Transcript
Brian: Hello, and welcome to another edition of Close Mode, the Enterprise sales show. I'm Brian Deitmeyer, CEO of Close Strong AI, the home of precision guided selling. And today I'm lucky to be here with Nicole Tams from beautiful Long Beach, California, home home of many mid -century modern homes, which we're both fond of, I found out. But Nicole's got a lot of experience in in product marketing, more than 15 years at global.
Brian: product marketing expertise, which is why she's here today. Nicole, welcome to the show.
Nicole Tamms: thank you thank you
Brian: So yeah, we were chatting last week and we I loved this conversation we were having about like leveraging product marketing and improving the relationship between sales and product marketing. So I wanted i wanted to pursue that today a little bit. And you you spoke a little bit about like potential areas of friction between sales and product marketing. can Can you describe some of that from from a product marketing perspective?
Nicole Tamms: Yeah, for sure. So I think that a lot of the potential conflict stems from a lack of understanding of what product marketing actually does. And so a lot of organizations have product marketing as part of the marketing team. And so it's really difficult to differentiate between those product marketers and those who are doing the actual marketing execution. And typically, I call those doing the execution corporate marketing. A lot of organizations are corporate marketing. But what product marketing really does is it represents the face of the product to the market. So everything that product marketing does, building a go to market plan,
Nicole Tamms: building content online, building the assets that sales uses to promote product, as well as sales tools and enablement and things of that nature, that is all built by product marketing. And, you know, it's not limited to leads. So when reps come to product marketing and say, hey I need more leads, I need better leads, that is not necessarily what product marketing does.
Nicole Tamms: And so thats there's a little bit of a conflict or a misinterpretation of what actually the product marketer's function is.
Nicole Tamms: But you know I feel like the product the relationship between sales and product marketing is really needs to be a symbiotic one.
Brian: and yet.
Nicole Tamms: a very mutually beneficial one because the more the the closer product marketing is with sales, the result of that ends up being better targeting, better leads and more. And so with with the with the relationship there,
Nicole Tamms: And building on that relationship, the communication between sales and product marketing leads to better go -to -markets, better content, better assets, and better sales tools.
Brian: Yeah. You know, I i wonder, it it occurs to me, Nicole, that there's been he eat so much change kind of in in the the overall marketplace, both the you know the way buyers are buying. we're We're in a different space of of demand even in the marketplace than we were several years ago. And and it you know makes me wonder, like do do we as sellers need more in different things given changes in the marketplace? And I wonder if you have a perspective on that. like how Is there an evolution that is occurring or should be occurring?
Brian: and
Nicole Tamms: Yeah, I think it really amplifies the need for a close relationship between sales and product marketing. And there is messaging that product marketing needs to produce at new levels.
Nicole Tamms: So for example, new personas are introduced into the sales cycle and that requires additional insight that product marketers need to study, you know, those new personas to come up with those types of new messages that can then be, you know, that sales can be enabled on.
Brian: Yep.
Nicole Tamms: um,
Nicole Tamms: to that product marketer in in communication and letting us letting us as a product marketer know, Oh, Hey, you know, I'm seeing a lot more of this job function in my accounts being decision makers on the solutions that I'm selling. I, you know, I need more information on, on that persona. I need, you know, deep dive on that. And that kind of,
Nicole Tamms: brings awareness to the product marketer so that we can then build a lot more targeted messaging for personas.
Brian: Yeah. And how and and Nicole, how how formal is that sort of information flow but between sales and product marketing kind of both ways, right?
Nicole Tamms: and
Brian: Is that yeah you know more more happenstance or are these like monthly standing meetings?
Nicole Tamms: yeah
Brian: Hey, how are we all doing? how How would you describe sort of best best case scenario for that communication flow?
Nicole Tamms: Well, I think that it needs to be an informal. Sales reps need to feel comfortable enough to have those informal conversations.
Nicole Tamms: And I feel like, yeah, there's got to be that set meetings, set enablement sessions, for example, leading up to a launch or something like that.
Nicole Tamms: But I think where the real meat comes into the conversation is going to be an informal open dialogue where a rep just calls up them the product marketer or feels comfortable enough to ah ah call up that product marketer.
Brian: Yeah.
Nicole Tamms: But, you know, even expanding upon the the the kind of buyer's journey we were talking about a little bit,
Brian: yeah
Nicole Tamms: I see a product a lot of product -led motions coming into play these days as opposed to sales -led motions when it comes to business strategy. And when there's a product -led motion that's prevalent in an organization, a lot of times the role of sales is is being downplayed.
Nicole Tamms: and They're focusing on building the product and the marketing within the product and having the product do a lot of that.
Nicole Tamms: I guess you can say the product is going viral within organizations because the product is marketing itself in a way.
Nicole Tamms: And so I think that the need for those
Brian: Yeah, yeah.
Nicole Tamms: folks in maybe sales development roles or just rep roles, that makes it cru the product log motion makes it crucial for them to know the message and understand the the value of the solutions even more and be even closer to the product marketing team.
Brian: Yeah, it makes sense.
Nicole Tamms: so
Brian: And one one of the things you mentioned when we were chatting a few days ago was this notion of like product marketing riding along on a sales call, whether that means sitting in on a Zoom call or whatever.
Brian: and And yeah, can you talk about sort of the importance of that and the structure of that?
Nicole Tamms: Yeah, so from my point of view, having a product marketing partner to come in with with you on a sales call really really can add depth to the conversation. And not only does it add depth to the conversation through different positioning,
Nicole Tamms: really honing in on the value and making sure that different opportunities are brought up in the conversation.
Nicole Tamms: For example, things like participating in the community for you know for the customer and even reference opportunities.
Nicole Tamms: So different different ways that the potential customer or customer can participate and in community and in reference activity with the organization that they're interested in purchasing from.
Brian: Yeah, it, it, it makes no, it makes so much sense. And Cole, because it it's interesting that a couple of days ago, my CTO asked me, he said, can can I sit in on a demo that you're doing, you know, and I understand my CTO is not my product marketing guy, but when he said that, you know, I thought it was brilliant. Cause he, he's, he wanted to hear the pitch, you know, and make that connection to, to the technology, which I i i thought was pretty cool. When, so we, we talked a little bit about the relationship between.
Brian: Product marketing and sales enablement and then we we even went a level deeper about the connection to sales training methodology and and to me you had an interesting insight on that so what you know what's the connection between product marketing and down to that that tactical level of you know a new methodology is being rolled out.
Nicole Tamms: In one of my previous companies, we were very close to the sales organization.
Nicole Tamms: and we were invited to join as a product marketing group. We were invited to join the trainings that the sales organization was participating in. And the value of that is that all of our marketing and all of the enablement we produce, all of the sales tools that we produce were able to be modified to fit that sales methodology.
Brian: Yeah.
Nicole Tamms: So weather thing whether it's something like challenger sale or corporate visions or things of that nature, we were able to fit what we were producing into that methodology.
Brian: yeah
Nicole Tamms: And that's so critical because you know that's what the sales team is going to market. And I just, I just found learning what they were learning really informative and interesting and, you know, insightful into, you know, what they're experiencing and allows me to adapt to that.
Brian: Yeah, it I love that idea just because it it connects things at ah ah at a tactical, at a deal level. And and it you know it it it seemed to me when we were talking that we could even take that a step further, and rather than like sitting in sitting in on the class, even before the class, understanding the methodology and saying, what what can what can we add and integrate you know, during the actual event, it just, it makes so much more sense to move from sort of that, that step -by -step, you know, generic methodology that's rolled out to everybody and and integrating some of the product marketing stuff, you know, right right into it. that That makes so much sense to me.
Brian: So how, and it so if we jump up a level to to sales enablement in in general, like what what is the, You know, as a stakeholder of yours, I would say, if you're in product marketing, I would say sales enablement is probably a stakeholder. Are there other areas, uh, like how, how high is that integration or how deep is that integration or is it more of just a touch point every now and then?
Nicole Tamms: So when we're talking about doing sales enablement and working within that methodology, that, I mean, we're able to not only understand what the methodology is, but also enable the rest within that framework.
Nicole Tamms: So whatever they're learning when we're doing that enablement, it'll resonate better because it's within that framework that they've been introduced to already and that they're already working with it.
Brian: Yeah.
Brian: it you know it It also leads me to ask the question about sales engineers. I did a podcast with ah ah a gentleman who led sales engineering and the whole technical side of selling. like And what' what's that?
Nicole Tamms: yeah
Brian: I imagine that's an important connection for product marketing as well.
Nicole Tamms: Oh, absolutely. So sales engineers are extremely helpful in the product marketing scope because a lot of times product marketers don't have that technical debt and When I'm, for example, writing a technical brief, I am putting together a piece that's going to go to technical people. And so the the advice and the input and and the value that a presales organization or engineer or manager would provide would be, you know, ensuring that it is accurate.
Nicole Tamms: and making sure that I am speaking in the customer's language, you know what I mean?
Brian: Yeah.
Brian: Yeah.
Nicole Tamms: And even on site, I've had, when I've gone on site with sales reps, we've had an SC in the room who would do the the demo and the technical, answer the technical questions.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah.
Brian: Yeah, it it it makes sense to me. This this has been so helpful and one of the things that really jumps out is is just the importance of that, even increasing that symbiotic relationship and increasing the communication and and whether whether it's the sales training or the SEs or ride -alongs, all of the demos, all that sort of stuff. that yeah it It makes complete sense, and I really appreciate it.
Nicole Tamms: yeah
Brian: You've been super generous with with your time and with your ideas, and this is a subject we haven't discussed before, so you know I think of this podcast as sort of this body of knowledge where people who want to know about stuff can come to, and and I really, really appreciate you adding your expertise to this.
Nicole Tamms: Well, thank you for having me. I enjoyed our time together.
