26: The Relationship Between PMs and Sales and Marketing

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