26: The Relationship Between PMs and Sales and Marketing

How To Succeed In Product Management | Jeffrey Shulman, Red Russak & Soumeya Benghanem

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Ted Dworkin (Sonos) to talk about strengthening the relationships between the PM and the sales and marketing team. PMs are dependent on the collection of data to be able to develop and improve a product, while sales and marketing has direct contact with customers and what they truly need. Therefore, the collaboration between these organizations is crucial to the overall success of any product or service.

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:52 How product managers and executives interface with sales and marketing organizations within the company
• 04:56 Becoming part of the sale force and being customer centric
• 10:35 Embedding conversations into the product development process
• 15:32 Having an established sales motion
• 19:50 The difference between B2B and B2C
• 22:50 Balance between doing sales and product market fit
• 30:13 The responsibilities of a product marketing manager
• 34:32 PMs collaborating with the marketing counterparts
• 38:22 How often is the core team talking about customer data?
• 42:22 Accept and look at all internal data
• 47:54 Hire the people with the right skillset
• 51:31 Take full advantage of building relationships with marketing and sales
• 52:53 Continue conversations with sales people
• 55:37 Sales and product should be hanging out often