What enablement needs to know about product marketing, with Jonathan Pipek

Speaker A: Welcome to the Sales Enablement Innovation Podcast brought to you by the Sales Enablement Collective. Each episode we sit down with sales enablement and revenue leaders from around the world and invite them to share their expertise and experience with the community. On the show today is Jonathan. Thank you so much, Jonathan for coming out to the podcast. Appreciate it.

Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me. Daniel, excited to be here.

Speaker A: So could you introduce yourself for our listeners, give a bit of background and just explore a little bit about who you are before we dive into today's episode?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Uh, so for over a decade I, uh, was a product marketer in the B2B space. Um, so I worked in house at a wide range of kind of industries and company sizes. Everything from, you know, Fortune 500 insurance, mid size HR tech, a cybersecurity startup, and a whole bunch of kind of other startups and SMBs. A few years ago I realized, look, love the startup space but I really want to explore more industries and um, more company stages. Uh, so I started Blue Manta Consulting, which is a product marketing consultancy. We specialize in B2B SaaS startups. So that's kind of my main gig. Um, apart from that, volunteer as a product marketing, um, mentor three DP list. I'm um, go to market mentor for Chicago's largest uh, startup accelerator, which is 1871. And then uh, on a personal note, I'm uh, low key obsessed with uh, cheese and Turkish, uh, pistachios.

Speaker A: That's awesome. And it's a great, uh, sort of background. We don't get to speak to product marketers too often on the podcast, but it's such an important relationship with enablement that uh, it's one that's going to be really cool to explore. Um, and so that is what we're talking about today is that relationship between product marketing enablement, particularly in the startup space. Um, and I think the best place to start is asking you how do you see product marketing and sales enablement working best together in sort of early stage startups? How have you experienced that relationship with, what are your sort of, you know, gold star sort of standards for that relationship?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, fair enough. Um, I think the kind of cop out is it depends, right? It varies. Um, every startup is different and product marketing, every startup is different. And so sales enablement in my experience, but kind of the most effective setups I've found are where product marketing focuses on the what and sales enablement focuses on the how. So what I mean by that is, you know, product marketing figures out, okay you know, what are the goals? Um, what does sales need to know? AKA what is the product knowledge they need to know? Um, what do they need to be able to convey? Meaning kind of what's the sales pitch? Excuse me? And then what do they need to be able to show? Right, so um, for example, the demo, right? What are the key items or features or things that they need to show? There's other components like competitive intelligence. Objection. Handling, etc. But the focus is product marketing focuses on what is it that we need to convey, show, explain, et cetera. And then sales enablement is really figuring out the how. So how do we accomplish these goals? How do we deliver training the most effective way? How do we build, you know, the right roleplay scenarios, how do we build the right courses? Um, and how do we really educate sales on, you know, the product, the demo, the pitch, et cetera? So it's, it's kind of a division of labors where product marketing focuses more on the what. Sales in a moment focuses more on the how. But again they're co creating the entire time. It's not like uh, a hey, let me throw it over the fence. It's more, hey, here's what I'm thinking, you know, what do you need from me in order to make this, you know, the best, you know, the uh, most effective, uh, kind of sales in a moment possible.

Speaker A: I love that, that, that's really a nice way to divide it. Um, and I guess that the follow up for that is like sometimes we see product marketing doing enablement to being responsible for enablement before there's an even enablement team. How does that dynamic change when a dedicated name is formed or the business decides it's time to have a dedicated enablement function? I, um, imagine maybe there's a little bit of worry about handover. That kind of can be difficult sometimes. What can be done to make that as smooth a transition as possible so that you end up with two teams working together as they should, like you mentioned.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, look, having a sales and implement team for product marketer is a luxury, right? So if you do it right, the dynamic should change in a kind of a beautiful way. Um, because if you think about it, when you have an enablement team, especially those that are embedded in sales, right. Which is my, my preference. If, if not that I have a vote because I'm, you know. But um, when sales and improvement is embedded within the sales team, it's kind of the best of both worlds because the sales team gets kind of like that strong Advocate that ideally has already been a salesperson before. So they know what works, what doesn't. They get a lot of credibility with the sales team. They know how the sales team likes to learn, and they're basically, you know, kind of a major advocate for sales. And then product marketing gets this like super strong partner that takes kind of product marketing's foundational knowledge and maximizes its effectiveness because they know exactly what sales wants, because they work with them, they were salespeople, so on and so forth. They also know what product marketing wants because again, we built a relationship. We kind of explain what we're looking for, the goals, why we're trying to train sales on X, Y and Z. Um, and that really helps. But to get to your question in terms of like, how do you make it more of a smooth transition? I think it's helpful to align on goals before starting anything. So between sales, between product and. Between product marketing and, sorry, sales, product marketing and sales enablement, um, for example, let's say this quarter, I don't know, we want to increase win rate by 10% for a specific product. Right. So where, let's just say Q3, Q4, like that's our goal. Great. So once you kind of have that like top level goal alignment, then it's helpful to understand kind of what the swim lanes are, meaning, like, you know, for, for product marketing versus sales enablement. Like what are the general areas or initiatives that each team is responsible for? And that's where something like a team charter comes in really handy. Right? Where you kind of explain, okay, this is what sales enablement does, this is what product marketing does. Here are key KPIs, or sorry, here are KPIs, your goals, so on and so forth. So once you have goals, once you have kind of swim lanes, um, established, then you want to kind of think through, okay, you know, swim lanes, say what, what type of work we do, but what are the major initiatives we're working on now? So when you identify those major initiatives, you can kind of tackle them together as a team like sales enablement and product marketing. You can co create the plan, you can co create the strategy, you can divide up the tactics. Um, because even though you have these swim lanes, even though you have these team charters, the reality is always a little bit different. Right. Um, so to give you like a concrete example, let's say, uh, uh, we're launching a new product, right? So we're launching a new product. Part of that obviously includes, you know, we got to have a new demo, which means you Need a new demo script. You need to explain to sales. Hey, here's what we need to show, here's what we need to say. So product marketing might tackle like kind of the overall narrative, right? So maybe we'll, we'll give like high levels, high level bullets on messaging. Maybe we'll create a list of like, okay, you want to show A, B, C and D feature in that order. Um, and then we might work with sales enabled by the sales enable. Might say, okay, well we're going to go ahead and choose what is the right script format. Why? Because they know the sales team. They know, okay, the majority of sales team wants, excuse me, high level bullets or hey, there are these three or four kind of more junior sales, uh, sales reps that want an actual word by word script. So again, sales enablement kind of figures out the format. Um, they're going to actually create the demo script, maybe they'll create multiple versions. Um, and then in a perfect world, they're going to actually work with a sales rep to pilot it, right? Have that sales rep actually test it out a few times with customers, refine it and then train the sales team. So, so just to summarize, I think I'd say one, focus on the high level goals, right? Develop those joint goals. Two, establish a swim lane. So it's clear, here's what product marketing does, here's what sales enablement does and then at the same time co create those initiatives, um, and really kind of blend the swim lanes a little bit to help each other out where it makes sense.

Speaker A: Uh, I really like that, really insightful, sort of to get to, especially with those examples. Um, and I love the call out of the sort of the charter as well. It's something we've talked about in the podcast in the past, um, and sort of how important that can be to enablement. So it's nice to get the call out from the product marketing side and seeing the value as well. Um, I guess following from that, our audience is obviously enablement professionals. What do you wish enablement teams knew about working with product marketing? Is there any sort of hiccups you sort of continually run into in your career or sort of trends that tend to pop up that will be solved if enablement just knew something in particular about product marketing that maybe they don't take into consideration enough?

Speaker B: That's a, that's a good question. Let me think about that. Um, there's something that sales and anyone would know about working in product marketing.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: so I don't know. This is exactly the kind of answer you were looking for, but it's a reality. So I think the biggest kind of hiccups that happen between product marketing, sales enablement is more on the product marketing side than on the sales enablement side. Um, and the reason why is because I think at least, at least for me and most product marketers I know is it's really hard for us to let go. So if we're working with sales, which, uh, unless you're at a strictly PLG company that doesn't even do SLG for enterprise, like if you're working with sales, which most of us do, it already feels like you're letting go a little bit because you're giving kind of this crafted messaging, this crafted positioning, this pitch deck, et cetera. You're already giving it to sales and then they're taking your, you know, your material and moving forward. When you add yet another layer with sales enablement, it feels like you're giving up even more control, you're giving up more access to sales. So I think a little bit of empathy and collaboration really does wonders. Um, and again, I think most sales that implement and product marketing get along great, but just, you know, having that empathy to say, like, hey, like, we're giving away our baby and it feels weird and we know it's the right thing, but it's like you're sending your kiddo off to college and it's like, or they're moving to a different city and you're like, like, you know, it's the right thing, but it just like it hurts. Um, so just a little bit of empathy there. Um, and then I think the, the one thing I would give that's more of kind of a tactical, um, answer, I think, to, to your question is probably more what you were looking for is, um, I think a lot of product marketers kind of shy away from building relationships with sales, especially more junior product marketers, because it feels uncomfortable. Um, and when you have a sales enablement team, it's very easy to use them as a crutch and say, hey, no, no, no. The sales enablement team is the one that builds the relationship. We don't. So I think for sales enablement to encourage product marketing to build direct relationships with sales would be huge. Um, product marketing is not going to try to usurp sales enablement or try to kind of take over what sales and is doing, but product marketing just has to have that direct relationship and that direct access to sales because we're the ones that are going to get a pulse of what works, what prospects are saying, how the product roadmap needs to be changed, um, how the industry is changing, et cetera. So we can take those insights, go back to product, refine the roadmap, go back to um, kind of the fundamentals and change your positioning or uh, focus more on competitors, et cetera. So I think I would say yeah, that kind of encouraging product marketing to develop those direct relationships is huge.

Speaker A: I like that, especially both the emotional side and the tactical side. I think those are both two sort of valuable takeaways for our listeners. And, and I guess onto the next question would be in terms of, we spoke earlier about sort of the startup focus as well. Uh, in large organizations things tend to be a little bit more structured. There's kind of more clear definitions for an enablement professional who's maybe moving from a large organization where they've had this sort of very well defined relationship with product marketing and then they move to a, uh, sort of startup. What sort of perspective shifts do they need to make in relation to working with product marketing? How does the enablement product marketing dynamic change, change at uh, startups where maybe things are a little bit less well defined?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean, I think you nailed it, right? I think that there's in the question itself kind of answered it right. There's a lot more blurred lines at startups versus larger orgs. Um, it's in my experience at least it's more likely that you treat initiatives on a case by case basis and you divvy up the workload based on like available bandwidth and it's kind of more flexible and agile. So what I mean by that is like. Well, I mean, I guess the other point is like there's way more urgency and less like padding at a startup. So to give you an example, if you had a Fortune 500 and maybe there's like a specific product that doesn't sell as well as it could be, it's not horrible, but maybe it's like, I don't know, 30% win rate instead of 40. Sure, that's an issue, but like your company's not really going to go under because of it, right? You're at a Fortune 500, you probably have dozens, if not hundreds of products. Like it's not the end of the world at a startup. Like number one, you have direct access and accountability C suite, which is very different than, you know, if you're at a Fortune 500. This CEO has no idea who you are, right? Um, most likely. But so at the start of this you have direct access to C Suite and the founder. And if the product doesn't sell well, one, it actually means, yeah, the company could go under. Right. But two, the stakes and the pressure are much higher because the founder is like saying, hey bud, like what's going on? Like why aren't you, why aren't you working on this? Like why aren't you making this better? Um, so the reason why that matters in terms of the sales enablement, product marketing relationship is because you actually have to build really, really strong relationship across sales, sales enablement and product marketing in order to continue to move the product forward and move the kind of, the enablement process forward. Because if not, what happens is as soon as something goes wrong, you start blaming and pointing figures when, when you know, when, when the going gets tough as they say. So I think that's, I think that's the really big um, point there is like relationships matter I think even more at the startup level and I think the pressure is higher and the agility is higher and then also the line just, they blur way more. Which honestly I think yes, is less, less efficient. So it's less um, maybe structured as kind of at a larger org, but it's also the reality and also that flexibility also kind of builds stronger relationships.

Speaker A: By definition that makes a lot of sense. But pros and cons to sort of both ways. Um, I want to touch on something that comes up regularly in our sort of sales enablement landscape report, which is who owns the sort of content creation process and sales collateral for reps, enablement or product marketing to. The responses are usually a mix of one team, a mix of the other, sometimes both working together. When it comes to content creation, what do you see as like sort of the best way to approach that from a product marketing and enablement perspective?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I mean I agree with the survey. For me it's a co creation thing. Um, and I would go a little bit further and say it really depends on like the specific people involved and the piece of content. So like to give you an example, like I could never give up creating the pitch deck, right? It's to me it's like something that's so fundamental that like I'd be happy to definitely be happy to like co create it with sales enablement, but it's not something that I could ever like give up 100% versus like something like a one pager or maybe training material. If sales enablement wants to drive that great, like we can collaborate. Product marketing can share key components. Typically it's like um, audience, uh, key messages, kind of the goals of the piece, like why are we creating this to begin with? And sales. Anyone can say, oh, actually um, the best format isn't a one pager, it's xyz, um, or hey, you know, I know you wanted, you were thinking this would be a one one pagers, actually three so on and so forth. Like we got to trust sales enablement to create the content that makes the most sense for sales. Um, and then the other part is like I mentioned individuals. So um, the reality is like sometimes a particular sales and a month pro is like fantastic at creating content the product marketer isn't or vice versa. So I think that plays a role. Um, so I mean for me it comes about, it comes down to like one, what person is best equipped to create the piece in a way that achieves the goals for it and ensures messaging is consistent. And then also just realistically like who has bandwidth? Um, because at a startup you're, you never have a ton of bandwidth. Um, the sales enablement person has, you know, a little bit more bandwidth or the product market has a little bit more bandwidth. And I think there's also that, that flexibility as well. But it should be focused on kind of who can achieve the goals and who can keep the messaging consistent.

Speaker A: I like that, that makes a lot of sense and I love the call out the trust as well. That's got to go both ways as well to build that relationship. Like, like you mentioned earlier. I guess the next thing I wanted to ask was if you had to pick a sort of top three or pull three items out, what are sort of the most important areas that product marketing and sales name need to collaborate on? In startups, like you said, there's not a lot of bandwidth. What are the sort of the highlights where if someone's sort of really focusing on developing that relationship between the two, where are those sort of key areas that they need to hone in on?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, fair, fair point. So three areas to hone in on for was product and sales enablement. Um, I think the most kind of top of mind one is sales training. Right? Um, I think that's where product marketing kind of misses the boat the most. Um, we try to be like, it almost feels like it's kind of ironic, right? So like when you think of product marketing with um, with customers or prospects, like we focus on like, hey, let's keep the message really simple. Let's like be really clear, whatever. And then when it comes to sales, we're like, hey, we're gonna just like vomit information at you that's just like 16 pages long and it's like 14 trainings and you need to know all these things. And I think sales enablement, like one of the superpowers of sales enablement has is they kind of pare all that down and say, no, no, no, like we don't need all this. Here's what we actually need. Here's the format we need it in. I love that you wrote 16 pages. No one on our team is going to read that. We actually need a video. We actually need an in person training, so on and so forth. So I think sales training is kind of number one, um, partially to make up for product marketing. And there's some product marketers that are great trainers. Not going to say they're not, but just, you know, painting with a broad stroke or, sorry, painting with a broad brush. Um, and then two I think is product launches. So product launches are so fundamental, especially the startup space where you just really need them to go well and you need them to make a big impact to your bottom line and top line for that matter. And you need sales enablement to kind of push that and be your partner and saying like, hey, here's why we're launching this, here's what you need to know and kind of um, galvanize the troops. Um, and then I think the third one, which is maybe less obvious when I think of sales enablement, like to me one of the superpower sales enablement has is really understanding not just sales but the sales process. So what I mean by that and by the way we've talked this whole time about sales, in my experience, sales and women also helps customer success, right? So it's too long for them to say sales and customer success, but let's just assume they're included. Um, but my point is like sales enablement knows kind of the sales process at the beginning, at the end, right? Cross sells, upsells, renewals, churn, um, they know, they should know customers, they should know the sales reps. So they have a really kind of unique and deep understanding of all that. So to me, and then product market on the other side really understands customers and prospects, really understands the market, really understands the product, um, should understand the sales process as well. Um, but maybe it doesn't have the same, maybe they weren't a sales rep and maybe the sales nobleman was so on and so forth. So to me what that lends to is like inevitably there's going to be go to market problems, right? Like something's going to not go well. Maybe the win rates low, maybe churns too high, retention isn't going, or sorry, cross, uh, sells aren't going where we expect, etc. So partnering on go to market problem diagnosis, like diagnosing what is wrong with our go to market and then also resolving it, like, that's huge. That to me is like massive, massive collaboration between sales and product marketing where we can go in from our respective viewpoints and say, hey, here's what we think is going on. Okay, great. How do we, how do we work with sales or customer success to test that theory and then to, if it does work, to kind of make it um, kind of the de facto or the default, um, kind of way we do things now. So I think those are the big three, right? Sales training, product launches, and then kind of this go to market diagnosis resolution, uh, one as well.

Speaker A: I love that a lot to sort of stew on as well for our listeners, I think. Before we wrap things up, what would. What should a sort of the biggest takeaway be for a listener? Especially since we don't get product marketing guests too often on the podcast. Uh, in terms of, for someone listening, they're in enablement and they're sort of trying to really understand the product marketing side of things. Uh, particularly in that startup side. What is like sort of the big takeaway you want them to have from this conversation. What is like the message that you want to sort of send out to enabling people listening. So hopefully it can make that relationship building just that little bit easier in sort of their current role, their next role, whatever it might be.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I think product marketers are kind of the classic A type, really, um, want to control everything, uh, really want to see outcomes, etc. And because of that, hopefully they're great partners too, but sometimes it's possible that they have trouble letting go, um, and just like founders that have trouble letting go, kind of a similar situation, which I think we've all kind of experienced. If you worked in a startup, um, I think if you can remind them why you're there, remind them of the charters you've created, remind them of the joint goals, the initiatives, etc. And kind of build that trust over time. You're going to succeed, you know, a lot more of the time and a lot faster. Um, and the other part is like, I think sometimes product marketers are wrong and we have a really tough time admitting that. And I think sales enablement is in a good place to do that in a tactful way. Um, and maybe in a way that, um, you know, sales isn't always. So I think again, building that relationship, building that trust just leads to better outcomes. And uh, I would advocate, you know, for sales enablement to kind of think of, uh, product marketing and sales as two kind of equal partners, um, and advocate for both. And I think that's kind of the way the path forward.

Speaker A: I love that. Hopefully there'll be some way more transparent sort of relationships, uh, coming in after this episode from people sort of taking that advice. It was really cool to sort of have your perspective on. So really appreciate you taking the time to share that, uh, lots of little bits from, for our audience to take away from implement and yeah, hopefully we'll see some much better relationships sort of going forward between the two teams. Um, so thank you so much, Jonathan, for coming on and sharing all of that.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. It was fun.

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