PRODUCTHEAD: Your go-to guide for go-to-market

(nice product) #

every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to

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tl;dr

Communicating your differentiated value consistently works better than a custom pitch every time

For go-to-market without a PMM, aim to fill some of the gaps, not to take over the whole role

Traditional marketing-generated leads involve telling the customer the value; product-led growth shows the value instead

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hello

Here in the UK, we’re all basking in unseasonably high temperatures over a public holiday. This has thrown us Brits for more of a loop than normal as we all had our big winter coats out only a week ago. While we wrestle with this meteorological conundrum, I’ve been writing a long-form article about go-to-market strategy for product managers. I anticipate it will be out in about a week on I Manage Products. While I’ve been writing it, I’ve been reading a few different perspectives and wanted to share a few of them with you ahead of time.

First up is April Dunford, the queen of positioning. I could have picked almost any of her articles or podcasts as they’re all on point, nevertheless I’ve settled on her piece figuring out why your sales team is completely ignoring or heavily rewriting the pitch from your (product) marketing team. The second edition of her book, Obviously Awesome is now available, which is a must-have on your bookshelf to understand true product positioning, rather than the “gorgeous, fluffy nonsense” that is sometimes mistaken for it.

Next, product marketer Olajumoke Adigun offers some practical advice for product managers handling go-to-market without specialist support. If you’re in an early-stage startup you might not have even a marketing team, let alone a dedicated product marketing manager. As is often the way, the product manager is expected to cover the missing disciplines. We’re all agreed that this is a compromise, nevertheless when you’re in such a situation if you don’t give it a go, it simply won’t happen at all.

For completeness, I’ve also included Mike Belsito’s deep dive into a traditional product go-to-market plan and the role the product manager need to play throughout. This will be familiar to anyone who’s worked in a large or enterprise software company, although it’s going to be overkill in its full form for smaller companies.

Then for contrast, Leah Tharin’s guide to product-led growth (and product-led sales). This offers a distinctly different take on go-to-market, where the product sells itself or qualifies its own leads for the sales team, but is one that may make far more sense for a modern SaaS company.

Speak to you soon,

Jock

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what to think about this week

Why Positioning Fails to Make the Jump from Marketing to Sales (and what to do about it)

Great B2B positioning will die inside the company if it doesn’t successfully make the jump from marketing to sales. Once you’ve worked through your positioning inside the company, the most common way for that positioning to fail is to fumble its activation in the sales team. Making that transition work is harder than it looks for many reasons. I will cover the four biggest stumbling blocks I see in the companies I work with.

A good sales pitch comes from someone who’s actually pitched a customer

[April Dunford]

How solo Product managers can own go-to-market strategy in lean teams

You’re the product manager at a lean startup. The feature is ready to ship, your CEO asks about the launch plan, and suddenly you realise: there’s no product marketing manager to hand this off to. It’s just you.

Clear customer understanding and systematic launches for the win

[Olajumoke Adigun / Mind the Product]

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Deep dive: A product manager’s guide to product launches

In the high-stakes world of software products, few moments are as pivotal as the product launch. It’s the grand finale of months—sometimes years—of ideation, planning, and execution. A successful launch can catapult a product to market dominance, while a fumbled one can doom even the most promising innovations to obscurity. At the center of this whirlwind stands the product manager, orchestrating a complex symphony of teams, timelines, and strategies.

A good product launch brings together everything you’ve learnt

[Mike Belsito / Mind the Product]

Leah’s Product-led Growth Guide 3.0

This guide will get you started on product-led growth and give you a fundamental understanding of the inner workings of

• Why it is so relevant today
• What it takes you to get started with it in a team or organization
• How the approach differs in B2B from B2C
• Combining Product-led Growth with Sales-led Growth to optimize your pipeline

Show, don’t tell

[Leah Tharin / Leah’s ProducTea]

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PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from dodging bank holiday traffic.