A Few Best Practices and Tips for Coming Up to Speed as a Product Marketer in Your First 30 Days in a New Role

We have a new Product Marketing Manager at the company I work for which got me thinking about how someone can ramp up to understand the company, the marketplace and competitive landscape, understand the portfolio and offerings, and start to make an impact as quickly as possible. I thought I would share some of my own practices and thoughts for how Product Marketers can get up to speed quickly.

Jump into Priorities on Day One

It’s usually the case with a new Product Marketer that there are priorities waiting for you from Day One. If this is the case, absolutely jump in as this is learning by doing (or trial by fire). However, you need to also be focused on balancing that with getting additional perspective and insights to help you in the longer-run. In both cases, have an ownership and ‘get my hands dirty’ mindset. Treating your portfolio as if you own it versus just support it and being willing to do what it takes will greatly contribute to your success in the role and beyond.

Who to Meet With

You need to meet with a circuit of people across the organization early on which will help you in navigating the organization and understanding what is important to your counterparts and others. It’s important to be diligent not to leave anyone out.

  • Meet with your immediate leader to lay out what is expected of you in your role and in your first 30 days, and plan to exceed their expectations of what you are able to do in the first 30 days.
  • Have Meetings Across Leaders, Counterparts, Sales Teams and others.
  • Meet with business leaders for the portfolio(s) you support.
  • Meet with each Product Management team member and leader, if possible.
  • Meet with a collection of sellers from around the sales organization. You might ask who the performers and any noteworthy up-and-comers are that are most worthwhile to talk to.
  • Meet with the Sales Enablement team to get their perspective and access to any curriculum or body of content they use for training.
  • Meet with more technical sales and other resources that can help explain more deeply about your portfolio while helping you to understand its positioning.
  • Watch recorded webinars or listen to podcasts conducted by your company for further insights.

Get First-Hand Perspective

It’s important to also hear the message from the horse’s mouth. Make sure to pursue meetings with customers and prospects, and in some cases, users. Ideally, a few meetings a month would be a regular part of your monthly activities.

  • Ask to participate or listen in on customer and prospect meetings.
  • Ask to participate or listen in on meetings with partners.
  • Get in on calls with third-party analysts where the conversation pertains to your portfolio.
  • If your company puts on annual customer events, ask if video or notes from the events are available to view or read.
  • Ask if the company has a win/loss program and if it would be possible to read interview notes.
  • Ask if the company conducts Net Promoter Surveys and if you could see those and any related comments or feedback customers are providing.
  • Watch webinars that your competitors put on to understand what competitors are doing and how they position their similar offerings.
  • Check out review sites for insights on your company’s offerings but be aware here that reviews can be skewed one way or the other. For instance, if your company uses a third-party review site to capture positive reviews, your company may be selective in sending over customers they know are very happy with your offerings. Don’t spend too much time here. But they do turn up a nugget on occasion.

Get to Know Your Offerings Portfolio

In many cases, it may be possible to see how your portfolio works in action. This isn’t always the case as in services. However, when you can experience your portfolio first-hand, do so.

  • Attend any Boot Camp or other training sessions new sellers would go through.
  • For times where watching someone in action performing their job is beneficial, set up time to shadow them for a half- or full-day. An example in my industry would be if you wanted to understand how your Security Operations Center operations worked, you would shadow an analyst for the day.
  • Read final reports and similar deliverables provided to customers for perspective on how your organization delivers value through services.
  • Read relevant third-party analyst reports on your industry.
  • If your portfolio involves a software application, set up your own account and map out the application (on paper) all of the different functions, options and pathways you can go in it, where possible. This may see tedious but doing so will give you a far greater appreciation for the application, its uses cases, usability and other aspects.

In all of these meetings, don’t be afraid to ask tough questions. Here are some I’ve seen our new Product Marketer ask or would suggest:

  • What are the organization’s overall OKRs, KPIs or other strategic goals for the year broadly and as they relate to your portfolio?
  • What financial or other metrics does your organization or you actively use to measure performance?
  • How can I get access to the roadmap as well as ensure I am part of its formulation from the very beginning?
  • What type of market and competitive research, research across sales teams, and what customer and prospect feedback channels exist and/or performed and how are they used to articulation of requirements and the roadmap?
  • What are the biggest challenges you see from your vantage point that you are focused on addressing?
  • What are we failing at?
  • What are your priorities in the next 6 months?
  • How well do you understand the role of Product Marketing?
  • How do you think Product Marketing is doing and could do better?
  • How do you see Product Marketing and your team/you working together?

Get a Mentor

Use a mentor either inside the organization and/or outside the organization that you can trust for honest feedback and guidance.

Conclusion

The tips here represent a great start to quickly building a solid foundation of knowledge that will serve you well in your role at the company. Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means and talking to your immediate leader will give you an important perspective on what they expect and any guidance they may have. Nonetheless, performing many of the aspects in this post will put your squarely on the right path to getting you up to speed and having an impact quickly and overall, excelling in your role.