw. And it can ruin your efforts.

Simply put, if the campaigns are developed without thinking about key aspects of product marketing, they will likely fail. And those aspects include:

• Understanding the market – from the problems they face to the tools they use
• What they do and don’t like and why
• Their buying process including budget and authority
• What will motivate them to action
• They have created the buyer personas that help others in the organization truly understand the buyers’ goals, attitudes and behaviors.

Tools Empower
Tools empower and enable, but too often, they do so at a cost. And, they often may empower the wrong team at the wrong time.

It starts when marketing teams create their campaigns in a vacuum. In order to effectively aid marketers in fully understanding customers and subsequently developing a strategic marketing plan, marketing automation tools provide information across all phases of the marketing process, including:

• Demand Generation
• Lead Management
• Lead Scoring
• Lead Nurturing
• Lead Generation
• Campaign Analysis
• Lead Qualification
• Sales Effectiveness

However, this vast amount of work that the tools can perform has created a false sense of security for the marketing teams. From my experience, without understanding the buyer first, even the best demand generation effort will not work as effectively as planned. And, there is no amount of clean up afterwards that will recover the lost time and effort.

Let’s Bring it Back to the Beginning

First, you can’t outsource the campaign or the copy. While many marketing teams will hire agencies to work with them on copy, the copy will only be effective if the right information about the intended market – the targeted buyer – is understood. It is never a good business practice to outsource a strategic element that is at the core of your business. Understanding the buyer is the job of Product Marketing.

Once your Product Marketing team has shared the buyers’ goals, attitudes and behaviors, and personas, it’s critical that they work with Marketing to create the triggers for the automation tool. The Marketing team and agency can help define the steps, the campaign flow – whether it be three or ten steps – and explain the goal.

The Product Marketing team should have definitive answers on what will motivate the buyer to move through the process eliciting the response for the next automated trigger to occur. Despite what many people may think, it isn’t a great pitch or giveaway that attracts buyers – it’s about making content meaningful to the buyer so they act in a positive way.

Product Marketing makes it meaningful by truly understanding the buyer’s motivation and properly communicating this motivation to all internal parties.

Product Marketing Shouldn’t Own This

I am not advocating that Product Marketing own the automation of the messages or be in control of the process. In fact, it should be the opposite. Once the strategy is set, the buying cycle is understood, messages crafted, the flow mapped out and the calls to action created by the Marketing team, Product Marketing should assume an advisory role.

The actual implementation of campaign management, tracking and administration ownership rightfully belongs in the Marketing team’s control. If buyers change unexpectedly at any point in the buying cycle, Product Marketing should be brought back as the advisor and recommend modifications to the campaign.

Looking in from the outside, if product marketing doesn’t plan and prepare to help our marketing counterparts, then we aren’t helping them understand where and why we add value. And, if we don’t add value, we need to accept the marginalized role that the automation tool will place us in.

Congrats!. You’re online. Now you’ve engaged in social media tools. The rise of social media has really revolutionized the tools I use to perform my product marketing role. Over the past years I have been using Twitter to really help make my life a little bit easier.

There are still a lot of comments that are flying back and forth about how to use Twitter for the best and biggest bang. The answer is simple – there is no one size fits all. Stop looking for it. Now more than ever, multiple people in your organization are engaged in social media. And, I support the notion that it is no longer a single source media – that it should be shared by multiple groups to support everyone’s goals.
But, like any other tool, you have to know what you are seeking, what you want to get out of it, before you engage in it. No social media outlet, whether Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. is a magic bullet with all the answers. Each tool has its place and purpose. Define it for how you work and what you need it to produce.

Here’s how I use Twitter for how I work:

• Listening to customers - I like to see what customers, competitors and prospects say about the companies where I work. Do they like our product, are they complaining about a feature, are they happy about a new feature launch, etc. Just watching the tweets helps give me a feel for how some segment of our customers are responding. Often times, I read a tweet and forward it to the appropriate team/person. For example, if someone tweets about the great service they receive, I take a screen shot of the tweet and send it to the development/support team to give them some kudos.

• Listening to competitors and their customers (the market) - The first thing I did when I installed Tweetdeck was to add columns for searches and I started to read them. Now I know when their customers are complaining, when they announce a new feature, what trade show or marketing event they are going to, etc. I get to see how their customers are reacting to them and all of this happens in real time. I typically check out Tweetdeck on my phone when I have a free moment, just to stay on top of it. You have to be careful to not check it too often or it will suck up too much time.
• Gather Market Data – This is really cool! Before twitter I used Google Alerts and it just wasn’t effective…It took forever to get through the noise of all the search results. Often times I would click a link and the content wasn’t helpful and then have to go back to the search and it just took forever. Now I just add a column in Tweetdeck with some keyword (or hashtag) I am looking for and the research just comes to me! With only 140 characters it is easy to quickly digest the nuggets of information and then find the right content. Because the content comes from people like myself, it is often relevant and helpful.
• Learn from others – I ask questions, throw out discussion topics and ask advice from colleagues, some of whom I met on-line and have never seen in person. Still, relationships are developed, reputations are built and friendships flourish. I have participated in an active, weekly chat #PRODMGMTTALK, and actively follow the #prodmgmt and #prodmktg hashtags, two of the most active for people in professional product roles like myself.
• Follow the right people – Easier said than done . I seek out thought leaders to learn from them as they seem to often have a lot of good information. Often times I look to follow key employees of my competition, bloggers who seem to have a lot of good information, and of course employees of my current job. I try my best to use this stream of content to help augment my other twitter streams with content that can sometimes provide more context.
• Promote my blog – how else would you find this blog amongst the many out there. This site, www.outsideinview.com strives to capture current hot topics in the product marketing world and adds in a slant of the owner’s personal quest to become known as one of those thought leaders you should be following.

But, again, you have to establish how all of these activities fits in to your work and goals. I have established guides to:

• Check Twitter regularly – Figure out a schedule be it hourly, daily, but be consistent
• Listen to the market – enhance customer loyalty and possibly fix customer problems reactively (or proactively offer alternative customer support option), react to customer feedback good or bad
• Provide customers with deals/incentives – reward loyal followers and keep them checking back
• Post company news – loyal followers will see it first
• Set up columns in TweetDeck – organize your sphere and easily follow tweeps of interest
• Follow influencers in your market space – know what the market gurus are talking about and participate in the discussion
• Retweet relevant market messages, not what you had for lunch – stay focused on your brand. Set up another Twitter account for streams of consciousness relevant to friends
• Create lists. To categorize people you follow, create Twitter lists. That allows you to more easily watch what a specific group of people is saying. It also allows you to show some love to those people you list. For example, create a list called “Great Companies in (your city)” or “Smart people in (your industry)”. Everyone likes being listed, because it helps you build influence on Twitter.

So if you have noticed I’m not really engaging in a lot of two way conversation with my customers. You might be thinking that takes the “social” out of social media and you would be correct. Depending on your company this may not be desired (some companies have folks whose job it is to monitor and respond to customers). For the time being, I mostly use it to listen and if I find something really useful I can always retweet it.

It depends on where your customers are. Mine are listening, not engaging, so I follow their lead. But, twitter, like the others, is just one tool in the bag of tricks – use it that way, not as your single source. If your customers read blogs, then blog. If your customers are on Facebook, set up a fan page. But, go to your customers.

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.

So … why do we always get stuck in the weeds? When I meet with leaders, I’m not asked about the big picture stuff, I’m asked and tasked with work on minutia, irrelevant projects, tiny details and even non-marketing or non-customer related projects.
Could it be that strategy is difficult for the organization to see, touch and feel? While the tiny projects usually produce tangible results or solve someone else’s problems? It feels good to actually finish and deliver a project – to complete something even though this is really not primary to the product marketing role.

I try to get rewarded for achieving certain metrics – such as product revenues, that are largely beyond my control. Again big picture, intangible stuff. But have you ever tried measuring strategy? So instead, I am rewarded by the amount of sales teams’ issues I put out by producing a new piece of collateral or a PowerPoint. The task work is more highly recognized within the organization.

Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that product marketing has become a big black hole in the organization that all too many senior leaders do not understand. Thus, the dumping ground mentality begins. Our desire to contribute and our positive, get it done attitude forces us to raise the hand and volunteer for even the grungiest projects – because they have to get done by someone. As more and more companies eliminate admin and junior staff, organizations have become “flattened” leaving no one else to perform these smaller, less strategic projects. This leaves the product marketing manager filling in the holes. But, where should these types of projects really belong in the organization?

As product marketing professionals, we need to take control. Stand up for our own voice and value. If we take our strategy, our personas and the lessons learned from our competitive analysis and parade it around the organization – making sure senior leaders are included, over time, the perception of product marketing will change to become more positive and be viewed as more strategic thinking. We actually must spend some time internally marketing our findings, getting the organization to adopt our strategy.

Looking in from the outside, some results sharing, some back patting is good, but simply building awareness of what we do will help senior leaders to see the value we bring to the organization. While sales might have the most recent customer interactions, are they asking the right questions to bring strategy into the organization?

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.

So, why then, when we introduce our company do we bore people with ego-driven introductions in presentations? I’d place a bet on how many presentations within your company start with the splash screen, and are followed by an agenda then the company history/background, or vice versa. Really? Why? Frankly, I don’t care about your company. I simply want to understand what you know about my problem and how you can help me solve it.

When you’re making million-dollar presentations, or any presentations for that matter, you should start the interaction by talking about the other person and their interests. Let them know that you know what they want to hear about, that you are sensitive to what they want to gain from this interaction, that you care about the same things that they care about. And if you don’t know what your audience’s interests are, it’s your job as presenter to find out: sooner rather than later. When we, as marketers are enabling our sales team, it is our job to arm them with the proper facts to ensure a successful presentation. Product marketing should always take a look at the presentation (especially if developed by sales), to make sure that the value proposition and messaging are in line with the product and company goals.

People want to hear about things that meet their needs and solve their problems. They don’t care how long you’ve been in business (unless that just happens to be the one big question they really need to get answered—but don’t bet on it). Your audience cares about whatever they care about, and that’s what you need to give them. Remember, with the amount of information available about companies and products on line, most of that general background information has already been discovered. Focus on meeting their needs, and you’ll hear nothing but praise.

So, how do you know exactly what meets their needs and solves their problems? One way is to visit your local psychic and ask for help. Or, you could finish writing those three personas that you have been meaning to finish. You have done your research, so if you complete the persona process, the answer will be right in front of you.

You don’t even need to use the term persona with the sales team. You can just tell them it is your “target customer.” They will be glad you did.

Looking from the outside in, solve their problems, don’t toot your horn, and the sales organization (properly trained) will make the sales. Stop looking in the cracked mirror, and look through it.