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What Makes A Good Marketer

Hello from the Highland Team

What Makes A Good Marketer: Lessons from Getting To The Top

Good marketers know they must focus on customer needs. The February 7th Getting To The Top Product Marketing panel focused on this issue when discussing the most critical success factors in getting to the top in product marketing/management roles.

How well do you understand your customers and what's important to them?

Whether a marketer focuses on products or other parts of the mix, knowing your customers is the key foundation of success in marketing.

The panel consisted of executives previously from Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard, PeopleSoft and Sybase, now at start-ups:

• Rita Iorfida, VP Products, Liquid Engines
• Rich Mironov, Former VP Marketing, Airmagnet
• Tiffany Riley, VP Marketing, Nextance
• David Straus, SVP Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Corticon Technologies

The panel had clear insight into the personal characteristics and experiences that make marketers, product managers and product marketers successful.

Know thy customer

It's not about the mechanics of product management or product marketing. It's not about finishing the longest product requirements document, having the best PowerPoint presentations or producing the latest webinars.

You must know what's important from the perspective of those buying and selling the product. Listen to customers and salespeople. Digest all the input: What are customer pain points? What are customers doing? What can you do creatively to solve the problems? Simplistically, can you answer the questions: So what? Who cares? Why?

Focus on sales

To be successful, you must be outbound focused and help sell customers.

David Straus pointed out that Siebel Systems product marketing organization was successful because it focused on supporting customers and the sales force. He cautioned, though, that the product manager must balance the optimism/evangelism front to customers and the realism of critically evaluating what the product can do.

Rita Iorfida was lucky to have a sales executive as a mentor that offered her the perspective of what the sales team needs from product marketing.

"Listen to sales but be careful not to be caught in the sales vortex, neglecting the other parts of the product management role," cautioned Tiffany Riley.

Use process and discipline

The product marketing/management role is complex with far too many details to juggle. Product marketers and product managers must have a process and the discipline to be able to digest all the data and then set priorities and manage time appropriately. The product manager is the owner of the product process so it is crucial to watch for organizational breakage and find ways to bring the pieces of the organization together.

Gain credibility to rally the cross-functional team

The VP Product Marketing/Management must gain credibility with functional areas across the company: executive leadership, engineering, sales, and more. Gain this respect by being the market expert in the company. Tiffany Riley pointed out that sharing knowledge helped build credibility. Go back to point one and learn the customer and the market. Share this market knowledge and customer insight in a prioritized manner with executive leadership. What are the customers doing? What are their problems? What's most important for the customers and why? Or as Rich Mironov says, "Speak customer and speak engineering."

Be an expert

As you move up in your career, product marketing/management functional skills alone will not be enough to get you hired into a new role.

Develop an expertise in a domain area, whether a technology or an industry expertise. Become an expert by really getting to know the customers' needs in this domain to become an expert.

Be Strategic as well as Tactical

As you move up the product management/marketing ladder, you must learn to give up the details and delegate. This can be the hardest thing to do as someone who loves the product, cautioned the panel. Know the customers, understand the competitors, create the product vision and lead the product direction, and make sure your staff executes the tactical details, as agreed by project plans, metrics and development plans

Remember: Getting To The Top: Getting Unstuck

Please register by March 31 at Register for Getting To The Top

Here's to Savvy Marketing,

Deborah Henken