Qualia VP of Marketing, Charlene Wang on Product Marketing KPI's

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome back to season six of um, the Product Marketing Experts podcast. Today I am really excited to have Charlene Wang with me. Charlene, welcome to the podcast. I'd love to hear a little bit more about you and get to know your path, uh, into product marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Um, I can start with my current role. I'm um, VP Marketing at Qualia and Qualia digitizes real estate transactions. So we're the leading SaaS platform for all parties on a real estate transaction that helps to manage closing and settlement workflows. We have several hundred team members across the US And I'm currently leading the marketing function which includes a seven person product marketing organization and along with other marketing functions. Prior to that I had led marketing at fin.com, product and partner marketing for WorldPaid's platform business and product marketing at Kupa. Prior to that I actually started my roles in strategy and strategy consulting. So I did that for EMC VMware and also at McKinsey and Company.

Speaker B: That's amazing. That's quite the path from strategy to product marketing to marketing leadership even. And I certainly want to talk a little bit more about that in the course of our conversation this episode because I know so many product marketing leaders trying to figure out how do I take that next step. But that's an amazing path into product marketing and now into overall marketing leadership. But I want to start the conversation around kind of KPIs. You know, especially in today's environment, in uh, today's economy, it's so important that we in product marketing and marketing overall are kind of proving our impact on the business. And, and so how do you think about deciding what KPIs truly reflect the success of, you know, product marketing efforts? And do you have any favorite KPIs that you feel like have been overlooked but are really useful for product marketing?

Speaker A: For sure. Product marketing is one of those functions that's so hard to measure because you are sort of impacting everything but also impacting nothing really clearly all at once. So I think that one of the key areas for product marketers to really think about is how do you paint the narrative of what you're actually doing and how that leads back to eventually the metrics of the business. So the way I think about things is from a pro product marketer's perspective, there are kind of leading indicators of things that you're directly impacting that are easier to measure and then lagging indicators which are kind of more tied to the business and might not be something you directly impact. But it's something that you impact longer term. And so what you want to do is be able to paint that picture. So for me, for instance, a, ah, leading indicator is something that goes back to really the messaging that you're producing and how that specifically is being used and the adoption. So as a product marketer, the direct output that you create is messaging. Now there's a lot that goes into the messaging. So there's positioning, there's, you know, to do the position, you have to understand the market, you have to understand the product and the company, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, the thing that you directly impact is that messaging. So things that I like to measure from the messaging perspective is the clarity of that messaging. So if I put this message in front of the salespeople and uh, in front of a couple of customers, can they very clearly articulate back to me or understand what are the key value props that we offer with our product, with our company, the adoption of that messaging? So is there a lot of usage within the sales team? Is that something that's being presented to customers and then the qualitative feedback that you're getting at the end? So are sales reps really resonating with the message and do they really believe in it? And then moreover, when you actually see gong calls and uh, when you actually talk to customers, eventually customers and also some prospects as well, are they giving you feedback that this message really resonates? So those are the leading indicators and that's what you as a product marketer directly impact. From there you want to actually get into the metrics of the business. And this to me are the lagging indicators of the impact of product marketing. So those are things like the win rates that you get, amount of pipeline that you're generating, the revenue of the business, adoption of the product, and then after adoption that's really retention upsell and customer advocacy. And from there it's a little bit more of a circuitous route, but you should be able to paint a picture of, well, we put this message out there, this is a new campaign that we ran and it really kind of was meant to position us against this competitive, uh, differentiator. And that allowed us to increase win rates by X amount. And when this new campaign went out with this message, our uh, win rates were able to kind of edge up by so much for deals that were using the message versus not. So then you can kind of more indirectly talk about those business indicators and those metrics that really matter for the overall business Long story, but basically from a product marketer's perspective, what I think about is what are the things in the business I really care about? What are those metrics that matter? What are some of the leading indicators that my messaging helps to drive? And then how do I paint a clear picture between those leading indicators into those metrics of the business? What I call those lagging indicators?

Speaker B: I love that. Ah. And maybe putting yourself back in the shoes of product marketing or what you maybe expect from product marketing, how often do you think about like reporting, uh, some of that because that story component is so critical that you mentioned. But how do you think about the reporting cadence and how that's historically worked best for you and your teams?

Speaker A: Yeah. So reporting cadence is also going to vary based on the metric. I think about it sort of in a continuous spectrum from things that you kind of really do on a one off basis. So when you're developing a new campaign or when you're kind of launching this new way of messaging, there's probably an overall hypothesis you've developed. For instance, just kind of go back to that example I gave. We are launching this new messaging. It's going to help us really differentiate against this competitor by saying this one thing. And so what we hypothesize is that the win rates will go up when we're head to head against that competitor. So that's something that you develop on a one off basis and then you kind of continuously measure it and then on a periodic basis based on how easy it is to actually see those win rates move up and down. I mean you could be weekly, it could be monthly, it could be just during certain milestones in this campaign. That's when you report back on that. On the other end of the spectrum you have metrics that you're just continuously reporting on and those I like to automate within some kind of tool, so some kind of sales enablement platform, content management platform, oftentimes times, and those are things like for instance, adoption of messaging, you know, what percentage of the sales team is using the core pitch deck, how many of these data sheets are being sent out to certain customers. And that's something you can kind of have on a dashboard continuously if you have the right tooling. And then there are other things that are a little bit more kind of in between. So maybe on a periodic basis throughout the year, you're kind of checking in on things like uh, sales cycle times and win rates, deal sizes, et cetera. And that's something that you can kind of periodically check in on maybe it's quarterly, maybe it's monthly. And then that kind of gives you a little bit of a guiding North Star as to whether or not the overall kind of marketing and messaging is working.

Speaker B: I love that and I love the kind of multi, tiered, so to speak, of things that you can almost set and forget and apologies for the phrase there, obviously you don't want to forget about it, but you can set it and report on it, you know, fairly indefinitely. But thing and then these other kind, uh, of efforts, so to speak, that you need to report on much more frequently than that, uh, as well. Yeah, I know a lot of teams and I mean I certainly talk with a lot of product marketers. I'm sure you probably do as well. Struggle to Link product marketing KPIs to broader business outcomes or even broader OKRs. Do you have any advice for making that connection clear and ensuring that KPIs are not just numbers on a spreadsheet, so to speak, but telling a compelling story?

Speaker A: First of all, I can completely relate to that problem. As I mentioned earlier, product is one of those functions that sort of both art and science. So the art part is just very difficult because you know how you're looking at things. I mean realistically, you're developing positioning and messaging. How does that actually drive things like revenue? It's very indirect and so you have to be able to really tell that story. I, uh, go back to first and foremost making sure that you have a compelling narrative. So kind of the example I was giving is if you're developing a specific type of messaging, in theory, what you should be doing is you should be understanding the market and the product first and foremost. So where is the product positioned overall compared to everything else out there? And that includes, includes understanding the competitors, understanding the sales cycle, understanding the company's internal operations and processes as well, and then, uh, from there being able to say, okay, my hypothesis is if we do this, it should help us achieve X. So example I gave earlier was win rates against a competitor. So maybe it's a campaign where you're going, where you've specifically decided that you need to tackle XYZ competitor and the messaging is built around that. Another example could be you might want to increase deal sizes, in which a, uh, hypothesis in that case is if we go into the first sales call and instead of positioning just the core product, we are now positioning a platform and actually bringing in this other product into that early conversation. In theory, what that should do is in that next stage of the sales cycle, you should see more attach rates of that additional product, and you should see kind of acv ARR, whatever you're measuring go up as well. So you have to have a narrative of what you are doing and why, and then that gives you the kind of metrics that you want to look at throughout the process. So, for example, in the case of that higher ACB ARR attach rate, you might want to look at first. Well, when I look directly at those leading indicators, am I seeing that customers in those gong calls, for instance, are really kind of like nodding their heads and asking more questions about this additional product? So that's the first thing that you're going to see is some kind of indicator that that messaging is working. The next indicator down from that is then you should start seeing attach rates kind of increase over time. And that's something you might want to monitor. And if that is working, that's great. If it's not working, you want to go back and kind of diagnose why that might not be the case. Maybe the messaging is resonating initially, but then the customer discovers, oh, this product is terrible, and actually this new attached product is not ready for primetime. So it could be many things, but if it's working, you should start seeing that attach rate increase. And then from there you'll start seeing things like the revenue actually increase. And that's something that will happen over time. And then you'll have to look at other things like for instance, is that actually increasing the sales cycle? And is that something that's desirable or not? But I give that example as a way of saying when you start with a specific messaging update or a campaign, you really want to start with what is the hypothesis I'm trying to drive here, and then go from the closest leading indicator, which to me is the messaging adoption, the messaging resonance, and then start moving further and further closer to the revenue of the business. So that is looking at, well, now we're increasing attach rates, now we're increasing win rates, and that is actually helping us achieve higher revenue in the deals where this new messaging is being used.

Speaker B: I love that. And you talked a lot about messaging resonance and attach rate in there. And I want to double click on kind of the thread between those, because those of course kind of require collaboration with the enablement team or just working on enablement, if you know whomever is listening is directly responsible for enablement as well. So how do you think about not only working with enablement and bridging that to generating revenue, but measuring the success of the effort that you tie into enablement for things like messaging resonance and attach rate and so forth.

Speaker A: For sure, the relationship with enablement is so critical and depending on the organization, a lot of times enablement sits within product marketing. It could also sit within sales, it could sit within an operations function. I personally think it's, I mean I'm going to be biased here. I think it makes a lot of sense for enablement to sit within product marketing because product marketing is oftentimes producing a lot of the things that need to be enabled on. And so having that close relationship with enablement is so critical. But regardless, in any situation, collaborating with another function always requires kind of starting with a shared end goals. So at the end of the day everyone wants sales to be successful, everyone wants sales to close more deals, to close bigger deals, and they want sales to do this very efficiently. So I always start with level setting with any other functions I'm working with or if that's level setting within product marketing, that this is what we care about and then uh, having that understanding and then having some shared metrics around that is very, very critical. Now the other areas within enablement I think are very helpful is to make sure that you actually set everything up so that you're able to get some kind of visibility into what's working, what's not. I'm very biased in that I really love content management sales enablement platforms. I have in multiple companies brought in something like a seismic or a high spot. And those platforms are wonderful because that gives you a single source of truth of a what is the latest deck that anyone needs to use, what's the latest data sheet? So you're able to put content into a single platform that is a single source of truth across product marketing, across marketing, sales and anyone else who's looking at this content and that's the latest and greatest. And you're able to actually see the adoption both internally and externally, even down to whether or not the usage of certain types of content is actually impacting sales cycles in a particular way. So that is really great because A helps keep everyone organized, it keeps everyone on the same page. But B, it also gives objective quantitative information about what's being used and what's not. And now the insights as to what's working. That requires a little bit more discussion as well. And really kind of not just the quantitative data, but really kind of trying to dig into how things are being used, what's resonating, what's not, and that requires someone to kind of go back and do some of that research. Or you can use additional tools. Win Loss analysis is a good tool to really understand what's happened for sales cycles I've closed and what drove those, either those wins or those losses. And there's other tools out there like Close or Clue that can help with doing that win loss. But also I think internally doing Win loss is always really helpful. So having somebody on the team who really owns that is good and that gives you some feedback into what's worked or not and then kind of observation. So if you have something like GONG implemented that allows you to record calls and see what's working or what's not. So basically to summarize, I think with sales enablement, the first thing first is that you want to make sure that you are aligned on which metrics you care about. And that's something that everyone collectively understands. You want to have as much as you can a consistent source of information about what is working, what's not. I like to use a lot of content management, sales enablement platforms for that and then that you're able to develop again some more hypotheses as to why things are the way they are. I think Win loss is a good way to kind of dive into that. But there's other ways that you can gather feedback and observation and then that helps to keep everyone on the same page and working towards the same outcomes over time.

Speaker B: For sure. Yeah, completely agree. And I love the shared alignment there. And um, I want to maybe double click just one more quick step on this topic, which is how do you think about leveling up the approach?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like where do you start from that alignment conversation and KPIs and, and how do you kind of ratchet up the maturity, so to speak, of those KPIs between enablement and product marketing as the organization grows and evolves as well.

Speaker A: Yeah. So when you're a smaller organization, generally what happens or from what I've seen, the tools and the sophistication is just not there. A lot of times you're focused on just one or two different outcomes. And I mean, when you're a startup, for instance, you're not going to be looking at everything under the sun, from sales cycles to average deal sizes to number of deals. You know, how long is it taking to ramp new sales reps that you just don't have that level of sophistication and complexity yet. But usually when you're at that stage, you're kind of focused on one or two things. And also on the other side, the complexity of the teams isn't quite there yet. A lot of companies won't have even a dedicated sales enablement person until much later on. So product marketing will usually be there early on. But as to having their dedicated sales enablement person, that oftentimes comes a little bit later. Oftentimes early on, sales enablement is product marketing. It's either that one person or it's a, um, portion of somebody's time on the product marketing team. So on the one hand, much easier to ensure alignment because it's a smaller team. But on the other hand, there's just too many priorities. So you have to focus on one thing and whatever's the most critical to the business, that's what you want to pick. So it could be just, you know, win rates. Win rates is the big trouble child we have right now. So we really want to increase win rates. And so you just kind of hyper focus on that one metric and you don't worry about too much tooling to kind of control those other areas. Because win rates is something you could probably just see in the CRM and for a smaller number of deals, you can get to that very clearly. So kind of over time, as the company scales, you go from focusing on single metrics or a couple of metrics that you could probably measure with existing tooling within your CRM oftentimes to then bringing in additional tools so that you can kind of get to those other areas of enablement that you care about. So maybe you want to start layering in not just win rates and kind of overall deal sizes, but now you have multiple product lines. And so how do you track the messaging around those product lines? That's when you maybe start bringing in not quite the sales enablement platform just yet, but something else to help you kind of coordinate and stay organized across these different product lines and then building out KPIs around that. Maybe that's something you do in a business intelligence tool like a looker studio, more tableau. And then over time you start layering in more and more areas to look at and more tooling around that. So maybe that's the point when you start bringing in real sales enablement team. And then you start bringing in a tool like a seismic or HighSpot, and then you're looking at more sophisticated metrics. So maybe you're now layering in sales ramp time. You're also starting to look at customer retention, customer upsell, customer advocacy. You're looking at things like attach rates by product. And those are kind of things that you can layer in as the company starts Growing in those directions and the sophistication of the team and of, uh, the tooling allows you to kind of do that.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And that, that growing maturity, obviously is super beneficial, just from a data perspective of all the insight it provides to not only the business, of course, but product marketing managers and what they can do and what they need to focus on for their respective products or the overall company. Well, we talked about, you know, growing a business and scaling a business and how businesses mature, but oftentimes that comes with additional kind of leadership opportunities and growth opportunities as well. And I know you've successfully transitioned from product marketing to overall marketing leadership. And so I wanted to ask, because I know a lot of folks listening to this reach out and they're saying, hey, how do I make that jump from product marketing to overall marketing leadership? So can you share like a little bit more about how you made that jump and maybe what was your biggest challenge you faced during that transition?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think the most important thing for anyone to kind of grow in their careers is to have a lot of intellectual curiosity and not be afraid of taking on more responsibilities. Well, in a responsible way. That's the thing. I will also caveat because it is possible to start kind of getting into everyone else's business. So don't. So there is a, like a way to approach it that will allow you to kind of grow. So in growing companies, and even in companies that might not be growing as quickly, there are always kind of pockets of the business where it's being underserved in some way. And when I approach a role, I always think about from the top level of the company, what are the metrics that we really care about? What does the leadership of the company care about? How does that translate? What does a CEO think about all day? And how does that translate into the C level and what the C level cares about? How does that translate into the next level? And why is it that we are, uh, focused on a specific campaign or a specific outcome this year versus another year? So really understanding all the way up to the top, why we're doing what we're doing. And then I always like to dig into different parts of the business and try to understand what my colleagues are up to and what they're focused on and why. And those are kind of conversations I just kind of have because I'm just curious. And people love to explain what they're working on and some of the areas that they care about. So that's helped me a lot in my career in terms of growth. I started in more of a strategy consulting background. So I came from a strategy knobs background. I originally started at McKinsey and Company, did management consulting and then moved into EMC VMware's strategy group. And then when I first came into Coupa, I actually started in strategy and operations which allowed me to kind of get a broader view of the business and then moved into product marketing. Now even within product marketing, the role I took on was yes, product marketing. And I could have been very narrowly focused on just the positioning and the messaging for the product areas that I owned initially. But I was always looking for other opportunities to up level what I was doing. And so there were certain products that I took on where I took on much more of the role than beyond just product marketing. So in some cases noticed that there was no good way to measure ACV by product. And so I worked with finance to develop that model and that helped me to kind of uh, succeed with those products that I owned. But it also really helped the business to recognize a lot of the contribution I was making. And it bought me the opportunity to take on other parts of the product marketing function and eventually grow within that role. And as I was taking on those other parts, I was also working very closely with Mangen and with Brand and with these other functions and just really developing that deep understanding of those areas and then how that kind of plays into the product launches I was leading. And so the big transition that you often make when you're coming out of product marketing into broader marketing leadership is those other parts of marketing. And more broadly, how does marketing tie into the, the larger strategic objectives of the business? So when I made that first jump from Koopa into a broader leadership role at Finn, where I was running all of marketing, a lot of the questions I was getting was around, you know, how do you think about growth? How do you think about demand gen? What's your strategy around brand? What do you think about our brand? How do you improve this brand? Do we need to improve our brand? How do you generate awareness? And so those were questions I was able to answer very effectively given the experience I've had and just kind of what I had observed and just provide a lot of insights that allowed me to come into that role and actually do those other areas of the business effectively. And that's something I've consistently used as I've kind of grown within my career. So I think first and foremost is whatever you are today, just always have some curiosity about what else is out there and why you're doing what you're doing and have some kind of idea and understanding of how you kind of fit into the broader business, uh, objectives. And then that's a good opportunity for you to just continue to learn and grow. And eventually, whether it's at your own company and you can create opportunities internally or at another organization where there's more opportunity to grow, those opportunities will come up. And if you have the right approach and you have a really sophisticated way of thinking about these things, you can eventually grow into those other roles and especially into those other functions within marketing.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I love what you were saying in there around, you know, kind of taking responsibility, of course, responsibly, but taking responsibility for things that may be outside of the scope of a traditional kind of PM role or job description when there's kind of a gap there. So much of my own growth as well has come from that kind of mantra as well, and speaks to a lot of ways you can learn new things and doing it responsibly as just to emphasize that point again as well, for sure.

Speaker A: And I do want to make sure that I am also emphasizing that because it is possible to start stepping into other functions. So the way I think about it is identify the areas that nobody is really kind of doesn't have the time or have the interest per se to kind of take on or just make people's lives easier. Right. Because you're going to have colleagues doing demand gen, you're going to have colleagues doing brand or sales, and you don't want to go in and become a sales rep. What you want to do is you want to go and say, hey, like this thing I'm noticing that is kind of a pain point for you. Can I help? And say, by the way, here's how I would think about helping and then just kind of ask for that permission. And, um, I think people are always happy when somebody's there to help them out. What you don't want to do is say, I think I can do this better than you. I'm going to come in, here's what you should be doing, and just basically take over their role. So. But the guiding principle there is to be helpful, not necessarily intrusive.

Speaker B: Absolutely. 100% agree. Amazing. Well, Charlene, this has been an incredible conversation. I really appreciate you being with us today and sharing so much of your insight with the listeners of this podcast. As we close out, I just want to ask one final question, which I ask of all guests. That is, is there any, you know, book or podcast or blog or anything else for that matter that you've kind of read throughout your career that's had a significant on your career, uh, and

Speaker A: really helps you out o so many things. I can't even go through all. I listen a lot to just general podcasts, so I always read the Wall Street Journal. I try to listen to a lot of kind of business podcasts and read a bunch of books and I think that's really critical. It's just not just understanding product marketing, but again, going back to what I was saying earlier about understanding the broader direction of the economy and the business, etc. Etc. So I highly recommend doing that and there's a bunch of really good resources out there for that. On the product marketing front, somebody that I follow quite a lot is April Dunford. So she is just the positioning, uh, queen. She has a bunch of books out there I think. Her most famous one, I believe is obviously awesome. But she talks a lot about positioning and messaging and sales enablement. And I think she's a really good, I guess you can call her an influencer in the product marketing world and then there's a couple of others out there. But she's probably my number one recommendation for product marketers in particular.

Speaker B: Absolutely. April is phenomenal and love the Wall Street Journal recommendation as well. It's certainly a good one to read as often as possible. Well, thank you so much, Charlene, for being with us today and thank you again so much for your time. This show is produced by sharebird, a site where leaders from top companies share their expertise. Our mission is to make the best product marketing content knowledge accessible to all. Get the latest tips and best practices at sharebird.

Speaker A: Com.