How to make complex tech actually sell, with Doug Kimball, Digital Science

Doug Kimball: Foreign.

Nitin Karthik: Hey there. Welcome to Product Marketing Tales from the Front Lines. I'm your host, Nitin Karthik. As the author of the Amazon bestseller, Product Marketing Wisdom, I've always found that real world case studies are the true litmus test for the effectiveness of any product marketing strategy. And that is why in this show we dive into the minds of industry titans as well as rising stars, unpacking their expertise in action packed episodes that showcase the power of product marketing through real world case studies. And today, my friends, we are joined by product marketing maestro, Doug Kimble. Doug is a, uh, global product and marketing executive who helps B2B and SaaS companies bring complex solutions to market with clarity, focus and impact. He specializes in translating technical concepts into bio driven stories that fuel awareness, pipeline and revenue growth across AI, healthcare technology, data management and SaaS platforms. Doug has led global go to market, product marketing and sales enablement teams across the us, UK and Europe. And he has also partnered closely with executive leadership to align strategy and execution. Known for building high performing teams, he brings a proven ability to, to simplify complexity and drive measurable results. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Doug Kimball. Doug, welcome to the show.

Doug Kimball: Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. That introduction is a bit overwhelming. Um, I've done all those things, but it's like how to hear it all rolling through. Um, it's pretty fun, but really excited to be on the show. I appreciate the opportunity to share a bit of my voice and hopefully bring some value to another product marketer out there.

Nitin Karthik: Absolutely. And we appreciate you attending as well. So thank you Doug. So, uh, Doug, today we will give the audience a situation from your background and we will use the A. So we'll talk about the antecedents, the prior challenges, we'll talk about the behaviors, the actions that you took and we'll talk about the conclusion, how things paid out. So with that, Doug, pick a situation from your experience and tell us what were the antecedents, what were the prior challenges?

Doug Kimball: Sure, sure. Joined a company, this is a chief marketing officer and it was a very, very deep, technology focused organization. And so they sold what's called semantic knowledge graphs, which I didn't know anything about when I joined the company or knew a little bit about. And uh, when I came on board, they had a very good, very powerful product, did a lot of fantastic things, very necessary in a world of data. But the way they were telling the story was very, very deep and very, very technical, which worked well for selling to the technical audiences. But we Wanted to up level that and make sure that people who had the bigger checkbooks, the right, the business side, um, could understand what this was. So we had to make changes for both the market to understand what it was we were delivering. The value, the outcomes, the need for that and make that message more absorbable, for lack of a better word. And when I came on board, a lot of the messaging was around. We're the best at the market of this. We're the only one that does these things. And here's the deep technical things that we provide, which was, again, let's take the best out of that. The technical piece was necessary because it is a technical solution. But when we said things like the best, you know, you've been in marketing, the best, how do you define that? The best cup of coffee. Um, so I spent a lot of time looking at, you know, we need to change that. Because if we were wanting to go after the enterprise business leaders, we had to change our conversation and change how we appealed to them. So that was really the biggest problem we ran into is how do we have that difference between technique, conversation and business impact.

Nitin Karthik: I love that. And you know, Doug, while we feel that that may be unique to our situation, I'm sure there are so many people in the audience who may be struggling with that exact challenge that you mentioned. So thank you for telling us about the antecedents. Now Doug, tell us, given these challenges, how did that drive the behaviors, the actions that you took?

Doug Kimball: Well, um, very quickly had to goes to break down how we speak about our product and how we spoke about the solution. And so I've used a framework I've used for many, many years called so what? Wine? Who cares? It's not my framework, but I've used it and adapted it a lot, both from a messaging perspective, but also for a strategic way of thinking to challenge us to say, uh, we have this technology piece. Okay, great. So what, what does that mean and why is this important and who does, who will care the most about that and take all of our messaging through that. So one of the first things I did was to put together a, what we call a message map exercise. Pulled the key people in across the organization to say, what is it we are delivering? What is the value that somebody's going to get by using this kind of technology and how is it going to change their business and work together running product sales? I think the pre sales, uh, customer focus field to say, let's tell this story and really be clear on who our Persona we were targeting for what are the, the challenges and the pains and the outcomes they were looking for to get there. And by using that message map exercise, it allowed us to have and create a more collaboratively agreed to story, uh, that was narrowed down and cleaned up and took that thing, language I like best and made it more business focused impact.

Nitin Karthik: I love that. I love that. You know, sometimes less is more. And when we clean up and take out things that are extraneous, what is left actually becomes even more impactful. I love that. So thank you Doug for telling us through that. Now Doug, we're all in suspense, so bring it home. Tell us about the conclusion. So how did that situation work out for you?

Doug Kimball: Yeah, and by the way, I was going to hammer what you just said. Less is more so important. We had this obsession with throwing up on a slide. Less is more. Um, so it didn't completely change everything because again, it was a very technology focused solution. We had to have the technology part of the conversation. So I would not say that I. And we made 100% wholesale change. What we came to is kind of an agreement, not kind of was an agreement to have basically me and the CEO called A1 and A2 language. A1 was the heavy technology, very, very detailed, crunchy stuff. A2 was the more the business language. So what was really good about that is it took some of the focus on technology out of that and move that into how we, we give that into business focused conversations. Um, and I'll give them a lot of credit. They, they, they were able to pivot from being we have to say it like this to understanding, oh, now I understand why we have to say it like that. For this business or for this, this Persona and this way for that technology Persona. Uh, we took some risks and tried different ways of telling a story. TR challenged some of the cultural thinkings that were very much embedded in the organization, uh, and just took different approaches. What I really saw was it elevated our ability to tell, especially at the enterprise level, which is where most of my background has been is enterprise business selling and step that up a bit. Now I will be honest. There were some cultural challenges with mindsets. Working with Eastern European versus North American directions can be a bit challenging. But we made that flexibility. Let's try it like this and try like that. In order to uplevel the messaging. It had an impact.

Nitin Karthik: Beautiful. I love that at the end of the day, having impact. Sometimes it's not like, ah, a complete, uh, 180 or 360, but it's evolution and that's how we make progress. So beautiful. So thank you, Doug, for telling us about that story. I think we all learned so much from that. So, Doug, now if people wanted to learn what's next for you and more about your background, where can they do that?

Doug Kimball: I'm always on LinkedIn, I think. Doug Kimball, LinkedIn, easy way to find me. Um, definitely. Always happy to network and connect with people and have chats about this because if I can help somebody else in their process and their progress and their journey, love to do so. Also very excited. I think I've been mentioning, I just launched a book on product marketing messaging. Um, electronic copies out now. By the time we get this out there, I think the print version is available. Best way to follow me is at so what, why who cares.com so what, why who cares.com you can follow a journey there. Love to get people to participate in this and see how just small changes to how you evaluate your messaging and you're thinking about it from a strategic perspective can make big impacts on storytelling and ways to maximize the pickup of your messaging to drive revenue. Because ultimately, product marketers, we are here to help pipeline revenue conversion, all those things. That's what we do. So, yeah, always happy to network people.

Nitin Karthik: Beautiful. So, Doug, thank you so much, folks. There you have it. Please reach out to Doug and check out so what, why who cares.com for more details and for even more insights, check out my Amazon bestseller, Product marketing wisdom@productmarketingwisdom.com and see you next time on Product Marketing Maestros. Sam.