What do you think are the top 3 hard skills & soft skills that every Product Marketer should have? Here’s my take:
Hard skills:
Excellent writing and storytelling skills
Data analysis skills
Product knowledge
Soft skills:
Grit
Persuasion and influencing
Servant leadership
This was a question that I was asked by someone on my team, so I’m sure they’d appreciate seeing your thoughts!
I spoke with a former classmate looking for advice about how to break into software sales. My top advice to her?
– Be willing to take a job at a company even if it’s not your dream company.
You can always switch later, and then you’ll have the right job title, so recruiters will be more interested in considering you for positions.
– Narrow down your interest to certain industries / verticals.
It will be easier for people you speak with to think of specific people to connect you with for further networking.
This is the difference between saying, “I want to work in tech” and “I want to work for a health tech software company”.
– Think about marketing yourself.
Make your resume tailored to the positions that you’re shooting for. When describing your results, use the same language as the job descriptions do. You need to position yourself in a way that will be relatable to them.
What’s your advice for her? I’ll send the comments to her later 🙂
I recently got a cold call from an SDR. What happened?
She asked if this was Grant, and I said it was.
She then immediately launched into a generic pitch about her product for over a minute. No personalization to me or my company, and it sounded like she was reading directly from her script.
I listened without interrupting. I know she has a tough job; I’ve done the job before and didn’t enjoy it.
It was clear me to that the product wouldn’t be a good fit for us now, so I told her I know she has a tough job and asked if she was open to feedback. She said she was, so I gave her two pieces of advice:
1. Make your pitch sound more natural so that it’s not obvious you’re reading from a script.
2. Personalize. Research me and my company before the call at least a bit so that you can tailor the pitch to make it more relevant to me.
What advice would give to this woman?
There’s something I’ve started doing before hiring a new agency.
What is it? I look at their recent LinkedIn posts as well as the founder’s LinkedIn posts.
I want to see their thought leadership.
I want to see how their thinking is the same or different from others.
I want to see if their clients are commenting on their posts.
Why?
It more tangibly shows the kind of value they may bring to us.
I want new employees to feel welcomed and have clear expectations when they join my team. That’s why I created a simple onboarding document template that is shared with them on their first day (see template below).
In addition to meeting important colleagues, this is an easy way for them to start out on the right foot.
Below is part of the onboarding template we use.
Let me know if you like it or would add anything to it (ignore the lack of formatting on LinkedIn).
Hi
We’re excited that you’ve joined Voximplant! Below are helpful resources and initial projects. I’ll be meeting weekly with you to support you, check in, and try to clear roadblocks out of your way. Please reach out if you have any questions.
Feedback
It is worth noting that we are very big proponents of feedback. People grow through learning what they are doing well to strengthen those skills and learning what they can improve upon. We are big fans of unsolicited feedback. Make sure to give and receive feedback early, often, and with grace. We want to help make each other better!
Daily Working
– Document collaboration and editing – We like to use Google Drive and related apps for most work.
– Messaging and collaboration – we use Slack to help us increase collaboration and team visibility, interact with each other better, be more productive, and be more aware of what’s going on.
Onboarding
– Identify what you hope to learn from this job in the next six months and what your potential future goals are
– Share any needs or accommodations that I should be aware of
– Follow these Slack channels:
– Add your picture in G Suite and Slack
– Review the Marketing Single Source of Truth spreadsheet, especially
— Pitch decks
— Kit Solution Overview
— Platform Technical Buyers Guide
– Familiarize yourself with the products. Examples for how to do this include:
— Watch some of our YouTube videos
— Review the website
— Read our customer stories
How to Use Jira and Submit Tickets
First Projects (in order of priority)
We’re excited to have you on the team! Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks,
As a marketer, working closely with your SDRs and BDRs is super important. They’re on the frontlines and hearing feedback from prospects daily.
What are some of the ways you keep a close connection? As an example, we have a Slack channel with all of them to ask questions and brainstorm new ideas with Marketing.
In 2022, I predict podcasts will become a primary channel for how customers learn from their vendors.
Podcast listens are growing rapidly, and not just for personal / fun podcasts. There are a lot of business / professional growth podcasts!
And this isn’t just a national trend. This is happening globally – just ask any podcast host to show you their regional breakdown of listeners.
Many companies are launching their own podcasts as a way to create thought leadership. They often bring on outside experts.
This is a great way to engage with existing customers and keep them viewing you as a valuable resource, and it’s a good way to engage with new people who aren’t yet customers.
So how about you?
One of the reasons I like working for a software company?
You can scale exponentially. Great product, great GTM – you’re off to the races.
Professional services companies – your product is usually hours of someone’s brain. That’s why these companies track “billable hours”. That means if you want to scale, you need to hire another person.
But recruiting for another smart person takes a lot more effort than provisioning another user account 😄
Things get lost in email. Don’t let your next meeting die because of email!
It’s better to try to find a time to meet while on the phone call with a lead or prospect rather than saying you can send them available times via email.
Then it’s less likely to get lost in the email back and forth.
If they say they have multiple people on their side they’d like to invite, you can suggest that they pull up the calendars of those people and check right then to see when everyone is available.
Skip-level meetings are so valuable.
I suggest all managers of managers do them! And if your org isn’t too big, do it with every single person in your org at least once per quarter!
Why?
– It shows that you care about everyone on your team
– You learn new insights about your individuals’ strengths and personalities
– You will learn more about opportunities or issues at your company
Figure out the cadence that works for you. For me and Larry Furr, quarterly is a good rhythm.
Anyone else find these worthwhile?