#335: How to Build a Product Marketing Motion That Works (with Jeff Hardison)

#335 | Jeff Hardison, now VP of Product Marketing at Sanity, joined Dave when he was running product marketing at Calendly to break down what the product marketing role should actually look like inside a B2B company. They get into how Jeff structured his team to serve both a PLG motion and an enterprise sales team at the same time, why he hires for specialization instead of making everyone a generalist, and how he thinks about measuring a function that touches almost every team in the company. Jeff also shares his take on positioning and messaging, how to run product launches that actually rally the company, and the two interview questions he uses to figure out if someone will be happy in a product marketing role.

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Dave [0:00:01]: You're listening to The Dave Gerhardt Show.

Dave [0:00:02]: Hey, it's me Dave.

Dave [0:00:18]: This is a throwback from a couple years ago because the fundamentals that Jeff covers here haven't changed.

Dave [0:00:22]: Jeff Hardison is now VP of product marketing at Sanity joined me when he was running product marketing at Calendly.

Dave [0:00:28]: To break down how he thinks about the product marketing role.

Dave [0:00:31]: We get a lot of questions about this, the role of product marketing and a start in particular, we got into how he structured his team at Calendly to serve both the PLG motion and Enterprise Sales team at the same time.

Dave [0:00:41]: Why he splits product markers by what they love doing most rather than making everyone a generalist?

Dave [0:00:45]: And how he thinks about measuring a function that touches almost every team in the company, which is a great one.

Dave [0:00:50]: This comes uPRall the time.

Dave [0:00:51]: How do you measure the effectiveness of product marketing.

Dave [0:00:54]: So I think you'll really enjoy this conversation.

Dave [0:00:56]: That's why we're replaying it and enjoy my conversation with Jeff Hardison.

Dave [0:00:59]: Alright.

Dave [0:01:00]: I'm here.

Dave [0:01:01]: This is Dave.

Dave [0:01:02]: My guest, Jeff is here.

Dave [0:01:04]: Jeff, Wanna to do a quick intro on who you are.

Jeff [0:01:06]: Hey, Dave.

Jeff [0:01:07]: Jeff Hardison Head a Product Market for Calendly.

Jeff [0:01:09]: So excited to be here.

Dave [0:01:11]: I do love Calendly as a product.

Dave [0:01:12]: I did tweet out this morning that I brag about not having it Calendly, which is a separate conversation.

Dave [0:01:18]: We don't have to talk about that on the podcast, but, Cool, Jeff and I got connected and traded a note on just, you know, hey.

Dave [0:01:25]: He's had interesting career in product marketing has some strong point of views on that, I think given who you are, the company you work at in your background, plus that.

Dave [0:01:33]: No surprise to you as a career product marketer.

Dave [0:01:35]: One of the top questions that I see come up in B2B marketing is, like, what the heck product marketing do.

Dave [0:01:41]: What do they own?

Dave [0:01:43]: And then you have people who say this is the most important role in a B2B marketing team, but most of us can't properly articulate what product marketing is.

Dave [0:01:49]: Long story short, I'm happy to have you on.

Dave [0:01:52]: Thanks for making the time for it.

Jeff [0:01:53]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:01:53]: It's to be fun.

Dave [0:01:55]: Alright.

Dave [0:01:55]: Bring me up to speed, before we talk about cal, we'll talk about the community stuff at the at the end of this podcast.

Dave [0:02:01]: Before you got to Cal, what have you venture career doing.

Dave [0:02:05]: You told me when we were hanging out before this for a couple of minutes You started your career in PR?

Jeff [0:02:10]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:02:10]: You know, I thought I wanted to be a, teacher professor, like, an English literature.

Jeff [0:02:14]: And one of my professors he waited until he was, like, forty to get his Phd, and he he'd been an advertising copywriter.

Jeff [0:02:21]: And he started talking about how much he didn't like teaching after one year of it.

Jeff [0:02:26]: And and I was like, maybe I might not like it.

Jeff [0:02:28]: And he's was like, you should do what I did and go into marketing.

Jeff [0:02:30]: And so, you know, I moved to West Coast.

Jeff [0:02:31]: And started applying places and got into a integrated marketing firm for tech companies and got acquired by Fl Hill and became a PRperson for amazon dot com and a bunch of different companies and ended up switching over to integrated marketing, like, advertising agencies and so forth.

Jeff [0:02:48]: And then I, joined the startuPRside with this company called meridian, and I was the first non engineering hire.

Jeff [0:02:55]: So I had do everything.

Jeff [0:02:56]: I had to do sales, Cs, a little bit of product management, all the marketing and the P, capabilities came in really handy because you could write, you could do positioning a messaging, you could not spend money and get things done, which I thought was important in a tiny startup versus, you know, some of my friends who came mad, backgrounds needed a budget.

Jeff [0:03:15]: And then we got acquired by Hp, and they needed some place to put me at a H hPRAr, and they made me director product marketing.

Jeff [0:03:22]: I had a team there, learned a lot about product marketing.

Jeff [0:03:25]: And then since then, been in some small startups ups where I don't have a budget.

Jeff [0:03:29]: And then I've also been managing product marketing teams like envision and and cal, and that's why.

Jeff [0:03:36]: I'm here today.

Dave [0:03:37]: Awesome.

Dave [0:03:37]: I think that's such a important role or or phase if you wanna grow your career in into any type of marketing leadership that, like, time period where you had where you had to do everything.

Dave [0:03:47]: So I have a similar story where, like, I worked in PR.

Dave [0:03:50]: While I was working in P, though I kinda had a sense of, like, oh, I saw other teams in marketing.

Dave [0:03:55]: I'm like, I'm interested in that.

Dave [0:03:56]: I think I can do that where if you've ever worked in PR.

Dave [0:03:59]: There's kind of, like, at least in my experience.

Dave [0:04:01]: There's one end of the spectrum or the other, There's the people who are, like, working in PRbecause they see it as a bridge to, like, also do x or.

Dave [0:04:08]: I wanna be a company...

Dave [0:04:08]: You know I wanna find my, start my own company or I wanna...

Dave [0:04:11]: Going into product marketing or be marketing, or you have the other people who are, like, nope.

Dave [0:04:15]: I am a life, and I've have hired people like this person is a PR person for life.

Dave [0:04:19]: This is my role This is what I wanna do.

Dave [0:04:21]: And it sounds like even and I are similar and that we were on the on the other side of the spectrum is like, oh, yeah, Happy to be good at the communication and storytelling part, and that's what played into that role.

Dave [0:04:30]: And just made me think of my time at drift specifically I think was, like, the most important time in my career because I got to do all that stuff.

Dave [0:04:37]: I went from being just kinda PRr and comm dave to, like, figure out the website, man, learn how to use Salesforce, figure out Google Analytics, hire, you know, sell ads, dude sales demos.

Dave [0:04:49]: Right?

Dave [0:04:49]: Like, did you feel that way in your crew?

Jeff [0:04:51]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:04:51]: You know what's funny too is it took a couple years for my past PR, friends to stop calling me a PR person.

Jeff [0:04:58]: Yes.

Jeff [0:04:59]: There's something about that industry where there's, like, no you're in internet for life.

Jeff [0:05:03]: You're t to this.

Jeff [0:05:04]: And I would have to remind them I'm like, no.

Jeff [0:05:06]: I'm now just a marketer.

Jeff [0:05:07]: I've always kinda found it funny that PRout of all the industries does that.

Jeff [0:05:12]: I don't know why that is.

Jeff [0:05:13]: Do think it is versus other disciplines.

Dave [0:05:15]: I don't know.

Dave [0:05:15]: I think it's very...

Dave [0:05:16]: I think just the nature of the personality of people that it attracts.

Dave [0:05:20]: It must be that...

Dave [0:05:21]: We're tied to our identities at work.

Dave [0:05:23]: I think.

Dave [0:05:23]: Yeah.

Dave [0:05:24]: In many different ways.

Jeff [0:05:25]: I do find the the experience valuable, and I love the PRpeople in my life because you have to learn how to hustle.

Jeff [0:05:31]: You have to learn how to story, and it's worse than cold calling sometimes because these people they are oftentimes some of these journalists are underpaid and their cynical, and they're like, who is this over paid person right out college calling.

Jeff [0:05:45]: I'm trying to pitch me on a store.

Jeff [0:05:46]: So you have to learn how take rejection very early on and story and get that hook.

Jeff [0:05:51]: Like, under the gun, and it's invaluable.

Dave [0:05:55]: Yeah.

Dave [0:05:55]: I love to figure it out now that I can see the threads.

Dave [0:05:58]: I love, like, to figure it out part of it, and it was, like, very early for me.

Dave [0:06:01]: It was much earlier in my career and it was, like, alright.

Dave [0:06:05]: You don't really know this company that well, You don't really know this industry that well, and you don't really know this CEO that well, but figure out how to get someone else to write about them.

Dave [0:06:13]: And you're like, okay So then you gotta research the company and find interesting story there, and all of a sudden you kinda you create this story and that was exactly what was so fun for me about, like, going to drift in that example was.

Dave [0:06:23]: I got to just figure it out at a bigger scale.

Dave [0:06:26]: And Was like, I understood what the company was doing.

Dave [0:06:28]: I was good the communication part.

Dave [0:06:30]: And, yeah.

Dave [0:06:30]: I don't know.

Dave [0:06:31]: Let's go send a cold email.

Dave [0:06:32]: And see what happens.

Dave [0:06:33]: And I think that was a fun part of that job.

Dave [0:06:35]: And I'm obviously, the landscape pitch shifted then, but there was, like, no better feeling than, like, riding a killer pitch sending it out, and then be like, alright.

Dave [0:06:42]: I'm going to lunch.

Dave [0:06:43]: I'm walking away for two hours and like, I come back, check my email and like, you get a response from the reporter.

Dave [0:06:48]: Even in then the reporters, they're always throwing no disrespect to any reporters out there now.

Dave [0:06:53]: But most of them are always so jerk.

Dave [0:06:54]: They're like jerks in their communication with you.

Dave [0:06:56]: And I'm just as lowly PR person and this reporter writes back, like, a one word, like, Tell me more or something that.

Dave [0:07:02]: They are Alright.

Dave [0:07:02]: I got.

Dave [0:07:02]: I got bait.

Dave [0:07:03]: And then you just gotta keep going down that.

Dave [0:07:05]: And I'm looking back now that was so fun and that was, like, the competitive nature in me and marketing, that I guess that's now made me hawaii

Jeff [0:07:12]: Exactly.

Jeff [0:07:12]: It definitely makes you competitive.

Jeff [0:07:13]: And I think going back to your point about in terms of PRpreparing for product marketing, that having to learn all those clients after, like, five minutes of knowing them on the agency side, makes me kinda raise the bar for people in the product marketing side, and all marketing colleagues, if they don't understand our products.

Jeff [0:07:32]: I'm like, you've been here two, three years.

Jeff [0:07:34]: Right?

Jeff [0:07:35]: How do you not understand like all the features and what they do and all the customer use cases?

Jeff [0:07:38]: Because when you're on the agency side, you had, like, maybe a week to figure it all out, and then you have to be talking to journalists or analysts about it and sound convincing.

Dave [0:07:46]: Yeah.

Dave [0:07:46]: That's so true.

Dave [0:07:47]: And I wonder, like, in that client relationship, you do it because there's, like, more pressure.

Dave [0:07:51]: You're like, I'm they're my client.

Dave [0:07:52]: I gotta learn the product Where if you're employed by the company you're like, I'll figure it out.

Dave [0:07:56]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:07:57]: Right?

Jeff [0:07:57]: The thing with agency life, you know, they can cut you all within two weeks.

Jeff [0:08:01]: Three months a year.

Jeff [0:08:03]: Right?

Jeff [0:08:03]: So you always felt like this, I could be cut as their agency at any time.

Jeff [0:08:07]: Oh, yeah.

Dave [0:08:08]: One of my first jobs at this agency that I worked at was, like, writing tweets.

Dave [0:08:12]: Ghost writing tweets, and this was in, like, two thousand nine, two thousand ten, Like Twitter was, like, very very new.

Dave [0:08:18]: And this company wanted to be on social media.

Dave [0:08:21]: It's specifically Twitter, and they believed that that would be meaningful in some way.

Dave [0:08:25]: And I would literally have to write up tweets to put them in a spreadsheet, send them to my manager to, like, review to then send off to the client who was probably a marketing manager to review.

Dave [0:08:36]: Yeah.

Dave [0:08:36]: And I remember we we...

Dave [0:08:38]: You know, I'd write something and then be, like, no, this is not the right hashtag.

Dave [0:08:40]: And I was like, looking back now Was like, man, that's crazy that that's what my job was.

Jeff [0:08:46]: My first job at this PRfirm was...

Jeff [0:08:48]: It was the recording industry.

Jeff [0:08:50]: Like, the people who issue like the gold records and so forth and suit Naps.

Jeff [0:08:53]: We were going into message boards and hearing people talk about, like, stealing music, and we were trying to, like, engage with them.

Jeff [0:08:59]: And it was like, engaging with, like, that's amazing.

Jeff [0:09:02]: The americans speak with the darkness Was it to,

Dave [0:09:05]: like, learn something or to try to tell them not to do it?

Jeff [0:09:07]: It was a combination of research and learning and trying to tell them not to do it.

Dave [0:09:11]: Wow.

Dave [0:09:11]: So they hired the company you're at PR firm to, like, that was the mission, like, get this message out.

Jeff [0:09:17]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:09:17]: And they...

Jeff [0:09:18]: And I got hired right out of college.

Jeff [0:09:20]: Without any marketing experience I just got thrown right in.

Dave [0:09:23]: There's just three right into the forums.

Dave [0:09:24]: Yeah.

Dave [0:09:25]: Would they even have had a way to, like, measure if that was successful or not or it was just like, a gut feeling, Like, we should do this.

Jeff [0:09:32]: I think we understood Internet communities better, because they were, like, it was pretty early on.

Jeff [0:09:37]: And, like, we were all kinda into them Like, I was already kind of into them and my boss was.

Jeff [0:09:41]: And we understood them, and we saw that's where a lot of the activity was happening.

Jeff [0:09:45]: People would talk about, oh use this file sharing service or use this one or use that one.

Jeff [0:09:48]: And so that's where a lot of the conversation was happening.

Jeff [0:09:51]: And you could track it versus, like, word a amounts sometimes she couldn't.

Jeff [0:09:55]: And so we just knew we needed to be there and and the recording street, you know, I'll give them some credit.

Jeff [0:09:59]: They took some chain...

Jeff [0:10:00]: They took a chance on it and they listened to us.

Dave [0:10:02]: We could spend three hours.

Dave [0:10:03]: I would...

Dave [0:10:03]: Now I feel like I wanna just hang out with the intel, like, PRr story vr r stories.

Dave [0:10:07]: But we gotta talk about product marketing.

Dave [0:10:10]: Yep.

Dave [0:10:11]: So this is what you do.

Dave [0:10:12]: This right.

Dave [0:10:13]: I think this is best in specifics.

Dave [0:10:15]: So let's talk about call.

Dave [0:10:16]: So talk about Calendly and why they have product marketing and, like, what is the goal and role of product marketing that we can get, like, what you and your team do I think that would be better.

Jeff [0:10:26]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:10:26]: So there's like the academic definition of product marketing, where that people pretend, like it's like this plato ideal or something that was sent down from the heavens to us, and I'm not one of those people.

Jeff [0:10:36]: I believe, even and I think someone else said this better than I did is that product marketing helps bring products to market Right?

Jeff [0:10:42]: Through things like partnering with product management on research and looking at the competitors and market analysis and helping do private beta testing and then messaging and positioning you based off that.

Jeff [0:10:52]: And then then we also...

Jeff [0:10:53]: Once we bring it to the market, we help market those products.

Jeff [0:10:56]: Together with, like, the sales team and Cs and and product management, the greater marketing team and all that.

Jeff [0:11:01]: And there's things we do that we don't always do the same at every company or every project or even quarter to quarter at the same company and that as we tend to do research we tend to do positioning messaging, sometimes pricing in sales led companies or PRg companies go up market.

Jeff [0:11:17]: We work with sales and Cs to train them.

Jeff [0:11:19]: We'd launch products, you know, we shepherd the whole process and maybe roll up our sleeves and do some copyrighted in the process.

Jeff [0:11:25]: And then we go look and see if the product's being adopted and we figure out why not, do some research around that and try to do some ongoing adoption marketing.

Jeff [0:11:33]: And then the cycle continues.

Jeff [0:11:35]: And that's kind of like the academic definition, and I think where product marketers get in trouble is where they, like, wanna do all those things equally at every company because they were taught that in school or some certification.

Jeff [0:11:46]: And the art too to it is knowing when to, like, Wan and wax to lean and lean back into each of the.

Dave [0:11:53]: Oh, this is great, man.

Dave [0:11:54]: I've never heard anybody really talk about it like this and you just hit on as I kind of taken notes while I...

Dave [0:11:59]: While I just...

Dave [0:12:00]: You hit on something that I guess I I haven't been able to articulate, which is...

Dave [0:12:03]: There isn't one clear definition.

Dave [0:12:05]: Like, product marketing is so dependent because of that kind of broad...

Dave [0:12:08]: Sphere that you outlined of all the of the things that product marketing responsible for think about how many teams that they're going to have to be involved when there.

Dave [0:12:15]: Well, if you wanna be responsible for the positioning and adoption of this product But you don't write any code well, shoot, you gotta have.

Dave [0:12:23]: You gotta have some type of extension to the product and engineering org.

Dave [0:12:27]: But you also don't sell the product.

Dave [0:12:29]: So you have to work with the team who sells the product.

Dave [0:12:31]: Okay.

Dave [0:12:31]: But you also don't really market the product that's gonna come from, like the digital team or demand.

Dave [0:12:35]: Okay.

Dave [0:12:36]: Now you're like, shit.

Dave [0:12:37]: I have basically to work with everyone in the company.

Dave [0:12:39]: And then I like the way that you laid it out, which is at each company because one of the questions that I see often is, like, well, dozen product marketing own pricing and you'd nailed it perfectly.

Dave [0:12:48]: When you said it's kinda like, it depends.

Dave [0:12:49]: So I've been at companies where product marketing has not owned pricing because we had a very unique, amazing unicorn Nba ops hire early on in the company, and he had done pricing in like, a previous role, and so it made sense for him to own pricing.

Dave [0:13:04]: And so we worked with Product marketing worked with finance, but actually finance and product owned the pricing.

Dave [0:13:11]: First, I've been in another company where the person who ran product marketing was like a classically trained in, like pricing and packaging.

Dave [0:13:18]: And so it made sense.

Dave [0:13:19]: For her to own it.

Dave [0:13:20]: And I think there's just so much nuance that this is actually what's fun about it is you kinda look at the ingredients of what you have from a team, budgets company position standpoint.

Dave [0:13:29]: And then you develop your approach to product marketing inside that company.

Dave [0:13:32]: There really isn't one perfect cookie cutter, you know, recipe for it.

Jeff [0:13:36]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:13:36]: And when a product marketing leader tries to apply the same recipe that the past company or something they read about or something they were trained on.

Jeff [0:13:43]: To the situation, they almost always fail.

Jeff [0:13:46]: And that's why product marketer struggle.

Jeff [0:13:47]: Is that they get rigid and too academic about their profession when we're just making this uPRpeople.

Jeff [0:13:53]: Right?

Jeff [0:13:53]: We're looking at the situation and we're saying, hey, What is product management need right now?

Jeff [0:13:57]: What does sales need right now?

Jeff [0:13:58]: What is Mark and written need right now?

Jeff [0:13:59]: What is this sales led company need versus this PR company versus this hybrid PRsales led company.

Jeff [0:14:05]: And it's always different.

Jeff [0:14:06]: And so as a product marketing leader, you need to cycle analyze the situation or maybe look at, like, an arm sure soc and then come up with your plan.

Dave [0:14:14]: I wanna get into your team and the goals and roles inside of the org, but let's first talk about what is the scope of product marketing inside of your company?

Dave [0:14:24]: Like, has a job to be done, Like, what is the purpose of what you do there?

Jeff [0:14:28]: So I think it's still helping bring products to market together with product management and engineering design, and then once we bring them to market marketing them, that is at its core still what we do and, we've done that at every company you've worked at.

Jeff [0:14:42]: I'd say what I've done differently at Accounting than I have other companies is when I've worked in sales led companies, like the Rubin Networks HPRbecause it was sales led, you had this CEO, and then you had this sales leader at oftentimes at the top.

Jeff [0:14:57]: That were calling a lot of shots and was about helping the sales team win big deals.

Jeff [0:15:02]: Right, or expanding existing deals.

Jeff [0:15:04]: And so product marketing as a reflection of that had to be able to not only launch products, but really serve the sales and Cs team and make them successful.

Jeff [0:15:13]: So a lot of maybe getting on the phone and helping pitch clients about, you know, new products and the sales team didn't understand training the sales team, creating collateral for them in addition to the launching.

Jeff [0:15:24]: And so there was maybe a little bit less research and so forth.

Jeff [0:15:27]: Whereas when I'm at a pure PRcompany, often oftentimes what happens is product management is at the table now like, never before.

Jeff [0:15:34]: And there may be calling shots and maybe sales is like a second class citizen in those situations.

Jeff [0:15:39]: I'm thinking those Pure PRcompanies where they only have credit card sales.

Jeff [0:15:42]: Right?

Jeff [0:15:43]: And in those situations, it's more about helping the product management team be successful.

Jeff [0:15:48]: So it's more research.

Jeff [0:15:49]: It's more data analysis.

Jeff [0:15:51]: It's more experimentation and testing than training the sales team.

Jeff [0:15:54]: So it's interesting at companies like Cali is that we both have a PRmotion where we have credit card sales.

Jeff [0:16:00]: So we have a product manager at the top running things together with the CEO, and we also have a sales leader and we have marketing leader and CS leaders and all that.

Jeff [0:16:09]: And so because we're a hybrid I had to staff it uPRand to think about what we do.

Jeff [0:16:14]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:16:15]: To serve both masters.

Dave [0:16:17]: Oh, it's super interesting.

Dave [0:16:18]: That's...

Dave [0:16:18]: Because you have...

Dave [0:16:19]: It's gonna the product marketing companion to the self serve, you know, nine ninety nine a month.

Dave [0:16:24]: High volume funnel is gonna be much different than the needs of, like, the enterprise sales rep.

Jeff [0:16:30]: Exactly.

Dave [0:16:31]: That's cool.

Dave [0:16:31]: That's interesting.

Dave [0:16:32]: And I think this is a common model actually now.

Dave [0:16:33]: At a lot of companies and a lot of people listening where you kinda have these two funnels.

Dave [0:16:37]: Alright.

Dave [0:16:38]: Let's...

Dave [0:16:38]: Actually, from here, it'd be interesting to actually tell us about your team structure and how you have things set up.

Jeff [0:16:45]: I recommend this for everybody that's an a PR company going up market with a sales team.

Jeff [0:16:49]: And that is...

Jeff [0:16:50]: You need to have some product marketers who maybe come from more a consumer background, like, a high velocity, PRg background, e-commerce background, that can work with the product managers that are serving the millions of freemium sign ups.

Jeff [0:17:03]: That they need to activate, Maybe they never buy.

Jeff [0:17:05]: But they're part of the masses that are important.

Jeff [0:17:08]: And then you need to have some product marketers who can work with product managers that are trying to build the enterprise features like single sign on and admin controls that bigger companies, you know, wanna pay for And so those are oftentimes two different types of product markers, different types of background.

Jeff [0:17:23]: The one that helps enterprise, oftentimes needs to be really good at working with sales, whereas the one who's working on the features and activation of the millions of users that might never buy.

Jeff [0:17:33]: They need to be really good at data analysis and research and partnering with product managers on experimentation and so forth.

Jeff [0:17:39]: And so we've structured the team with most kinds of product marketers who are amazing.

Jeff [0:17:43]: Then the second thing we do is we have solutions marketers.

Jeff [0:17:47]: And I recommend this too is that if you can get buy in from leadership.

Jeff [0:17:50]: These solutions markers specialize in key personas we're selling to.

Jeff [0:17:54]: And so there's one, you know, that's specializing in tech industry companies, but they also...

Jeff [0:18:00]: Work with sales, cs and marketing department buyers.

Jeff [0:18:03]: Another one specializes in say, financial services.

Jeff [0:18:07]: And so they can wear these multiple hats of specialize in different ideal customer profiles, And then that team really works more with our sales team on doing all those little assets that sales teams have and sales led companies such as hey do you have a Pdf version in the pricing page.

Jeff [0:18:22]: Can you create a battle card explain this competitor to us.

Jeff [0:18:26]: Can you help me write some email copy for...

Jeff [0:18:28]: Sales after outreach that we're gonna send down into the email cadences, as well as helping the demand gen team who often has lots of astronauts around copy and understanding, you know, certain Ic and so forth.

Dave [0:18:39]: What was the first bucket of roll called?

Dave [0:18:40]: This is solutions.

Dave [0:18:41]: What was the other one?

Jeff [0:18:42]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:18:42]: The first ones were just kind of product marketers, but a lot of times, they are product marketers that partner...

Jeff [0:18:48]: Mainly with the product management team.

Dave [0:18:51]: Okay.

Dave [0:18:51]: Cool.

Dave [0:18:51]: So you have actually two...

Dave [0:18:53]: This is interesting.

Dave [0:18:54]: Like, I've, there's sub rolls.

Dave [0:18:55]: I've kinda always wondered what the role of, like, solutions does in marketing, but probably at the scale of this company, this makes sense.

Dave [0:19:01]: As you were saying those things part of me was thinking like, well.

Dave [0:19:04]: That's kind of the job of product marketing more like a smaller startup.

Dave [0:19:08]: One person might do all those things, but when you're at the scale that you're at now with Cal, you can actually specialize them.

Dave [0:19:14]: Is that why you do it that way?

Jeff [0:19:15]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:19:15]: So I learned the lesson than the hard way to envision, which was also a PRcompany that went up market.

Jeff [0:19:21]: And there, we had fewer product marketers that were wearing multiple hats.

Jeff [0:19:27]: They were the full stack product marketer.

Jeff [0:19:29]: And not only do they have these consumer background Facebook product managers being like, hey, Let's do a ton of research calls.

Jeff [0:19:35]: And let's look at the data, you know, in mode to see where people are falling off, so they had to put that kind of quantitative consumer grade product marketer or hat on.

Jeff [0:19:44]: Then the salesperson would be like, hey, can you get out a call and help me pitch this client.

Jeff [0:19:47]: And it's was like, it was too much Kinda product marketers.

Jeff [0:19:50]: So here we kinda bi it where it's...

Jeff [0:19:52]: Like nice.

Jeff [0:19:53]: These product marketers will specialize in helping the sales and demand gen teams, and these over here will really specialize and helping the product managers.

Dave [0:20:00]: That's probably more fun from a career standpoint too because, like, everybody's different.

Dave [0:20:05]: I'm just think of me, I did some time in product market.

Dave [0:20:07]: Like marketing.

Dave [0:20:07]: Did some time I was adjust a jail sentence.

Dave [0:20:10]: But I I always...

Dave [0:20:12]: I gravitate towards, like, the positioning, messaging, storytelling, copy, like Deck for launch, part of product marketing, marketing I hated the research analysis, Ic, charts, this sen that buyer personas.

Dave [0:20:25]: And so, yeah, me at a startup.

Dave [0:20:27]: I'm gonna have to do both of those things, and I'm probably not gonna do as good of a job on the other stuff because I don't love it.

Dave [0:20:31]: You can kind of then have the bias towards like, the person who's gonna own that stuff is gonna be more biased towards that where versus the other side of the product marketer coin is gonna be more of a writer creator storyteller.

Jeff [0:20:43]: Right.

Jeff [0:20:43]: And what ends up happening is that you will always have these product markers, you specialize in different areas of that circle.

Jeff [0:20:49]: I was talking about earlier research, position messaging and copyright and all that.

Jeff [0:20:52]: And so if you just staff your team at the size county is with the full stack product marketer, they're gonna fail at something, and then it's gonna come back on you as the leader, and you're gonna have to go to product management, some leader who's from Instagram and say, sorry, we're not good at research over here, then they talk to the CEO and then, you know, it all starts to fall apart.

Jeff [0:21:11]: So it's better to just try to split the team a bit where you find...

Jeff [0:21:16]: You you staff people on things that they're good at and they're passion for, which is one of the things I hire for.

Jeff [0:21:22]: So I have a certain question than I ask if you wanna...

Jeff [0:21:24]: You don't mind me sharing it.

Dave [0:21:26]: No.

Dave [0:21:26]: I do.

Dave [0:21:26]: I do.

Dave [0:21:27]: But I wanna talk about hiring in a different.

Dave [0:21:29]: So Okay.

Dave [0:21:29]: Save that off for hiring.

Dave [0:21:30]: A hundred percent do let's go on this team?

Dave [0:21:33]: Because as people are listening to just, now they're interested to how you do product marketing.

Dave [0:21:35]: Can you actually share with us, what the team looks like you like, you're Jeff, your head of product of marketing.

Dave [0:21:40]: There's ex people on the team here my direct reports, people.

Dave [0:21:43]: I know it seems silly, but people love hearing that.

Dave [0:21:46]: So sure if you can tell us that.

Dave [0:21:47]: I would love to get it.

Jeff [0:21:48]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:21:48]: So the way it works is there's me and I have a few direct reports.

Jeff [0:21:54]: One of them is a manager, and they manage the solutions marketing team.

Jeff [0:21:59]: The senior manager.

Jeff [0:22:00]: They manage the solutions marketing team.

Jeff [0:22:01]: And they really have a passion for helping sales.

Jeff [0:22:05]: Helping demand and, understanding these buyers.

Jeff [0:22:07]: Right?

Jeff [0:22:08]: They don't like as much doing, like, product marketing launch marketing, and we're launching products and so forth.

Jeff [0:22:12]: We have a products marketing manager who is specializing in to enterprise, And so they have experience in those features that are, like, security features and so forth and selling to It buyers.

Jeff [0:22:27]: They still support the sales team, but not as much as the solutions marketing team.

Jeff [0:22:31]: And then there is another manager who's over the...

Jeff [0:22:34]: What we call course scheduling of call, and that's a lot of the free features that everyone uses.

Jeff [0:22:39]: And so it could be maybe, like, we are changing the homepage and how event types work.

Jeff [0:22:44]: That are free.

Jeff [0:22:44]: And it's gonna affect everybody, but it's also gonna really affects millions of people out there who was just using Calendly for free.

Jeff [0:22:51]: And so they have a team, a small team of one person, and then the other person who's running enterprise has a small team of one person.

Jeff [0:22:58]: The solutions marketing person has a a few people reporting to them.

Jeff [0:23:01]: The last groups are...

Jeff [0:23:03]: We have somebody, and this was something else I discovered was that a lot of times partner marketing.

Jeff [0:23:07]: If you're at this mid midsize level gets kicked into product marketing because the company not big enough to fund it as its own department yet.

Jeff [0:23:14]: And so we have one person reporting to me that that handles product marketing.

Jeff [0:23:18]: So that's a lot of the c marketing we do with our integration partners and so forth.

Jeff [0:23:21]: It's person's amazing at doing that.

Jeff [0:23:24]: Sometimes they even pitch in to help talk to partners who want to partner with us.

Jeff [0:23:27]: And then last, we have a person that is more of a life cycle growth marketing manager.

Jeff [0:23:35]: And this is another thing that I see that gets pushed into product marketing, and maybe you saw this at some companies.

Jeff [0:23:39]: Where growth product management is more focused on in app changes.

Jeff [0:23:43]: And then the growth marketing team oftentimes get pushed more in an acquisition mode, running, like, Facebook ad experiments and so forth in testing sign up pages on the website in some companies And so the cycle marketing sometimes gets kicked over to product marketing because we can write.

Jeff [0:23:59]: And we understand customers and so forth.

Jeff [0:24:00]: But it takes a special kind of person that has a true, like, consumer grade email to millions of people background to do that work.

Jeff [0:24:09]: In credible way.

Jeff [0:24:10]: Yep.

Jeff [0:24:11]: And that think person does that.

Dave [0:24:12]: I agree.

Dave [0:24:12]: The other thing is about life cycle marketing, I I think typically, the mistake that I have made within it in one company was from a business standpoint and I'm assuming when you say life cycle means, like, how somebody might upgrade and expand and use more of the product and drive adoption, especially in Calendly lease model, I'm sure there's some consumption based pricing in in in some way, like, use more of it.

Dave [0:24:34]: You guys make more money.

Dave [0:24:35]: And I think I made a mistake of the company from a business standpoint had budgeted for x dollars in revenue from uPRupsell and expansion.

Dave [0:24:45]: We had dedicated sales reps that were supposed to sell into those accounts.

Dave [0:24:50]: Mh.

Dave [0:24:51]: But there was no real, like, marketer who also owned that number.

Jeff [0:24:55]: Right.

Dave [0:24:55]: They just kinda got all passed to everybody.

Dave [0:24:57]: And so I think the mistake I've made is not having that be, maybe the title life cycle, but they gotta be in my opinion, like, a revenue minded type of person, and it's not just somebody who's gonna send newsletter about new product updates once a month.

Dave [0:25:12]: Yeah.

Dave [0:25:12]: It's somebody who knows how to, like, hit a number.

Jeff [0:25:15]: Right?

Dave [0:25:15]: And if you have a number tied to.

Dave [0:25:17]: Otherwise, like you're you're never gonna get there.

Dave [0:25:18]: You're gonna have somebody who does life cycle a marketing, but they kinda just...

Dave [0:25:21]: I've seen it over and over again Down.

Dave [0:25:23]: Let's do a...

Dave [0:25:23]: You know, we'll do a webinar, and they said, we do webinar.

Dave [0:25:26]: We send emails, and then we wonder why, like, upgrades and expansion aren't happening.

Jeff [0:25:30]: Yep.

Jeff [0:25:30]: And this is just where we were at for the past year.

Jeff [0:25:33]: But, like, Now Calendly has, like, a cycle marketing team, who are awesome.

Jeff [0:25:38]: And they own, like, website conversion experiments and email conversion experiments And this person, like, works with them, but also works with the product management team building experiments.

Jeff [0:25:47]: So one of the things that I I talked to the team about a lot of times is that you got to use of often use phrase.

Jeff [0:25:52]: You gotta like, let go of your legos.

Jeff [0:25:53]: And that, like, just because product marketing is only cycle right now doesn't mean we would, you know, in twenty twenty three.

Jeff [0:25:59]: Right?

Jeff [0:25:59]: And so you have to be ready to kinda pivot and like, oh, these things is the company gets bigger, and you get more credibility around hiring different roles and so forth.

Dave [0:26:07]: The other note I made is the other forgotten one or often lumped in with product marketing.

Dave [0:26:12]: I've seen is customer marketing.

Jeff [0:26:14]: Right?

Jeff [0:26:14]: There's two types of customer marketing.

Jeff [0:26:15]: And this is one of those I love us in marketing.

Jeff [0:26:17]: We always come with these words and we use them in, like, a million different ways.

Jeff [0:26:20]: So there's, like, customer reference marketing where your job is to get references, you know, companies that like Calendly and and like your company and talk about us in case studies and it trade shows and videos and all that.

Jeff [0:26:32]: There's that kind of customer marketing.

Jeff [0:26:33]: And then there's the customer marketing of, like, almost like cycle marketing where how are we gonna communicate with our customers once their customers versus their prospects.

Jeff [0:26:40]: And that's what we have is we have an amazing person from our CS team moved over to the solutions marketing team, and they own customer reference marketing.

Jeff [0:26:51]: We call it customer marketing, but it's customer reference marketing of.

Jeff [0:26:53]: Let's get some companies that like Kinda and let's tell their story.

Dave [0:26:57]: And that's awesome to be able to specialize in that role because it means like you'll get that as opposed to just a par somebody else.

Dave [0:27:03]: Alright.

Dave [0:27:03]: Can you go back to your team and kinda give us a high level of each one of those buckets of the departments in product marketing, what their business goal might be?

Dave [0:27:10]: You don't have to...

Dave [0:27:11]: Yeah share the real number, but just as an example.

Jeff [0:27:14]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:27:14]: I would say that their goals change about every quarter based on the company's O ours and how we do O ours and how we're measured, changes.

Jeff [0:27:23]: Every quarter.

Jeff [0:27:24]: Right?

Jeff [0:27:24]: Because we're fast moving fast growing company And, like, we don't just set, like, one For the year and and measure it the same way versus maybe, like, a bigger company.

Jeff [0:27:33]: Doesn't maybe we'll get there someday today This is not where we are right now.

Jeff [0:27:35]: And so how their measured changes.

Jeff [0:27:37]: But I'll give you some examples of what's happened in the past.

Jeff [0:27:41]: The product marketing team who's partnering with product managers, which is, like, today, it's three people, but it'll will eventually be four.

Jeff [0:27:50]: They are responsible for partnering with the product manager also on their un c owning their O.

Jeff [0:27:57]: So, like, let's say they're gonna launch some new feature like routing, which allows you to add, like, scheduling your website and qualify the people who sign uPRso you can let them schedule right then at tenth night.

Jeff [0:28:07]: That product right there has a certain amount of usage we wanna drive with existing customers as well as net new prospects buying it.

Jeff [0:28:14]: And so there's an okay around that, and we're partnering with product management and Cs and sales and so forth on that.

Jeff [0:28:20]: Okay?

Jeff [0:28:20]: So that's one example.

Jeff [0:28:22]: Over on the course scheduling side, the two product managers that own that.

Jeff [0:28:27]: There's all kinds of new features that are coming out, they're free as well as Ui changes to our existing kind of, like, cali as you know it.

Jeff [0:28:34]: That'll be interesting to see this year.

Jeff [0:28:36]: That product manager also owns product usage numbers.

Jeff [0:28:39]: Right?

Jeff [0:28:39]: So, like, let's say we launched meeting polls, which was free.

Jeff [0:28:42]: This person would have owned that if they were here, and there was a certain amount of usage we wanted to see of existing customers.

Jeff [0:28:48]: And so they work with product management and they c own that.

Jeff [0:28:52]: On the solutions marketing side, there are efforts to partner with the demand gen team on, hey, let's see if we can get a certain amount of net new marketing departments buying Cal, like talking to sales and getting a sales accepted opportunity and actually upgrading to the enterprise plan.

Jeff [0:29:10]: They also are...

Jeff [0:29:12]: They measure themselves, like, from a Kpi perspective, maybe not like an official company O on how much they survey the sales team on how happy the sales team is with how they're supporting them.

Jeff [0:29:22]: Some marketing leaders might sc at that.

Jeff [0:29:24]: But I think it's important because ultimately, every Cmo cares if a sales leader comes and it's like, hey, we're not getting much helPRout of your team.

Jeff [0:29:30]: They're you're they're hard to work with.

Jeff [0:29:32]: They take three weeks to do a Pdf, a one pager.

Jeff [0:29:35]: So we do survey the sales department on how we're doing over and supporting them.

Dave [0:29:40]: I love that.

Dave [0:29:40]: I heard did a podcast a while back with a a VP of product marketing, and he talked about.

Dave [0:29:45]: They have a big...

Dave [0:29:46]: Field sales, and he said the number one kpi that he has for my team is how much their name is used by the sales team.

Dave [0:29:52]: And I thought he was joking, and he's like, no I'm serious.

Dave [0:29:54]: Like, I basically just pull the sales team and talk about, like, how much has x person helped you and that's how we know if they're doing a good job.

Dave [0:30:03]: Now, it's different in that model when it's very field sales.

Dave [0:30:05]: Like, you're literally, like, helping them close deals, but I still think in in your org, it makes a ton of sense too.

Dave [0:30:12]: So unless there's any more context on on the goals,

Jeff [0:30:15]: There's two more.

Dave [0:30:16]: Okay.

Dave [0:30:16]: Go ahead.

Jeff [0:30:17]: Then we have our partner marketing person.

Jeff [0:30:18]: Like, we have certain integrations that helPRus go uPRmarket, for example, they might be gold around, like, let's partner with Hubspot, and there's a certain amount of not only engagement with those c marketing things like the webinar and so forth.

Jeff [0:30:30]: But also what kind of net new leads around lead sharing are coming out.

Jeff [0:30:34]: That's an example of how they are gold.

Jeff [0:30:36]: And then last, we have that person I mentioned earlier who specializes kinda, like, life cycle growth product marketing.

Jeff [0:30:41]: And so they are driving a number of experiments, So they might be gold around one quarter on.

Jeff [0:30:47]: Let's see if we can improve how net new sign ups to free county activate in the first two weeks by ex exploring with certain types of emails we send them that are different than our initial driPRsequence or.

Jeff [0:30:58]: Partnering with, you know, product to do in that messaging gene to be like, hey.

Jeff [0:31:01]: You haven't tried this feature yet?

Jeff [0:31:02]: They're gold around that.

Dave [0:31:04]: Beautiful.

Dave [0:31:04]: People are taking notes right now on their runs.

Dave [0:31:08]: Alright.

Dave [0:31:09]: Is that...

Dave [0:31:10]: Would that cover the gold before I think you somewhere else Yeah.

Jeff [0:31:12]: I think that would cover it.

Jeff [0:31:13]: And I know it's kinda confusing just kinda going over it orally, but if you might has any questions for request.

Dave [0:31:18]: No.

Dave [0:31:18]: It's great.

Dave [0:31:19]: There's not a recipe, but I think if people...

Dave [0:31:21]: At least for me, like when I would listen to something like this.

Dave [0:31:23]: It's like, oh, just getting one idea for like, kinda you might restructure or restructure your team can be such a big unlock as opposed to, like, a little channel optimization.

Dave [0:31:31]: I'm, I've always kind been obsessed with changing and rearranging the team, which, not a lot of people like, but I kinda...

Dave [0:31:39]: You know, it's I think it's something that you're always thinking about.

Dave [0:31:41]: Right.

Dave [0:31:41]: Alright.

Dave [0:31:42]: I have a bunch of a product marketing topics that I just wrote down.

Dave [0:31:46]: I would love to just hear your perspective or your reaction or how you approach it, You can take it any direction that you want.

Dave [0:31:53]: Number one is measuring product marketing.

Jeff [0:31:57]: So I think that there are certain types of output measurement.

Jeff [0:32:00]: I think in marketing in general.

Jeff [0:32:01]: There's outputs, Like, I'm doing this thing.

Jeff [0:32:04]: I'm making this email.

Jeff [0:32:05]: There is outcomes, it got a certain amount of, like, engagement, like, clicks.

Jeff [0:32:09]: Know, so on and so forth.

Jeff [0:32:10]: And then there's out takes.

Jeff [0:32:11]: Like, what can we take out of this marketing activity for the business?

Jeff [0:32:14]: Right?

Jeff [0:32:15]: Increased revenue, increased upgrades, to paid plans, increased, you know, etcetera, etcetera.

Jeff [0:32:20]: And so I like to try to measure all three of those And where I get kind of irritated it sometimes with the market history is when we try, like, favor one or the other.

Jeff [0:32:28]: We say it's all about just measuring the out takes how we're moving the needle for the revenue, and it's like, yes.

Jeff [0:32:33]: That totally does matter, but sometimes the company doesn't have their data game together where you can figure out how much an email impacts sales accepted opportunities or upgrades or whatever.

Jeff [0:32:42]: Or maybe does CEO once a certain amount of things made that they've always wanted it.

Jeff [0:32:47]: And they're gonna measure you on that.

Jeff [0:32:49]: Regardless if you hit the number or not.

Jeff [0:32:51]: Right?

Jeff [0:32:51]: And so you need to product marketing needs to partner with leadership, the sales leaders, the product leaders, CEO, the head of marketing and figure out what makes sense for each product market to be measured around.

Jeff [0:33:05]: So demand in, I think what makes that joB2Both easy and hard.

Jeff [0:33:10]: It's a double edged sword is that they often have, like, one number.

Jeff [0:33:13]: I'm delivering either Mt or a sales qualified opportunities or pipeline.

Jeff [0:33:17]: And that's what they're marching to.

Jeff [0:33:19]: And every demand team probably is measured by one of those, and that's what makes the job kinda of predictable.

Jeff [0:33:24]: The hard part is they have to hit that number.

Jeff [0:33:26]: Right?

Jeff [0:33:26]: Whereas in product marketing, a lot of times it just changes because we don't have that same responsibility of delivering the number that way.

Jeff [0:33:34]: We partner with demand gen on it, and we should c the number maybe, which not as we do at Cali.

Jeff [0:33:39]: But maybe we want to drive activation of free users.

Jeff [0:33:43]: Maybe we wanna drive amount of usage of a product a new feature.

Jeff [0:33:47]: Maybe we wanna drive, you know, upgrades to pay plans.

Jeff [0:33:50]: And so really, it should be an ongoing conversation with leadership every quarter on what product marketing measure by.

Dave [0:33:56]: Nice.

Dave [0:33:56]: Like that.

Dave [0:33:57]: There's often...

Dave [0:33:58]: It depends on the health of the organization.

Dave [0:34:00]: But I've seen some beef between demand gen and product marketing for almost that exact reason.

Dave [0:34:06]: It's like, hey, come on.

Dave [0:34:07]: We're measured by this, Like, we don't believe in your goals.

Dave [0:34:09]: And so there's nothing more toxic than when you have two teams who don't believe that the other team is being measured correctly.

Jeff [0:34:16]: Right.

Jeff [0:34:16]: Or that the other team isn't working hard enough or they're not being in service oriented enough or it's classic.

Jeff [0:34:22]: Like, basically, one of the challenges being a marketer and a Saas company is that CEOs that are oftentimes less experience will think in the very early days that they can get one marker that knows how to do dimension, and it's good with spreadsheets and good with numbers and their growth hacking.

Jeff [0:34:37]: And in that same market, or they also have a product market That's good with talking to people and does isn't grumpy and can write and can explain things to sales and talk to.

Jeff [0:34:48]: That's really difficult to find in one person, and that's why many CEOs have a hard time hiring and keeping the marketers in small startups.

Jeff [0:34:55]: And so when you get bigger and you have the budget for it as soon as you can, you should hire two different types of marketers and let them kind of have some healthy conflict between the two of them because their personalities are very different and how they're measured is very different.

Jeff [0:35:09]: So I think it's healthy to have that conflict.

Dave [0:35:11]: But when the both teams...

Dave [0:35:12]: When the team leaders like each other and agree on each other's goals and feel like they are each other's superpower, like demand Gen is raving about how great product marketing is helping them and product marketing is raving about, like, how much demand gen is helping them prove that they're driving revenue.

Dave [0:35:28]: Like, I think that's when the magic.

Dave [0:35:29]: That that's when you have a really strong unit.

Dave [0:35:31]: Like, I've been a situation where demand gen is, like, hey.

Dave [0:35:34]: No.

Dave [0:35:34]: Product marketing, like, Let's measure this.

Dave [0:35:36]: Let's figure out how that new positioning is driving revenue.

Dave [0:35:38]: When they believe in and together, like any other team when everybody's rolling together, It's like the one plus one equals three effect.

Dave [0:35:45]: But I think it's a coin flip.

Dave [0:35:46]: I feel like every other company, it's like you have the amazing one, you have you want Do the idea this anyway.

Jeff [0:35:52]: Sometimes they're in both amazing, and they still have conflict.

Jeff [0:35:54]: Right?

Jeff [0:35:55]: It's just...

Jeff [0:35:55]: I think it's because their personalities are oftentimes different.

Jeff [0:35:58]: People that are demanding gen often have a certain type personality people that are prod market answering not personality

Dave [0:36:03]: Like P, like a P, we talked about earlier.

Jeff [0:36:06]: Totally.

Jeff [0:36:06]: Right?

Jeff [0:36:06]: And I think that's why you see conflict and marketing departments is that Unlike product management where it's, like similar personality, but just owning different parts of the product.

Jeff [0:36:14]: In marketing, it's, like, all these different personalities trying to do the same job.

Dave [0:36:20]: Alright.

Dave [0:36:20]: So I think that will suffice for your answer on that one or your statement.

Dave [0:36:23]: Next topic, positioning and messaging

Jeff [0:36:26]: my thoughts on it.

Dave [0:36:29]: No.

Dave [0:36:29]: I have nothing else to save.

Dave [0:36:30]: I'm letting it breathe.

Dave [0:36:30]: Okay.

Dave [0:36:31]: I'll restate the statement, positioning and messaging.

Jeff [0:36:34]: Okay.

Jeff [0:36:34]: So I think that there are way too many product marketers talking about position messaging on Linkedin right now.

Jeff [0:36:42]: Product marketing position messaging is, like, one of, like, ten things we do.

Jeff [0:36:46]: And it's important to get right, but one shouldn't fuss over the style of position messaging, the framework and so forth.

Jeff [0:36:54]: And there's just too much talk about it.

Jeff [0:36:55]: And I think part the reason is there's a lot of consultants who's entire job is just doing position messaging for companies and talking about it.

Jeff [0:37:02]: And so they wanna push their framework.

Jeff [0:37:03]: Just like on the sales side, you have, people pushing bam or medic or different sales frameworks.

Jeff [0:37:07]: Right?

Jeff [0:37:08]: And I think the best thing you can do when you do position messaging is just step back and just think like a normal human and say, like, why do we need position messaging?

Jeff [0:37:17]: Well, we need to figure out for what customers as a company we do what for for what benefit.

Jeff [0:37:23]: And Unlike the competition, we do this other thing different and better and for what kind of business outcome.

Jeff [0:37:29]: There's the classic formula that's really easy to remember that's in crossing the chasm that people sc at now today, but the reason it's been used for decades.

Jeff [0:37:38]: Is that it's super easy to remember for everybody else in the company who's not a position messaging expert.

Jeff [0:37:43]: And so oftentimes still companies like, when I'm like, advising small startups.

Jeff [0:37:47]: Like, just start with that, the, Cross Chasm framework of, we do this for these people to this benefit and I like companies would do this.

Jeff [0:37:54]: Now, what ends up happening is you'd then have demand that's once words.

Jeff [0:37:58]: They want actual example copy that they can, like, copy and paste into emails ads and so forth, and that's where messaging comes in.

Jeff [0:38:05]: So messaging is really like talking points or example words that other departments can use, whether it's sales, send an email about a new feature that's gated or it's demand doing it.

Jeff [0:38:16]: And there, I think as a product marketer, do you need to be very flexible and and partner with your team and say, like, hey.

Jeff [0:38:21]: Had a past job, what does you use like, what kind of framework did you like in terms of a spreadsheet of all this stuff.

Jeff [0:38:27]: Did you like and I'll adapt to you?

Jeff [0:38:29]: Because I want you to actually use it?

Jeff [0:38:30]: And too often product managers try to force some latest framework that they learned about somewhere, on the rest of the team, demands and sales, etcetera, and no one wants to use it because it's not familiar.

Dave [0:38:42]: I love that.

Dave [0:38:42]: Opinion only because not many people say that it's...

Dave [0:38:45]: I don't wanna say overrated.

Dave [0:38:46]: Not they're saying overrated, but it's overly talked about where you need to I like that advice also because I do see a lot of companies get.

Dave [0:38:53]: He's spent so much damn time on because there's so much about company story.

Dave [0:38:58]: And I've pushed these narratives also company story and the importance of creating a category and strategic narrative that men.

Dave [0:39:04]: I see companies today.

Dave [0:39:06]: They take three months to launch of new position, like a new website with the new positioning first, like, if you just go with your model, rip the page out across in the Ads and explain who you are and what you do and go and test and learn and you can, like, build that as you go as opposed to every time you wanna change a story, like product workers has gotta go shut everything down for three months and do this big freaking project.

Jeff [0:39:26]: Totally.

Jeff [0:39:26]: And part of position of messaging is just being a writer and being an psychologist.

Jeff [0:39:31]: Yes.

Jeff [0:39:32]: And there's just a lot of markers who aren't writers in psychologist.

Jeff [0:39:36]: Like, they got in it for it was fun or look cool or whatever.

Jeff [0:39:40]: And so you've gotta have somebody in your team who's a writer and a a storytelling in our psychologist doing your position message.

Jeff [0:39:46]: Don't care it's a product marketers or or PRor whatever.

Jeff [0:39:48]: Like, I did position messaging PRperson.

Jeff [0:39:50]: You probably did two.

Jeff [0:39:51]: Right?

Jeff [0:39:51]: Yeah.

Jeff [0:39:51]: And so you gotta have that person doing it.

Jeff [0:39:53]: And then once they write it down, you need another person to order that same person that's good at collaborating with people, not forcing people to use stuff collaborating with them to test it out, use it, give feedback, all of that.

Jeff [0:40:04]: So, like, I'd say, like, twenty percent is the writing and the storytelling, the other eighty percent is getting people to actually use the thing.

Jeff [0:40:11]: And be flexible on how you deliver it to them so we'll actually use it.

Dave [0:40:16]: Well, to your point about who's doing it for all of the positioning and messaging books and frameworks and everything out there, like, the best positioning and messaging that I've ever come uPRwith has come uPRwith has been in back and forth WhatsapPRmessages with the CEO.

Dave [0:40:30]: Yep.

Dave [0:40:30]: Right.

Dave [0:40:31]: And there was no framework, but we just we both were, like, pretty good at it and us r together was, like, a really good combination and like, we just would be, like, boom.

Dave [0:40:39]: There's our new tagline.

Dave [0:40:40]: There was no...

Dave [0:40:40]: We didn't test it with anybody.

Dave [0:40:42]: There was no process.

Dave [0:40:43]: It's like some of this has still got an intuition and, like, the ability to be creative and tell stories.

Jeff [0:40:49]: Yep.

Jeff [0:40:49]: And I think that's why sometimes companies hire outside people to do their decision messaging.

Jeff [0:40:56]: Because they wanna hire somebody seasoned that the CEO trust, sometimes you just trust people who are outside consultants.

Jeff [0:41:01]: You know, there's, like, familiarity breeds can tips sometimes your own team.

Jeff [0:41:04]: And so a lot of times you'll see companies hire outside people because that person knows they need to partner with the CEO and their objective.

Jeff [0:41:10]: Consultant and they come in and they r together with CEO like you said.

Jeff [0:50:58]: Totally.

Jeff [0:50:59]: And it it forces you not to do that and to just pulled the point.

Dave [0:51:03]: The who method can be very off putting it first because it turns the interview into, like, a...

Dave [0:51:07]: You're, like, hey.

Dave [0:51:08]: I and I remember being, like, look just.

Dave [0:51:10]: So if I was gonna interview to Jeff, Like, you're, you seem great Look.

Dave [0:51:12]: So the next thirty minutes is gonna kinda be weird because I'm gonna basically, like, inter you, and I'm gonna just not make a lot of small talk.

Dave [0:51:20]: I try to, like, I got better at it when I kinda get it out of the way as opposed to, like, someone feeling like that.

Dave [0:51:24]: And so especially, like in the who method when your job is to basically be like, the...

Dave [0:51:28]: I figured out the role is, but you're supposed to be the fact finder.

Dave [0:51:30]: So I was supposed to find out, like, what you did at all of these companies and it very specifics about their roles, it's gonna take thirty minutes to get there.

Dave [0:51:37]: If you spend fifteen minutes talking about, you know, oh, yeah.

Dave [0:51:40]: Yeah.

Dave [0:51:41]: I have all have a, you know, my in laws have a summer house in in here.

Dave [0:51:44]: Like...

Dave [0:51:44]: And I'm not saying that stuff is important.

Dave [0:51:46]: Like, you have to build a relationshiPRand rapport with somebody, but that can come in the later stages, I think of the hiring process really on.

Dave [0:51:51]: You gotta be in there trying to get the facts.

Dave [0:51:53]: And I think that's why the Hub method is really great.

Dave [0:51:55]: So

Jeff [0:51:55]: Totally.

Jeff [0:51:55]: And it is kinda off putting at first, and I have, like, you, I've really worked hard on, like, how do I soften this a bit and make it not so nauseous.

Jeff [0:52:03]: Right?

Jeff [0:52:04]: And just be like, they're a bunch of weird questions.

Jeff [0:52:06]: I'm just gonna for you And these are the questions

Dave [0:52:08]: like, I would be like, oh, you worked it Clear it.

Dave [0:52:10]: Okay.

Dave [0:52:10]: Interesting.

Dave [0:52:10]: When did clear by...

Dave [0:52:11]: What what marketing automation system did clear it use.

Dave [0:52:14]: Oh, use Hubspot interesting.

Dave [0:52:15]: How come you guys, you know, you want use Hubspot over market?

Dave [0:52:17]: Now this would be like if I was interviewing you for marketing ops or something like that.

Dave [0:52:21]: But It's like that level of of grilling someone and I think most it's it's not common to hear that.

Dave [0:52:26]: Totally.

Dave [0:52:26]: Okay.

Dave [0:52:28]: We could talk forever.

Dave [0:52:29]: We gotta go.

Dave [0:52:30]: I just noticed my daughter's is getting off the bus.

Dave [0:52:32]: And it's been over an hour with you.

Dave [0:52:34]: So Jeff, thank you.

Dave [0:52:34]: This is a great conversation.

Dave [0:52:36]: Do my CTA for all these episodes and this is my favorite part because I hope you send me a message in a couple weeks is.

Dave [0:52:41]: Go to Jeff's Linkedin, go to linkedin and type in Jeff Hart Cal.

Dave [0:52:45]: You'll find him.

Dave [0:52:46]: Connect with him, send him a note, tell him that you learned a thing or two on this podcast.

Dave [0:52:49]: Would make me really happy.

Dave [0:52:51]: I don't want a raid and I don't wanna review.

Dave [0:52:52]: I want you to go and send Jeff a note.

Dave [0:52:54]: Jeff, Thanks for doing this.

Dave [0:52:55]: I appreciate you having on.

Dave [0:52:57]: I'm sure we'll be in touch for the future.

Jeff [0:52:58]: Thanks, Dave.

Dave [0:52:59]: Super happy to be here.

Jeff [0:53:00]: Thanks for having me.

Dave [0:53:01]: Alright.

Jeff [0:53:01]: Thank you.

Dave [0:53:02]: Hey, Thanks for listening to this podcast.

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Dave [0:53:09]: I'm not even gonna ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that.

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