Unpacking Product Marketing | Praval Singh | B2B Marketing Shepherd Rajesh Kumar | EP 04

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Decoding B2B Marketing with Rajesh Kumar welcome

Speaker A: back to Decoding B2B Marketing on B2B Marketing Shepherd, I am Rajesh Kumar, your guide on this journey through the world of B2B marketing. After three decades of marketing experience at giants like Microsoft, SAP, UiPath and Parno, I now help startups as a fractional CMO and as a board advisor. Oh, and my book Decoding B2B Marketing drops soon on Amazon, so keep an eye out. You know, B2B marketing can sometimes feel tricky. There is not enough clear, practical content out there. That's why we built this show. We cut through the chase, break down the complexity and bring you actionable clarity from the brightest minds in the field. And today I am thrilled to introduce and host Pravel Singh, VP marketing and customer experience at Zoho, one of India's most beloved global software companies. One of the biggest success stories. Praval has been a digital agency entrepreneur, a coffee enthusiast. We are coffee soulmates in that sense. And a, uh, Corporate innovator with 14 years of experience at Zoho itself. We are going to be diving deep into product marketing and go to market strategies, the building blocks every company needs to get right. Especially now as India's B2B SaaS startups storm the global stage. So are you ready? Let's decode it together. So welcome to the show, Praval. Thank you for joining us today.

Speaker B: Thank you so much. My pleasure.

Speaker A: I'm curious to know what got you into B2B marketing and how has been the journey so far?

Speaker B: All right, so I think a lot of it was accidental. Um, you know, back in the day, about 17 odd years ago, I met two friends of mine on the Internet and we started a small business together. It was an agency business and we worked with some of the largest brands in the country back then, helped them launch products, um, helped them build communities, etc. And that went on for about four or five years. And um, you know how agency lives are typically, right? You're working for a client, you have meetings, you have deadlines, there are no weekends practically for those four or five years. And at some point I kind of got sick of it. That life. Okay. Interestingly, one of the co founders, he was a strong tech guy and uh, we built a product and we started using that product for some of our customers. It was into social analytics. So I had that kind of inclination towards products from then. And uh, when I decided to move on and do something else, I was looking for a product company to go and Build a product, take the product to the market and things like that. And, uh, that's how Zoho happened back then. And, uh, there was a product that they were trying to build, and I said, okay, we'll figure out. Figure it out and how it goes. And, yeah, it's been, what. This is my 14th year here, so a long journey, but, uh, very rewarding. Um, uh, wonderful. Lot of learnings along the way, but, yeah, super, super grateful for that.

Speaker A: It's so amazing. I mean, it's so inspiring what you have accomplished and being part of a success story out of India, which was a dream few decades ago. I mean, I think it's inspiring for many other brands and companies coming out of India. So I also want to ask you a little bit about your passion on coffee. There's something close to my own heart as well. What got you into it? What are your favorite coffees? You know, what, Beans. And, uh, you know, I mean, I

Speaker B: would like to start with a disclaimer that I love tea equally. Ah. As much as I love coffee, you know, tea is. It's just a different drink for me. Coffee is something, uh, that happened, I would say, in the pandemic. You know, all of us were holed up in our houses, and, um, I always loved coffee, but never got to a point where people would call me a snob. But that happened in the pandemic. Um, there was not much else to do, so picked up, got into the rabbit hole of understanding coffee, learning about it, the producers, the beans, the process, the whole chemistry of it. Okay. And, um, I, in fact, got to be a part of a few Reddit groups and discords and all of that. Right. So it kind of. It got to a point where I was having, like, four, five, six cups of coffee a day. I've cut down now, but keep it to two. But that morning thing became a ritual. You know, waking up and making your first pour over. Uh, I think it's a process that I started to enjoy and just happened to stay with me for several years now. And, uh, yeah, I like to. And that's when you realize that a lot of coffee that you call coffee is not really coffee. I mean, again, sorry to be a snob again, but, um, yeah, that whole process of brewing your first cup and then having an espresso later in the afternoon just became a ritual to me. Um, but, yeah, that's pretty much it. And in terms of what I've tried, when I travel to a new country or a different place or even a city in India, I try to go to a local coffee shop, I try to know what people drink there. If I get a chance, I lug back some beans which I would share with some other coffee coffee lovers around me. So it's become a good thing to sort of catch up socially as well. And uh, yeah, and again, I like my coffee black. So unfortunately, on the other side of coffee, which is trying to play with milk and other things, is something I never got into. I'm just not a fan of milk and sugar in the coffee. Just the taste itself is very different for me, so I just prefer it black. And then the art of making it and learning it, improving your craft, etc, just got onto me.

Speaker A: So we should do a coffee jam sometime.

Speaker B: We should, we should.

Speaker A: I also don't do sugar, but I do milk.

Speaker B: Okay, we can play with that.

Speaker A: Espresso based. And others. And including the filter. So, um, filter is brilliant for me as well.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: So you worked with a company that pioneered in building products out of India, and on top of that, many successful ones. So tell us, and you yourself as product marketing manager for a long time. I remember seven or eight years. Right? That's a long time. And that was really when they were really making it. So tell us about the role of product marketing. How does it bridge both ways between product building and taking to the market?

Speaker B: Sure. So again, the role itself is defined slightly differently in different companies, but I'll, uh, kind of share that from my own lens and journey. I wasn't qualified to be a product marketer, let me put it that way. I didn't have a professional background nor a degree or, uh, anything that would qualify me per se. All I had was intent and willingness to learn along the way and a supportive team, good mentors early on, and a good canvas to paint on. That's how it started. Also, just for context, when I joined Zoho, we were much smaller. We were about 1,000 1400 people. I would say somewhere there, about 6 million users globally and maybe about 15 odd products. We are at close to 18,000 employees now, uh, more than 130 million users globally and uh, more than 55, 60 products today. So we've come a long way. So that canvas actually was very helpful in learning me how to paint. So a lot of it was just trial and error. A lot of it was applying the first principles of what the better people were doing outside. Okay, coming back to your question, the reason I like that role, uh, and I still do, is it sits at an, uh, intersection of your product, your customers and the market. The market also includes your competition by the way. Right? So, so, and it sits very close to the product to begin with. Right. So if you do not love your product, if you're not passionate about understanding your product deeply, I think the role doesn't sit well. It's not a pure play communications role. A lot of people mistake it that way. Communications is important, but it sits very close to the product. So understanding the product. And when I say that, I mean everything from the capabilities or the lack of capabilities in your product, the integrations for that matter, the APIs that exist, how does your product sit in the marketplace for that matter. All of that around the product is important. Doesn't mean how to build a product in terms of writing code, you can skip that part. But still in terms of use cases, your, um, other variables where how your product sits with something else together, um, maybe from within the company or from outside. All things product is very interesting to it. The other is understanding what does it take to take that product to the market. So how do you equip your salespeople do that? So everything from sales enablement for that matter, your decks, your competitive positioning, all that is also very interesting, I would say. And then the third part is marketing itself, where, how do you take it to the market? Everything from your positioning statement to uh, how do you go to market in a particular region? There could be nuances. For example, uh, a product that is being launched in a country like India may have a very different narrative for the US market or vice versa. So understanding that nuance, is there a topical reference, is there a market fit that is needed here? Look at something like accounting software. Now when, um, the GST thing happened in India, it was a massive opportunity which is very, very focused on the Indian market. Right. And we have an accounting software called Zoho Books in that market and we had a good run and it is still continuing in terms of it's one of products that gets most number of customers every month. So that GST opportunity was very, very topical to India. Okay. Which had nothing to do with the U.S. similarly, in other products, understanding the local context and nuances, it could be something as trivial as compliance, for that matter.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Or let's take GDPR as an exercise that started with Europe. So I think understanding that local flavor as well from a GTM standpoint is very, very crucial for a product marketer. So all this intersection made that role very, very interesting, I would say. And um, I think most successful PMMs I know of, both AD Zoho and outside love this intersection as part of their role, which is a mix of product, uh, understanding, communication, marketing and helping sales as well. So salespeople love PMMs because they help them do their job better. That's how I look at it, and that's how my journey has been.

Speaker A: I think it's a true bridge because we hear so many stories of people loving products but not thinking of the connect to the market and the customer. You start late in the game, it gets harder. So tell us, how do you arrive at the decision to make a product? What role does product marketing play? Do you assess and size the segment, assuming it's an existing segment or it's a future segment? And uh, how do you then build a business case for investment and garner resources? You've built so many products, so you should have already a science around it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's rather interesting and fuzzy. At Zoho, I will tell you how. I mean, it's very easy to look back and say, oh, we always knew we'll build 50 products. But that was not the case. We started with a few products. We were trying to solve certain problems for businesses. And uh, the only thing we knew was that we'd be solving for business needs. We were very B2B focused. And then one thing led to the other. So we started solving one problem and then started solving adjacent, uh, problems. Right. Look at our CRM for that matter. Right. It's one of our earliest products. In fact, we're competing 20 years this year for Zoho CRM. CRM was known to be a sales people. Right. But today CRM story has evolved into a CX platform everywhere, not just at Zoho. And when you say cx, it kind of brings in both your, uh, all three sales, marketing and support. Right. So how do you build Adjacent, uh, for Adjacent needs is something that we've, I would say we've done really well at Zoho. Um, I'll give a recent example of some. We launched something called Zoho Contracts, which helps businesses manage contract lifecycle. Right now, the pieces it uses is everything from our mail engine to our E signature tool to uh, our word processor. All of these were built in the last two decades, one after the other, by solving adjacent problems, like I said. So what happens is for us, a lot of it is based on need, customer demand, and figuring out what are the missing pieces in the puzzle. Okay. And over the last two decades, I would say we have built several pieces of the puzzle that a business would need, you know, for Example accounting or HR or project management work, uh, productivity and collaboration. Similarly on the other side, you need inventory management if you're running a, uh, supply chain business or something of that sort. So we build these pieces one after the other rather organically enough, has been acquired by the way we've built them from the ground up on the common technology layer. And I think over the years what has happened is it has all come together nicely, uh, and available to customers a independently and as bundles and suites as well. So that's the way we have grown into all of this. It's not that, oh, one fine day somebody woke up, hired a consultant to tell us what to build. That's not typically how we operate. Okay. A lot of it is inside out, you know. And how does that come in that Intel? Well, talking to customers, meeting customers and analysts and you know, people who've been using our product. Where are the gaps? And I think that has led to a lot of this in the last two decades, I would say.

Speaker A: So how much of it is sort of made into a science or a quantitative sort of estimation versus a belief, uh, and a gut feel?

Speaker B: A lot of it is belief and gut feel, to be honest. At Zoho, a lot of it is, you know, is just a thought, uh, or an idea or a need that thrives from what already exists.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: It could be a conversation with a customer that a module may come up into an existing product. It could be a conversation at an event where we see that, uh, our event management platform, it's called Zoho Backstage, lacks a feature that a customer really needs. We figured it out at an event, okay. On site, and that feedback was passed on to the product team by the product marketing or the salespeople at the event. And a few quarters later we were able to roll it out, test it with some early customers. Very organic, feedback loop based rather than, like I said, top down. So that's the usual approach of building products at Zoho.

Speaker A: Tell me some of the things that uh, have worked really well with that approach and some probably could have been better.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I gave two examples already of Zoho contracts and um, how we've evolved the whole CRM platform and the event you mentioned there and the event management, uh, application as well. See, there are certain areas where a use case that we may think is highly useful people would use. It doesn't go that way. Right. Think of something like building a travel module within the CRM. You're assuming that the salespeople will travel for meeting customers or Whatever. And you want to bring that module within the CRM thinking that people would use it, but that may not be the case. Right. So what we do here at Zoho is, you know, we do this 0 to 1 product market fit with a select group of customers. Okay? We give them early access so that feedback loop gets closed sooner, number one. Number two, we have a good channel network partners. Any feature, any product, any integration that is rolled out is almost always rolled out to the partners first. They have their own customers. So that feedback loop there also gets closed first before it is announced with uh, a, let's say a media announcement for general availability or any of that kind. Or we talk about at a large event. We do the 0 to 1PMF early on. So the first 10, 20, 30, 50 customers. I'll give an example again, we launched a POS solution called Zakya even before we publicly started talking about it in a big way or we did a ad film and whatnot. There are already about 100 customers using it. Okay. And our teams had met each of these customers, uh, either physically or virtually or whatever to get that feedback. And I think that helps us, um, uh, bringing new features but also remove things that are not needed. I think that's the feedback loop. Because we often would like to believe that we have all the answers, but we don't. And when we do um, community events with users, you know, it's so fascinating the way they surprise us. You know, I've seen people use products in ways which I myself would not. Okay. So I think that intel is very organic, very genuine and natural and I think that's a superpower in terms of, you know, it's, it's a goldmine of real time data with customers. And when you, you may not make a uh, judgment by talking to one customer, but beyond a point, you start to see a trend. You know, you start to figure out that, okay, this is something that I think is coming up. We have to work in that direction. If you're not already doing it. I think our PMs kind of work on that.

Speaker A: So do you have sort of a formal structure around identified set of customers who you regularly talk to or like a customer council or a product?

Speaker B: Yes, we have something called uh, Customer Advocacy Board as well and customer Advisory Board. Certain customers. And this is based on segments, so certain um, customers in the enterprise segment which is also now getting very industry focused. So for example we working very extensively in the automobile world, right, for things like dealer management system for that matter. So uh, and a Lot of work that we have done in those industries is co creation which is we bring in the technology and the platform expertise, the customer brings in the domain expertise. Okay. And then we together co create a solution which is custom built I think uh, across industries and across segments. SMB enterprise, mid market, we are able to create customers uh, who we know that we can trust them to test something out. And most customers want to do that. They want to be, they opt in to be on that list of early access. So I think it's worked out well for us across regions now.

Speaker A: Yeah, I saw this whole uh, thing work out custom development pretty well at SAP in my time. Many times problems which had never been solved, customer would come up and there'll be a joint development project and in a lot of cases that become a regular product afterwards. And uh, in a new to market category like RPS software where I saw where a lot of the use cases were driven by the user's passion, they would come up with things that nobody had thought about. So that community will come up and those meetups will give rise to so many new use cases.

Speaker B: No, absolutely. In fact uh, one of the recent examples I remember is um, not just the fact that the customer can bring in. What I also see is how the tool enables customers to do more right look at something like a Zoho platform on customer experience. Right now the low code no code tools that are available on it make it so agile for customers that they don't have to depend on somebody else to, to do let's say something like change management. And again in any regulatory world, let's say BFSI for that matter, we were very aggressive in that uh, segment as well. Say we may roll out some new compliance, some changes. How soon can you go to market with that change? Is what this low code no code tools enable on the platform and customers love it. They surprise us with what they are able to achieve on the platform and I think that's something that makes RPMs our teams happy as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that is really making it participative and collaborative versus this whole corporate wall.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Between them and the software in the earlier era when I think the SaaS first did it and now the low code no code is further taking it. So tell me how do you then work through the positioning, messaging, launch, the whole nine yards of marketing bit of it?

Speaker B: We decide on building a product right. There's a need that we are trying to sell. Uh, we articulate that within the team. We know what we are building and we know what we are not. I'll give an example to illustrate this as well. Um, once the product is ready, the first cut is what we call engineering release, which is for internal consumption. Right. Our internal teams can use it, some trusted customers or partners can have access to it. And uh, which is where everything from fixing bugs or figuring out any workflows that are missing, et cetera, happens parallel the marketing team. Typically the product marketing team starts to work on collaterals. Collateral could be anything between a website, uh, a landing page, if you want to run a campaign around it, could be any emailers that you want to send. Could uh, be working with the PR team if there is a media announcement that's going to happen, uh, could be a press release, could be a physical meeting, whatever. Then the team would also work with the regional teams. If that launch has any regional context. Let's say you're launching something which is very specific to eu because of whatever reasons, the product marketing team will work with that regional marketing team as well to bring that out. Because the regional marketing team will give that intel about uh, how to position and like GDPR is a good example. Yeah, that's a good example of that. Similarly, uh, the team would work with local partners, especially in a region where, let's say language is a challenge or something of that kind, where the partners also have a lot of understanding especially of the competitive landscape, also of the top customers in the region. How do you go to market? You're sitting and building it in India, you're launching it in some part of Europe or some part of South America for that matter. So working with those regional teams and that's the reason we have those teams there. They are our people on the ground in that region. So we collaborate with them on the launch part of it. And then certain leases are global which are synced across regions, certain are local and uh, yeah, that's how we roll it out. Um, if I give an example, uh, there's a product called Bigin, uh, uh, which is a small business, CRM. Now the question is why did we build Bigin and one of our fastest growing uh, products, tens of thousands of customers already the question came was why did we build begin when we already had Zoho CRM. That's an obvious question. Media had that question, customers had that question, our partners had that question.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But it was a thought through decision. We realized that in the last decade and a half, which is around when we launched Bigin a few years ago, CRM had been around for 15 years now by then we Realized that the CRM of today is not what it was 10 years ago. It has evolved, it has matured, it has turned into a platform instead of a single, uh, application. There's a lot more complexity it handles today for diverse needs. But what about the small business? They don't have that complexity. They want to get live in hours and not days and weeks and months. How do you get them to see value early on? How do you make it simpler for them? How do you give a consumer app kind of uh, experience to them on the mobile phone? Right. Which can happen with the CRM as well. But it may need a lot of customization and building and all of that. A small business doesn't have the appetite for it and the need as well. So we built Bigin. We positioned it separately as a small business CRM. That also displaced our CRM as a more upmarket ready offering mid and large size customers. And I think that was a wonderful call. And we are seeing um, the early apprehensions where, oh, this would impact our CRM revenue. That didn't happen. CRM kept growing. Okay. It helped CRM position get positioned as a mid to large, uh, size offering and begin took that space of a small business CRM. Both continue to grow directly via marketplaces and integrations and whatnot. Both attend events of different kinds. Okay. And I think instances like these kind of tell you why positioning is important.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Because one wrong step in positioning could create a huge conflict and would hurt us back. That didn't happen.

Speaker A: It would be cannibalizing in this case. It's multiplied.

Speaker B: Absolutely. You're multiplying it, not cannibalizing it. Right. That is where positioning is important, I would say. You know, and PMs and PMNs, uh, come together to make that happen.

Speaker A: So tell me about any product that you sort of been new to the world, new to the category, has been a category builder, has any such product. Uh, because I noticed many new products on your website which I wasn't aware of. You know, there are a lot of products.

Speaker B: Uh, in fact the joke internally is people ask me, what's the next product coming out? And sometimes I myself don't know. Many of us don't know because we're a large company and like I said, most products are not built top down. They build bottom up. Some team which is already working on a product starts an experiment to build something else and starts to take shape. Uh, for example, one of our teams that runs our presentation tool called Zoho show started to build um, uh, a product on Collaboration, Uh, and it has an open canvas. You can collaborate, you can invite users, multiple people can come and discuss and write. And it's a collaboration tool called Vani. And uh, we've been building it for a few years now. Uh, it's already available for early access. But it was very organic how it came up. Right. It was not on the charter, it was not something that we already knew we were going to build. But one thing led to the other and very organically, from bottom up, a team came up with it, uh, started to look interesting. There was internal adoption for it as well. And now we have the product ready. So these are, I would say, unique ways in which we have come up, uh, with product and ideas, which is, uh, something I attributed to the culture actually, because as a company we're very R and D focused. The roots of the company are very engineering heavy. People take pride in building. People take a lot of pride in building stuff, doing a lot of R and D. So much so that we run our own data centers. For that matter, we run our own everything from our own technology stack, uh, to data centers to people who manage those data centers, also internal. So there's a lot of pride in doing it. Diy. Okay. So I think that results in a lot of what comes to the market. And again, there are experiments that don't see the light. As in, we know that we should shell this out and we've done that as well. But yeah, what do you think of

Speaker A: this whole idea of PLG or product like growth, which has become popular in last few years? I mean, where does it work, where it doesn't work? What's the right place to apply it?

Speaker B: I think, um, very clearly, uh, it has worked for some companies like crazy. Look at something like Dropbox, um, wherein a referral alone got them hundreds of thousands of customers just by referral as a tactic. Now everybody has a referral program. We have a referral program as well. But the way it was created as a consumer app, first to get the referrals, uh, there have been some struggles on the business side of it is what I'm aware of, which is obviously harder to crack. Um, file service as a standalone offering for businesses is much harder than as a consumer app. But typically in plg, what you've seen is any consumer focused app gets a lot of virality because of it. And that could be, uh, early access, that could be limited access, that could be referral only. There's so many ways to bring that into the product. But from a B2B side what we have seen when we talk about PLG, how we look at is in the SMB space when we're targeting that and we are very SMB heavy, we have a lot of customers, uh, in the SMB space. What works is when you engineer the whole workflow of onboarding users with that in mind, um, that you don't want people to have to pick up the phone and talk to you. So from your signup to your trial period, you make it so easy, I mean today to try a Zoho product, I don't even need your credit card, you don't have to talk to us. You go sign up, start using the product, right? There's always a forever free plan in every product without any ads. So if you don't intend to pay, you think you don't need a paid version, you're fine to use the free plan, uh, forever. But what we see is when users come on board, they try it, uh, after a trial period, they end up choosing one of the paid plans. Okay? And all that experience, all that journey is very low touch. Okay? Most of this gets wrapped up in emails. Sometimes somebody will need, need help with, they'll pick up the phone maybe. But the whole idea is the experience is created in a way where you don't have to talk to a salesperson to be able to decide. Whereas in enterprise software, you see, typically there's a button that will say contact sales because they want to talk to you. Oftentimes it's required because the need could be custom. But in the SMB space, as I said, a lot of things are self serve and that's where PLG kind of picks up. So you make it easy to try, you make it easy to buy. You have the freemium, uh, uh, offering for people to test it before they are committed to buying, uh, a subscription. And the consumer space, that element of inviting somebody else to use it brings in that vitality as well, which is within the product. The other thing to plg, what I would say is a lot of growth is looked at how people are using your product versus a uh, marketing push. So when people are using certain features, certain aspects of the product, then you wear the PM hat to sort of figure out how you a monetize it, how you increase usage.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And then everything from pricing, your pricing could be usage based, it could be user based. Right? All that intel comes into it when you understand the product, the market, uh, the customer. And I think that's a bit of art and science coming together to make it happen.

Speaker A: So I Guess lighter weight consumer to SMB, where user is the driver, it's probably going to be a lot better.

Speaker B: This thing is harder. Companies have done it where it's bottom up adoption. But uh, typically anything that is even slightly complicated, like a CRM, right, you have to talk to somebody for some solutioning.

Speaker A: So as product marketing, how do you look through the product life cycle and manage it? You know, once it is out there in the market? Of course, environment and circumstances changing constantly. Some products can expand, enhance, some can shut down. So how do you, what role does product marketing play and how do you manage?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that's a very good question. And because we have seen that journey across products, what I would say is not every product gets a home run, you know, and the factors could be many. It could be the product itself, it could be the market that it's playing in, it could be the need, the demand. Look at something like video conferencing. What did pandemic do to them?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, and um, similar, such I would say needs often define the trajectory of a product. Okay, Overnight everybody wanted um, a visual tool to collaborate or a video conferencing tool to sort of be able to engage with each other remotely. Now what we've seen is certain products have a natural tendency to sort of grow. And uh, it may not have a hockey stick growth. Some do based on various factors. But one thing that a PMM is always on top of is what we call release cycles. And cycles may be a quarterly, a uh, six monthly or a yearly annual cycle, whatever it is, where you work with the PM and the engineering team to have that strategic narrative for your next release. And that narrative has to differentiate, has to educate, has to inform people of what is it that, why should people care about it? Okay, it could be an integration you're doing with something that people need. It could, it could be a new feature that was in the works for a while and customers have asked for it, you're ready to launch it for everybody else. It could be a pricing change for that matter. And you may have a genuine reason for why you're changing the prices either going up or down or whatever, mostly up. All of that is where PMM as a function plays a very important role in communicating it, articulating it both internally and externally. The internal stakeholders as well. If you're working on integration, there are probably working with some other teams as well. How do two teams come together to communicate that integration? PMMs do that between the two teams. Right. So this is important. Part of the Life cycle. Because I mean, take an example of the product I mentioned, CRM or something like our HR suite, Zoho People, which has been around for 15 years now. Okay? Now in 15 years or 20 years, these products have gone through multiple updates and revisions. And you know, oftentimes in, in many of these cases, a lot of code base has also changed. Evolved, I would say. Right. And now with AI coming into it, all of, uh, it different. Different use cases for different Personas. Right. All of that is what the PMM is responsible to communicate. The engineers will build it. Okay. Tomorrow you can say that, you know what? AI will help me detect anomaly in my ticketing software. That's fine. That's a feature. How do you bring it out? How do you bring it out? How do you segment and target to the right people? Okay. What is your message for them? Why should they even care about it? Okay. Unless it's something which is strikingly new, oftentimes it's not the case. But then how do you differentiate? How do you make sure that there is enough value prop in what you're trying to launch? Channel could be anything. You're doing it on social media, you're getting an actor to talk for you, or you're, um, putting uh, out a press release. Those are channels. But how do you articulate that message? You know, that your customer should care is what BMM owns. And I think that makes the role very interesting.

Speaker A: So tell me, what's your. And I'm beginning to hear a lot of interest in product marketing as a career from young people, which I didn't a few years ago. So tell me, what is your advice for people who are aspiring to make a career in product marketing?

Speaker B: Now when you say young people, I know which side to sit on.

Speaker A: But you are young, younger than you. People are just embarking on the journey.

Speaker B: But, uh, to be honest, uh, A, there's a lot of understanding of the role itself to begin with. I mean, I remember 13, 14 years ago when I took this role. I had a not so good understanding of the role, but we knew we'll figure it out kind of situation today when I interview people or I meet young PMMs fresh out of college or including those who never went to college, when they talk about PM as a function, they have a good understanding of it. And thanks to companies, not just Zoho, but the overall ecosystem that we have, uh, there's a lot of awareness about understanding about it. So much so that now even the best of colleges, I would say B schools for that matter, they are trying to bring that into the this thing. If not the curriculum. They will have guest lectures. They'll call people to.

Speaker A: I saw one of your decks. I quite liked it.

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. Uh, I've done a few of those, um, at different, uh, B schools. And I think that itself is a very good indicator. I look at it as a, as a green flag where at least they care about the function itself. And, uh, I would still say a lot of learning in a PMM function is on the ground with a real product. But I think the fact that people have opened up to the idea of it, they know what the value is. And I think it's one of the hottest jobs today in marketing on a B2B side, for sure.

Speaker A: It really connects the dots.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: There's a lot of content in that whole.

Speaker B: So I think in the last five years or so, this is, as you said, has picked up, uh, dramatically. And, uh, there are enough and more openings left, right, center for this role as well.

Speaker A: And I think as you connect the dots, it makes you so much powerful.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: As a business leader, eventually.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's something that I've seen that because you have a good understanding of not just marketing, but product and sales and customer, I think it kind of prepares you as a very different person down the line. You know, I have personally benefited from.

Speaker A: Uh, really makes you the dot connector within the organization and gets you the respect.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: So my last question to you. India, for long has been the home of IT services. And we are trying to make this transition to being a product, product builder. Uh, you know, and it's been hard. So many companies struggle with it, uh, because, you know, they still think like a services company. So for companies building products out of India for the world, what would you recommend? Your top takeaways or your advice or your comments for them to think in terms of having the mindset of a product company versus services company.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's a wonderful question to wrap this up, to be honest. When Zoho started off, we were in that rage of IT services. That's where it started. Right. I mean, every look at the large IT service companies today, they were all started on the similar timeframe where everybody focused on IT IT services. Uh, we took a stance on building product from India. Right. That was a crazy idea. Okay. And, um, again, our craziness did not stop there. We've continued to do crazy things like not raising money, for that matter.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: We've stayed private. We intend to keep it that way. But I Think over the years what we have learned is product mindset is also different because you have to play the long game, you know, you have to stay the course because there's no magic wand. You know, it's hard to build something and then assume that you'll sell it off in a year or two years and three years down the line. And basically there's no get rich quick scheme. Unfortunately. A lot of M companies, uh, we've seen around have had that mindset and we've seen what happened to that and then everything from hiring fast to firing fast and all of that.

Speaker A: Um, I also actually think that lot of belief of the people founding or building that product in the product and not to be led by or pushed by even demands from customers. They would want everything and the first drop of the hat if they tries to build something new, suddenly you have so many versions you don't know where it starts and ends.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, when I say playing the long game, what I mean is to build something of that kind, you know, it takes time. It takes time to. And again, not just time, but people. I mean, think about it. All the products that I mentioned today, uh, or HR software, or CRM software, or email software, the people who started those products 15, 20, 25 years ago are still on the team. They're still leading the team. Imagine that compounding context of the product, of the market, of the customer. I think that's just magical. You know, I don't know if any other way we could have built and sustained 130 million plus years.

Speaker A: I think it's just rare because maybe the global companies who built have had that, but India, that kind of vision has been rare and people don't believe it till they see it. Now that they see it, I'm expecting more and more companies will go that way.

Speaker B: No, absolutely. I mean all of us give examples of companies like Apple, you know, and how people have been there for so long as designers, as builders. Right. But it's hard to see that outside of Apple, you know. But again, at Zoho we've sort of

Speaker A: kept it your own career. I don't know of a lot of people who have like made that kind of commitment to product and to marketing to stay that long on the course, you know.

Speaker B: So yeah, honestly it wasn't planned, it just happened is what I would say. But it also speaks of your own grain.

Speaker A: What you believe in, how it is aligned with the company's grain, you know, and, and gives you something that is way beyond just, you know, say you know, financial gains.

Speaker B: That's true with most of us who have been with Zoho for 10, 15, 20 years now. It's beyond that financial, uh, gain that you get. It's how you become, you rub on each other, the company and the employees, and then you become part of that cultural fabric.

Speaker A: Such a happy situation. So thank you, Prabhuan.

Speaker B: My pleasure.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. I really love this conversation.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: And, uh, really inspired both by your journey and what Zoho is doing for itself.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: And to position India as a product builder for the world.

Speaker B: Thank you so much.

Speaker A: Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker A: Wow. What a conversation. Huge thanks to Pravel for sharing his insights on product marketing. Product market fit and go to market strategies. If you are serious about leveling up your B2B marketing game, this episode is a gold mine. Did something Pravel said spark an idea or a challenge in your thinking? I'd love to hear your take. Hit me up on social or drop a comment, whatever platform you're listening on. And if you found something valuable here, don't forget to subscribe and share this with your marketing tribe. Remember, mastering B2B marketing is a journey and you are not alone. We'll keep bringing you the best voices to help you cut through the clutter and build a marketing that truly stands out. So until next time, keep decoding. Remember, you are the shepherd of your own marketing story.