Aligning Product Marketing and Sales

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of Close Mode, the Enterprise Sales show. I'm um, Brian Dietmeyer, CEO of Closest Strong, the home of precision guided selling. And today I'm legit excited to be here with Carol Grant, who's the Senior director of Product marketing with Storable. And what I found interesting too is looking at your background that you were messing around with AI in 2015 because before it was even a thing at Microsoft. And Carol also has some chops from Zillow. And for those of you who don't know, Storable, uh, is property management software, provides end to end solutions for storage facilities. So with that long introduction, Carol, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: What an intro. Thank you so much. Brian. Hi, Close Mode community. It's a pleasure to be here with

Speaker A: you and Carol and I coordinated All Black today. That's right, it's the hipster Friday here. So we're, we're talking about uh, aligning ah, product marketing and sales. And we were chatting a couple of weeks ago and it was very intriguing to me because I haven't had a ton of experience working in a sales organization myself or leading one where I had product marketing. So I learned a lot as we were talking and so we were talking about how we can work more effectively uh, together. So you said something to me, you called product marketing the ultimate enablement function. Yeah, tell me, that was intriguing to me. What did you mean by that?

Speaker B: Yeah, so you know, I think when, when, when people think of product marketing traditionally. Right, of course, uh, especially in a sales led motion, we have a huge role to play in sales enablement. But I think about it as well as enabling our internal stakeholders, everybody that plays a role in go to market and so obviously customer success plays a big role in that. But then also our internal marketing partners as well, you know, you think about product marketing really helps shape and define the target and the audience that's critical for our marketing partners to be able to do what they need to do and aid us in the execution of that. Go to market.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And um, our product partners, right, the ones building, it's really our job to help bring insights to the table, to help them refine what they're doing and, and kind of give them an additional layer to consider as they're building value. And so I think about it as the ultimate enablement function in that aspect but also too uh, a big part of product marketing. And I found the most successful product marketers help drive clarity when it comes to go to market, especially go to markets in complex orgs. With complex product portfolios, you're constantly having to drive that clarity and help people connect the dots to, to get really, uh, valuable solutions and product to market. And so I think that's the other layer of um, the enablement piece. When I think about it being the ultimate enablement.

Speaker A: I don't remember us talking about that last week. And I'm with you. That's right on. And I can think of the last couple companies I've started where I'm usually about 18 months in before I feel like we have that simple, a simple way to, a simple authentic way to communicate it to people. So yeah, I hear you on that. Especially with stuff becoming more complex. So um, you did some cool stuff when you first took on the role and I want to get to that next. But you also talked about, I was just talking to you sometimes maybe about friction between product marketing and sales and you said one of the problems is sometimes product marketing just comes in with the past playbook and why that's not relevant today. Can you hit on that a little bit?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And you know, I do think there are core fundamentals and principles that we apply as product marketers across the board. You know, no matter what role, I think what you use when and what frameworks you use when is really dependent on understanding the stage of the business and what problems they're solving in the moment. And so that's what I mean by there is no standard playbook. Right. As you're switching between companies. Because every company is different.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you know, as an example, you could go to a company where they don't have an awareness issue. They don't have a problem with driving that top of funnel acquisition for a product. Right. But then all of a sudden usage and real adoption becomes an issue. Well, is positioning going to help you there? You know, it's like whipping out, you know, standard playbooks. I'm going to come and do positioning, I'm going to do the messaging framework, I'm going to do all those things. But that's not the problem. Right. At that point because you're clearly cutting through the consideration set in the market. Well now the problem may be onboarding. The problem is customer education. And so that's what I mean by there is no standard playbook. And uh, another thing I will say is some of the best market product marketers I've witnessed are really good at diagnosing. Right?

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And so that to me that's kind of the initial thing when you're coming into a new org as a Product marketer. That's really the first thing you want to do. You want to do a lot of listening, especially from a customer perspective, but you also want to diagnose, you know, diagnose what really are the blockers right now to product adoption acquisition, so on and so forth. And that starts to lean you down different paths. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and then you start to figure out like, okay, out of my core set of principles or what it is I do from pred market or what do I really need to apply here?

Speaker A: It's funny because I'm hearing more. One of the things you're not saying, but, um, I'm hearing is, you know, this notion of expertise, bringing someone in with expertise. I interviewed somebody who was talking about finding really non traditional ways to find salespeople, you know, and I feel like I'm hearing this more and more that sometimes, you know, the traditional model has been someone's got the chops doing this, bring them in and then they try to do what they've always done. And so, uh, yeah, just, I feel like there's this little baby leading indicator where people are trying to say, let's think about it differently. And you also, this is one of those like reasonably obvious, but somebody was talking about the difference in sort of established brands versus emerging brands. And that's what was in my head when you were saying that, that it's, it's an entirely different playbook, an entirely

Speaker B: different approach and a different set of problems. Right. And also like, where is your standing in the market? Right. Are you the market leader? Are you, you know, not the market leader? And you're trying to kind of get in and cut through. And so those are going to have different problem sets you need to solve to driving product and market and driving that adoption. And so that's what I mean by like there really is no standard playbook. There's, there's, there is a core set of principles. As product marketers, you have to know how to do, but really what you apply when it's going to be really dependent on the, or the company, the stage they're at and what are the set of problems they need to solve within, within the market.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I might ask you an unfair question here. Maybe not. It's not designed to be, but I'm thinking of those two things of an emerging brand and an established brand at like the highest levels. Um, what would you say? I know what's in my mind, like what's the number one thing you got to do with emerging and the number one Thing you got to do with established, I want to see how different those are.

Speaker B: Okay, well, first I will say the first answer. Not so different. Understand?

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. All right.

Speaker B: The business and understand the who's who in terms of your customer set and um, who you guys are really trying to target. Right. And so I think like that is standard across the board.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And obviously do your triaging with your internal partners to kind of understand where some of those, those issues may be. But from an emerging, um, versus established brands, like established brands, they already have that pull. They don't really have acquisition or an awareness problem. Right. They have that natural pull. They almost have that growth flywheel. So and in established brands, most established brands, they have large product portfolios. So then your challenge becomes how do I cut through and kind of position within the broader set of this portfolio to drive this product forward. Right. And I think that's where you start to get product marketing teams that are evolving into like, you know, you see solution marketing start to evolve. Right. And that becomes a role or you see them break off to focus on segments. So you may get enterprise, you know, enterprise product marketer versus a SMB marketer. Right. Because now you have this huge set in an estab. In an established brand. And you have to start thinking a bit more holistically about cross sell, attach and so on and so forth. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Where an emerging brand, your product portfolio is probably a little bit simpler and you're still trying to gain that awareness of your overall brand and market. You don't have that pull necessarily. And so you're trying to kind of build your brand cachet at the same time by driving really that top of funnel for product. And so it's a little bit, it's a little bit different. You know, it depends on kind of again, how mature you are on the market to your point where your customer set is and kind of understanding and trusting. Trusting you. Right. Because if you have to go build that trust, that's an extra layer. Um, and so then you don't probably have that product adoption yet. And so it's just kind of thinking about those things in the realm of like really kind of where are you at from a market perspective and then where are your customers at from a trust perspective? And what do you have?

Speaker A: And yeah, you just made me think of something with this trust thing. Years ago, uh, I worked with a tech company in Silicon Valley and, and we, we referred to this thing very generically as legacy practices. They had kind of been jerks in the marketplace. They always had the coolest new tech, you know, and, and so they played hardball with everybody. And so it occurs to me, yeah. When you talk about trust, that some, some of that established brand thing, we, we actually in helping them get deals done, we had to undo some of the brand. Right. Which is. Yeah, that's gotta be difficult from product marketing. I bet that's tricky.

Speaker B: Right. And it's, you know, it's a bit of a dance with your brand partner depending on if there is a brand partner. Right. Because uh, they really have to work with setting the broader stage of like the company brand. And then, you know, I think about product marketing as helping provide the proof points to that. Right. From a product value perspective. And so it really is, is a core partnership. But yeah, like at the end of the day, if that trust layer is broken, it's like we all have to back up. We all have to kind of back up and reset and sometimes, you know, that happens. And that's why I intentionally use the word trust because that has to be in place for, for that pull to really be effortless.

Speaker A: And I remember us landing on that. And my, my point to them was we're going to, so we, we have this, this intention of how we want to do deals going forward. We're going to have to consistently do deals that way for a while to depending on how long we've been jacking the market around like to build trust. That's going to take time. So yeah, going, going back to something you started on earlier, which I really liked. And I think everybody in a new role should do this, but you did it. Most people don't. So you were talking about how you sort of started your work when you came to Storable and how you did that discovery, much like most of us in sales do. And yeah, can you share a little bit about, you know, the instruments you used, how you did it, what you learned.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And so, you know, I think it goes back to what I said where it like be a diagnoser, you know, don't just assuming, you know, what your deliverables are. You know, really take time to understand like what are the challenges that the company is facing? What are the business objectives? What is the go to market motion? Right. My org is a sales lead. Go to market, Go to market motion. Right. And so are there any blockers in that? Like how are we doing today with go to market and are we really getting the most out of helping sales go drive that adoption for the product that we want to bring to value? Right. And really asking those questions, is that a key blocker? Because I do see for me, in a sales led organization, sales is such a core channel for us.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so that's not working at the most optimal level. Then we're not doing our jobs. And so what I did do, uh, once I joined Storable and really started to get embedded with my internal stakeholders, sales leadership and also our client success leadership, really kind of identified enablement as an opportunity, uh, working with them. And what I set out to do was what us product marketers do best. Go get the customer insights. And in this instance, sales was the customer. And we did a survey to get deeper about, you know, how, how do you feel most set up for success when we're bringing a new market, a, um, new product to launch? Can you tell us a time when you felt the most ready to go sell something new? What are, you know, what kind of format do you learn best in? Right. What assets do you find the most useful? And so kind of just getting kind of a total landscape of really how do they, how do they learn best? And then how do we use that as a container to start to restructure how we're thinking about our assets for product marketing and start to plug, plug that in. It's also a partnership with our sales enablement director as well. Um, but that is essentially the tool that we use was like, let's go get, let's go get the data, let's go get the insights. We're making a bunch of assumptions right now so that we can collectively start to see where do we need to optimize and where do we need to start focusing from a product market?

Speaker A: Uh, I know you're not gonna. Well, maybe you do. I doubt you have a stat on this, but I'm wondering like how, uh, that seems like you absolutely should do that when you walk in. How common do you think that is? So a new product marketer comes in because you mentioned the old playbook and I can already see in your facial expressions. Go ahead, answer that.

Speaker B: I don't think it's that common.

Speaker A: Yeah,

Speaker B: but again, right, like, and, and I, and I. And again, it depends on like, what problems are you trying to solve and, and what are you finding in your diagnosis? I do feel like there's a bit of a, uh, sometimes, you know, we talked about this tension, right, between sales and marketing and we, and you know, we know that there's broader tension with sales and marketing overall. Right. And one of the things that I really try and land internally is like Sales to me is the best, has the best level of information of what's happening in the market.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so, you know, I, I really look at, you know, if we're enabling them in the best way possible, we can really accelerate what we're trying to do and drive more efficiency in how we, and how we go to market. And so, uh, to answer your question, I don't suspect it's happening a lot in terms of that kind of formal way that I, you know, that I kind of try to gather those insights. Uh, but what I do believe is happening, like across the board because product marketers just can't be effective without it. Right. I do think they are having those informal conversations, getting that anecdotal feedback. Right. And, and having those conversations to understand at a high level what is working. I am very data driven and so I like to get insights en masse. And so that was part of my intention of, of doing that. But I do think we are trying to gather it at a high level in different ways. I don't think kind of maybe the process that I did is probably not.

Speaker A: No. And I think I got the sense when we were chatting last week, it was a more formal diagnostic. Right. And, uh, I was thinking about that question in terms of, hey, you're new in the role. What's the first thing you should do? You could be in your role and go do that right now, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you could be month 12, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And go do that. And, and as, um, sales teams grow or there's, you know, turnover, things might start to look different in terms of what the needs are. Right. And so you just, you asking that question now is making me think. And I'm like, oh, I think I gotta probably do this, I don't know, twice a year, quarterly. It is something that we're now baking into our product marketing goals. And so we will do almost this, like, benchmarking survey more often so that we can start to see as we learn and we refine, are we moving the needle with our partners and helping them feel set up for success. And so that is a goal that we're taking on in partnership with our, with our enablement function.

Speaker A: And I'll make an assumption as a lifelong sales leader, sales consultant, salesperson, that like the market reaction. Like, as a salesperson, I'd want to be asked that. So I'll make an assumption that they like the process. But I have a question for you now on outcomes. What, what disconnects did you learn about in the survey? Like, holy Smokes, like they don't really like this or they don't really use this. And then any insights where you're like, wow, they want this. Any. Yeah. What were the big takeaways?

Speaker B: I think so some of the bigger takeaways are just on like, format of delivery of assets, right? Where my team is spending so much time churning out one pagers, battle cards, you know, all, you know, all of these standard things that you can think about. And they're like, hey, we just want more time with, you know, solutions architects on live demos, you know, and then maybe some videos to go along with that. Right? Like compete information. Uh, not so much. And so, so that to me was a bit of a, like, oh, wow, that, that's a little bit of a surprise. Right. And so I, you know, I think as we start to kind of peel it, continue to peel those insights and refine, we'll find more of that. And I'm intrigued to see as we start to get into that and make changes, how does that evolve? I'm assuming, like, if I did this by the end of the year, we find some new interesting nuggets that, that make us feel like, huh, that's interesting.

Speaker A: And I'm wondering if you have any formal or informal indicators of, of adoption. If they said this is what we want and you put it out there, like, if you were to compare, do they use it or, you know, they say that the marketing stuff sits in the trunk of the car. Nobody does that anymore. But it used to, like, do you have any sense of that if you give them what they want, are actually going to use it?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. We don't have a sense of that yet. You know, one of the things, and I think this, and I'm sure a lot of product marketers would appreciate this, we are using, you know, content management system to deliver to sales, right. Where we can track. And so one of the things we do have to do as a part of this, I would call like reset, is figure out how to get that to a place where consumption is easy so that we can start to track. So in short order we will have that. But you're absolutely right, like, those things have to go together, right? And you know, as we refine, how do we know, how do we know if what they say they need is actually going to be used? And so I think that goes hand in hand. So that is something we're retooling and, um, lining up with our efforts.

Speaker A: So my last question is one that I'm Personally, if anybody's listened to more than one episode of Close Mode, I'm, I feel like the one thing that's shifting, uh, how we all approach business more than anything else is what one of my friends and advisors, Jim Diggy, calls the speed of change, selling at the speed of change. And I've sort of double clicked on that, that I think, uh, that's a big broad statement. But your value proposition is changing, your competitor's value proposition is changing, customer needs are shifting. I mean, think back to when supply chain interference and then geopolitical stuff changes. And so all of these things are Chang and I had a VP of sales say to me about a year and a half ago, we do the equivalent of annual planning quarterly now. And which, which by the way freaks me out because I can go back to when I was with a Fortune 50 and we shut everything down three months before the annual plan. So like, how the hell, how the hell do you do that quarterly? But so yeah, how, how does that impact, like how do you feel about that speed of change? Is that a thing? And then how does that change the role of product marketing?

Speaker B: Yeah, first of all, I love change and transformation. So it's right up my alley and how I think about that for product marketing. And also what I'm seeing product marketers do to kind of rise up and respond to that speed of change is not have a fixed mindset or a fixed way or plan when they go to drive, go to market. Right. I, and I've been there, you know, at uh, big companies where it's like you're launching a thing, it's six months out, you know, everybody's kind of marching to this thing. Nobody says a peep about it, it's hush hush, you launch it and everybody and you sit back, right? And then that's it, you go on to the next thing and launch. You know what, what I see happening is it's less about getting to that launch, perfect launch moment and stopping, but it's like how do we quickly iteratively get it out there, launch, get insights, iterate, go back and then go past a launch motion. Right. It's really start thinking through the entire life cycle of that customer and then being able to be flexible to respond to how the market is shifting. Right. And not being so tied down or weighted in your, in your plan.

Speaker A: Right, yeah.

Speaker B: Building that flexibility in your plan. It's knowing that like, you know, okay, yeah, we have a, we have a launch date, but you know, maybe we're teasing some things in before that to get a little bit more signal so we can make that launch date stronger. Right. So I think, you know, product marketers are thinking about go to market, I feel like almost more multidimensionally and then in the context of a full customer lifecycle, not just I'm, um, getting the launch and then that's it. Good luck. Good luck, sales team. And then you're on to the next, and then you're on to the next product. So that is how I think product marketing and that's how I'm experiencing product marketing kind of rising up to meet the speed.

Speaker A: Well, it's interesting to me too because, you know, sales, uh, enablement is making the evolution to revenue enablement for that, for that very. Like, let's look at the whole sales cycle, not just getting the product out there or getting, or getting the deal. So yeah, it's.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say I think it's more critical, you know, even for companies who are trying to drive cross sell and sell into like multiple product portfolios. Right. Like, you really have to think about how, how complex that is and how many touches you need and then what does it mean to kind of go beyond, to go beyond launch and continue to kind of hit it, hit it, learn iterate, bring it back and keep going and going and collecting that and collecting that data and in real time. I think, you know, product marketing discipline, we're really good at like gathering the insights upfront, doing the customer interviews, locking and loading on like, messaging is set, positioning is set. But I, you know, I see the change as like even being more fluid with that, you know, with that process. It's like, yeah, we kind of got what we got, but we really don't know until it's in market. And so we just got to know that even those things that we deem as like the foundational part of the strategy may need to shift a little bit and we might need to change course. Maybe we find a whole new ICP or segment, uh, when we get into market, it's like, okay. And so, you know, I think it's more about that flexibility in how you approach your go to market. And thinking about it in the context of the, of the full life cycle.

Speaker A: One, one of, one of the ways I've heard this expressed in a quite frightening way is a book called the End of Competitive Advantage, which is a very sad story written by a professor from Columbia, Columbia, uh, Rita Hunter McGrath. And she said that our challenge is to learn to compete on not our like, fixed position that we started at the beginning of the year with. But we need to learn to compete on a series of short term transient advantages. And it's just like that kind of exploded my brain because that is it like we have, we have this thing and this thing has got what, uh, a 90 day. You talk about how tech. Earlier you were talking to M. Me about how tech companies can punch above their weight now by leveraging AI, that kind of thing. So we're rolling stuff out. But. But the competitive life cycle of this stuff is a minute and a half because data is so pure, people get access to it and they copy it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's really the wild, wild west. That's like the best way I can describe it. Right. And it's almost like we gotta figure out how do we, how do we put our cowboy hat on to like rise up to the challenge and just not be so fixed in the way that we were thinking about and designing, Go to markets and just know like everything is full fluid now. And what drives that fluid fluidity is how quickly can you get information learned and get the data to then reshape and go and go back.

Speaker A: Well, and that, that's also back to one of your earlier points about coming in with the old playbook. You know, the entire structure has changed. I did a podcast a week or so ago with, uh, Gordon, the CEO of Strategic Account Management Association. His whole topic was disrupt or be disrupted.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, and I think that's it. And it wasn't part of his whole dialogue was you could milk it for a while in the past. You cannot anymore. You just have to blow stuff up. Like it in advance. You got to blow stuff up or you're going to get blown up.

Speaker B: Yeah. You just got to assume like whatever model you have is not gonna. It's not gonna work. And so. Yeah, I think you're right. Right. And. And it's like to me too, it's like refining that diagnosis muscle as well. Right. And that's part of also rising up to meet this, this change, rapid change.

Speaker A: Well, I'm just jealous that I don't have you as a product marketer in my organization. I'm legit. Like, I, it's. It's so fun talking to. And you've been super generous for, you know, for folks who listen to this. Like we have pre calls, you and I ping back and forth. Like we, we get ready for these things and you've been really generous with your time and your ideas. And I think of close mode is sort of this body of knowledge for those of us who are out here doing hard jobs. Or we can go, hey, you know what? Maybe there's a little therapy and going, listening to a peer, you know, whether it's, whether it's forecasting or product marketing or whatever. So you, you've added to that body of knowledge, and it's been really fun for me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker B: Saying you've been so gracious to have me on and, uh, to have me speak to your community. I thank you for the time as well. And it's been, it's been fun. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you, Brian.

Speaker A: Happy Hipster Friday.

Speaker B: Happy Hipster Friday.