Chris Handy

A list of Questions 👇

I’ve found that if you work backwards from what success looks like you will end up identifying gaps in your Go-to-market strategy. Without clear answers to each of the questions starting from the bottom up, it’ll be a tough road ahead. Never skip steps.

• Are customers buying multiple products?
• Are our customers advocates?
• Are customers renewing?
• Are customers expanding their usage?
• Are customers paying/upgrading?
• Are customers happy?
• Are customers putting the product into their production workflows?
• Are customers activating?
• Are customers attempting to set up the product?
• Are customers signing up?
• Are customers “most aware” (exploring our products)?
• Are customers “product aware”?
• Are customers “solution aware”?
• Are customers “problem aware”?
• Are customers completely “unaware” that they have a problem?

No slide deck in the world can help you sell if you can’t do two things:

1. Listen: Understand their world before you tell them about yours. Ask human questions (not just BANT) that reveal the real life stakes if things don’t improve. No one wants to be put through the qualification process.
2. Tell a compelling story: Tying the company mission back to the old way/new way story is the only way to break through for real buy-in and impact.

A company’s memory is typically very short. That’s why you need to build a team of documentarians.

Slack messages drift off the screen, emails get archived. But a company wiki lives on for people who join in one month, one year, one decade. It should be tablestakes to document your workflows, processes, and knowledge. Especially when it comes to product marketing. We touch so many areas of the organization, it’s essential to build a “culture of docs”. Whether it’s in Confluence, Notion, or something purpose built like Tettra… you need to document, document, document.

Seems like a reallly good time for bootstrapped startup innovation.

Leadership is not a title.

Leadership means clearing the path.

Leadership means rolling up your sleeves.

Leadership means celebrating wins in public.

Leadership means having your team’s back.

Leadership means supporting your team.

Leadership is not a title.

If you meet with people virtually, it’s important to consider THEIR experience. Are you hard to hear ? I’ve met with people with really nice and fancy webcams that still sound like they are in a tin can. Focus on the audio first. Then the video.

If it isn’t working…

Are we following the process?

• If so, change the process.

• If not, why not?

“Still Open” and “Ready to Ship” are important differentiators in times like these.

Pro tip: Be yourself.

There are three Slack channels every marketing team needs. (We set it up this way at Crux.)

1. #marketing

This channel is for anyone and everyone at the company to see announcements from marketing and see when things ship. They can also come and share info or ask questions. It’s the internal Twitter account for the marketing team.

Status: Public Invite: Everyone

2. #marketing-team

This is the channel for the in the weeds collaboration. People who care a lot about what’s happening inside the inner workings of projects can dip in to check out what’s happening. Working on a project? It mostly happens here.

Status: Public Invite: Marketing team and key stakeholders

3. #marketing-team-internal

This is just for team members to communicate about internal logistics like: “here’s the new zoom link” or “I’m running late, can you start the meeting without me” or “here’s a relevant meme”.

Status: Private Invite: team only.

There’s actually a fourth channel that I’ve found helpful, but that’s for another post! (It’s a feed channel that rolls up notifications from Zapier.)

Study Human Behavior and you won’t need to focus on hacks, tips, or tricks anymore. The best part is that the syllabus is all around you. At the store, on your street, in your org. Decisions are made everywhere all the time. Your #marketing superpower is learning how to notice.