All right. Good morning. I look forward to maybe moving away from the traditional view of product marketing that we′re working tactics rather than driving strategies. And as we think about what Rowan and the team are trying to do is reset the expectations of marketing as a strategic role. It′s not about colors or tactics or marcom. It′s about driving success and rethinking product marketing. And so my name is John Gattrell, and I′m an instructor at Pragmatic. Pragmatic marketing helps companies better align their roles, understand their activities and accountabilities, and put together best practices for engaging your market, understanding your buyers, and achieving the goals of business. And when I look back in history and we think about organizations and companies, whether it′s looking at the Fortune 500, about 50 years ago, the average company was on the Fortune 500 for 75 years. Fast forward to today and the realities of how things change, how things emerge, and how markets change, you can only expect to be on the Fortune 500 at this point for 15 years. And so how do you as marketers manage that inertia, that change, those differences in driving success and hitting goals? And at Pragmatic marketing, we often know that as folks in marketing, you all sit back and make plans. You go look at the data, you′re working it, you′ve got a plan, you′re sitting in your cube, and then the phone rings. You all know this phone ring. It′s the random act of marketing from some other part of the business that they now think you need to solve their problem. Whether it′s a presentation for sales, whether it′s a new mock-up for something else, it just becomes this bomb that just destroys your schedule, makes it difficult for you to predict. You haven′t seen that before? I keep seeing this, you′re smiling. But let′s imagine we′ve addressed this issue, this bomb that has emerged, and then we go forward trying to work the path, to accomplish the goal, and get the work done on time. And so we′ve got a product. People have told us, here′s the features and functions, and you go through that feature function analysis. Have you done that before? And then you get in that feature benefit war. Someone′s like, no, that′s a feature, no, that′s a benefit. And the smarter ones goes, I′m going to put an adjective in front of it. It′s now a benefit. And the challenge many organizations have is that when they start with the product, they′re too late. And so the value I′ve seen in my career with product marketers really started one day when I was having a discussion with my boss at the time and CEO of a company when I was running marketing. I go in for my weekly one′on′one, and we′re chatting a little bit, and he notices I′ve gotten the iPhone. And he says, hey, can I see your iPhone? I′m like, sure, Sean, go ahead and take a look at it. And then he asks, why isn′t your email connected to our network? And I′m like, well, why are you looking at my email, Sean? Let′s be clear here. And I said, here′s why. Because IT won′t let me connect it to the infrastructure. And he said, are you sure? Because I′m buying an iPhone this weekend, and I′m pretty sure IT′s going to let me connect to it. And that change in the market behaviors of how they make a decision and how they determine which product should be used in businesses was my first sort of, I guess I would say, real world situation where I knew the buying process was more important than how you build the product or how you use the product. And so organizations that start with the product rather than the market needs and the people that make those decisions often take a very linear and waterfall approach. We put the product on the shelf. And in many organizations, they think that′s the hard part, getting the bits, the bytes, the realities, when the reality is taking people′s money. I mean, what′s the role of marketing and product management? Understand a need, build the product, tell a story, and ultimately take people′s money. And if we′re going to put together a plan to achieve those goals, then we′ve got to figure out a different way to work it because this linear waterfall approach doesn′t really map to the behaviors, the cadences or realities of our life because you got a plan and then there′s another change. And so we want you to start thinking that waterfall doesn′t work. The traditional approach to MARCOM, put together an operational plan, work that plan and hope that plan achieves the goal is no longer relevant. There′s no such thing as an annual marketing plan. There′s annual goals. There′s programs we′ll put into market, but then we have to measure those and move and pivot based on our performance, our targets, and our business expectations. And so if I step back and think about rethinking marketing as something that′s not MARCOM or tactical, I want to start with a quote from Steve Jobs. Forget the product. Start with your go to market strategy. And really what this means is if you don′t know the story you′re going to tell to the people you′re going to take money from, how are you possibly going to be successful? Because nobody cares about your product. Your product in the eyes of the market in many segments is exactly the same as your competitors. And one of the folks I′ve worked with, Cheryl Altshuler, told me once when I was a product manager, fairly junior in my career, I′m rolling out a new release. I got the feature functions. We had a checklist. You all got a checklist for getting something out and launched. And on that checklist it said, call a meeting with MARCOM. And I usually did it with a whole bunch of time, like two or three days before launch. And I would show up with my 172 features of product management greatness, and I′d ask them, you know what, create some demand. And then Cheryl would say to me, John, I don′t know how you create demand. You can create awareness. You can create beliefs. But the product doesn′t drive demand. Your market does. And if you don′t have the right product, you don′t have the right story, you′re never going to meet those goals. And so let′s forget about the product, because all of our products in many markets are just about the same. So what does that mean for product marketing? How does that work for us to be more impactful, more strategic, and really be those architects of growth? As I step back and think about the roles that I′ve had and the teams I′ve worked in, I have found that the better way to look at product marketing is to look at a more agile approach to understanding your customers, those buyers that make decisions. What are their roles? Some people own the budget, other folks might own technology. And as we deploy our solutions and our stories in the market, what is that defined market definition, that segment that you want to go dominate, not just participate in? And then once we understand the market of customers, we focused on a segment. How do you step back and use your people, but also your knowledge of the personas in the market to effectively influence the audiences you need to engage, to target them with the right messages, using the right channels? And then what processes do you have in systems to govern, to measure, and to monitor? So as we put content, programs, and initiatives out in the market, we can measure them. And based on that measurement, change our direction, slightly morph our message. And so let′s now drill into this concept of agile product marketing. And I said it starts with the customer. Who are those folks that have the problem you solve? Who are those folks that make decisions in the markets for the problems you solve? And this is the starting point. Because if we don′t know the people and we only know the product, like this one, the Internet refrigerator, anyone have this stupid product before I rail on it? Right, it was originally launched exclusively by Best Buy in the United States. It′s great technology. It really is. I mean, no one can challenge Samsung for great technology. But I think the challenge with the Internet refrigerator is this. Nobody thought about the market. They only thought about the technology. And you know how this actually happens. It′s something we call inside out decision making. They probably called a cross business unit innovation summit. They took a bunch of people to Malaysia for, you know, go to the Four Seasons for five days, draw clouds and lines. And they got the people from appliances there. And the appliance, like, we got this thing called the refrigerator with a lot of negative space in it. Negative space? So that means we can put random stuff in there. I think we can put a Nick card in there, the network person says, great. What are we going to do with that? Well, we got to render it somehow. So maybe we need to get a screen on the door. And then wham, Internet refrigerator. Great technology. Horrible business plan. And so how do we start with what the market actually cares about rather than what we put on the shelf? In fact, Rowan said this earlier. One of the strategic things you can do, whether it's knowing your buyers or doing win loss, is really getting your arms around that customer, not your product, and putting together a plan that resonates, that connects to the process steps they take, the criteria they use to make those decisions. And once we have that market knowledge, then we have to step back and say, well, I understand the market. These customers, these people, we need to influence and create beliefs. Now how do we step back and validate, understand, and improve our execution? And so we're big fans of testing. Start small, be excellent, learn from that testing process, whether it's a message, whether it's a channel, a way for us to build a community of interest of folks that we can reach out to. I call it the product marketing council. And everyone should have a set of stakeholders inside their organization and out into the market that represent that validation point to say, did we get it right? Do we need to move it this way? And it becomes a way for us to prototype messaging, a way for us to figure out what collateral and sales tools, just because it's on the sales kit requirement checklist doesn't mean your market cares about it. And so we have to step back and say, what are the right materials to enable sales with? What are the right messages and tools to drive decisions? And so product is part of it, messaging, and then it goes all the way down to the execution of your outbound programs to make sure you're on target, that you're getting the responses, the engagement, and the conversions to ultimately drive revenue and hit the goals of management. And so the first step is test with your market, learn from your execution, and make better decisions with your stakeholders, your teams, and your programs. And if we understand that market of customers, we have a small trusted group that we test ideas, programs, and targets on, now we've got to go to a segment that's focused, that market segment that we can build one set of content to be consumed by many in the market. In fact, as we create artifacts, as we create opportunities to bring people into our blogs, our streams, or our buildings, we got to put together a plan that says, I'm going to build content once to be consumed by many's in the market. And those many's, those archetypical targets, we call buyer personas. Who are those buyer personas, and how do we put the right materials at the right place for that persona to consume, engage, and drive decisions? And so as you try to build content and test it for your segment, we want you not just to test, and we want you, or trial and error, we want you to test and validate your opportunities for investment consistently, collaboratively, and ultimately with a goal of continuous improvement. And so the first part about validating an opportunity, is it feasible? Do we have the skills? Do we have the understanding? Do we have the context and empathy to actually drive this idea all the way through execution and achieving results? And so in feasibility, one thing once you get past that particular benchmark, then you say, is it repeatable? Is this something we can actually productize in our channel and in our programs to consistently measure and improve and validate over time? And this iterative approach is really about going back between feasibility and validation, feasibility and validation, to where we get to a point that we have the belief, understanding, and the metrics, that it's not just repeatable, that it's also scalable, that we can take this best practice, these learnings, and scale it in to that market opportunity to drive growth, to hit our business goals, and ultimately improve our win rates. In fact, you'll hear a little bit from some folks throughout the day, whether it's Alan Armstrong or Jeff Lash, of how you can get to a more strategic role of scaling the efforts around product management and marketing. And then once we have feasibility proven, once we've got a repeatable model that we think scales, hopefully then we can then manage the visibility, the metrics, all the way to justify our ROI. And I don't know if you folks, pretty easy to determine ROI in your business, right? Just look at the work and look at the results. In fact, that's one of the hardest things ever. And so this whole concept of feasibility, repeatability, and scalability is that we've got the right processes systems to justify our expense, that we can actually drive profit in a meaningful way that's got an ROI that the business embraces, understands, and will continue to fund. In fact, that's the purpose of a marketing plan, right? Make a commitment to management, say over time this is going to be the return on investment. And we have to go through this iterative process to gain that confidence and credibility to make that commitment to management. And so the next step that we need to really think about is how do we measure, metric, and optimize that execution so we can have the clarity and focus, the confidence and commitment to say management, we don't want just budget to do stuff. We're not asking for allowance as marketers. We're making a commitment to management to get a return on investment. So measurement is critical. And many organizations certainly deploy marketing automation tools and those certainly help us. That's a starting point, but then you ultimately have to link it to the results. And our sales force automation tools or a marketing or CRM applications. Now once we iterate and improve and get that confidence, then we have to figure out what's the right resources we need, the right targets we need to move down this path towards more agile marketing. And that brings me to the challenge many companies have is your org structure. And I don't know what your org structure looks like, but in many organizations it's this tiered, multi-level, hierarchical situation where there's a very important C-level person at the top. And everything comes from on high. But the reality is, y'all are doing the work. You're the ones that are closest to the market with the knowledge, the expertise, and the desire to succeed in your roles and in your business. And so this sort of top-down approach from management and organizational alignment actually becomes a burden for us from approval cycles, from an execution model, from, hey, can we get the content approved? And so teams increasingly are not about tiers. Effective teams are about being integrated. The integration starts with the market. And then we look at our processes that face that marketplace, whether it's building products that delight our users and drive profit for our investors, whether it's those market-facing activities around channels and content, but also the support chain. How do we service our customers in a way that drives satisfaction, drives loyalty, and improves ultimately our opportunity to increase share of wallet, increase lifetime value of the customer? And so the center of integrated teams starts with the market, that our sales channel has the confidence of who those customers are in the market, the problems they have, and how our unique developed technology addresses their needs. And so integrated teams, using data in a more agile way, can drive more success as long as they embrace a consistent process. And so processes are, there's our processes as marketers, the systems that we have, but there's also the buying process. And when we think about managing the load, and many organizations may see this, some of you folks work with agile development teams. Is that a fair statement? All right. We don't have a majority with that. But those of you that have worked in agile development teams, anytime they build something, they want you to market it. Does that sound right? We have a tiny little feature that should somehow magically change the world because it's in production. God, does that feel like a treadmill sometimes, right? We just refresh, bullet. But you know what? Maybe we shouldn't do bullets and refreshing. We should step back and understand all the work in the backlog, and then put together a way to have more agile approaches to delivering. In fact, take agile methodologies and put them into marketing. We've got a series of stories for our buyers. We've got a series of channels we can use and timelines to deliver. So let's create iterations of work. And I don't care if the content's in production or it's on the shelf. Our job's to make it fly off the shelf when it's got meaningful value, enough velocity, and a coalescence of value that someone's willing to say, yes, this is incrementally better. And so figure out the work. Then look at the work in logical, iterative chunks. And then start doing the work. On a daily basis, you report, you do stand-ups. And then as you get through the finish line, you review with your stakeholders. And then you ultimately test and evaluate those concepts in small batches, learn from those test runs, and evaluate at the end of the day the performance of the overall program. And so agile is increasingly not just a development methodology. It's a project management methodology. It's a way to get people aligned to communicate and make visible the work we're doing and the results we're achieving. And so this should be how we work based on what we're learning in the business, learning in the market, and understand our products. So as we as marketers, we're not just focusing on tactics. We're trying to achieve goals that management cares about. And those goals, that scorekeeping needs to be understood, needs to cover the whole life cycle of the activities we put into the market. And so let's talk about systems and tools. And the first part I want to talk about is often the underappreciated, qualitative aspects of knowing your market. Because it's fuzzy. It's contextual. But you've got to go out and do win-loss. Do market visits. We call it nihito. It means nothing important happens in the office. I mean, there's urgent things that happen in the office. Like we got to send an email on Tuesday because I think we got to send it on Tuesday. Tuesday would be great and we could have a meeting after that. It would be great. It's not important, urgent. There's interesting things that happen in the office. Like what did you do last weekend? Great. The important things you need to understand are what the goals you want to achieve and the people that help you achieve. And so go out into the market, learn. Do win-loss. Figure out the roles. Do buyer persona interviews. Talk to sales. Get a nice cross-section of insight that provides you context and empathy to create a good survey. In fact, the challenge of many organization surveys is you haven't done the front-end work to discover things you don't know. So you have to spend the time up front to learn and then validate those learnings. And once we understand what the market cares about, those buyers, then step back and say what are the stories we need to work, document, and deliver to help those buyers make the right decision. So as a buyer, an economic buyer, I want to achieve an ROI of X so that I can justify Y. Let's put together these market-centric stories that have no relationship to our products because the product's already on the shelf. We have to make it fly off the shelf. And so qualitative research is the starting point. Surveys are your validation and then you have to monitor, measure, and consistently engage your market for feedback. There's feedback from execution. There's feedback from interplay and from our sales channel. And so don't under, you know, just don't lull yourself into here's the activities and here's the work. We got to make sure we have the right filters by knowing our market, validating that knowledge, and then prototyping those efforts so we can scale and pivot to get the right return on investment. And so that's the high-level overview that we're hoping to talk today to move from being a more tactical part of the organization to being that architect of growth. And the key takeaways is that go-to-market planning isn't about finishing the product and then doing positioning. Positioning and those kinds of activities have to happen before you build the product. And then you've got to take those ideas out, validate them early and often, iterate it, take that data to change your decisions. And if we do this well, we create a team that's empowered, empowered with market knowledge, that's empowered by success. They actually know what winning looks like. And I don't know what winning looks like back at your office. But I know in many organizations, product marketers and product managers, regardless of the title, because titles are a mess, we don't have any clear goals. We have tactics to measure, we have items we want to work. But other departments, they understand what winning looks like, don't they? I mean sales. A salesperson comes home, they know when they've had a good day. Honey, I've had a great day. I hit quota, packed the bags. It's Dominican Republic, five days, four seasons. Your CFO, he or she knows what a great day looks like, right? Honey, I had a great day. Open a bottle of cake bread. The audit's done, I'm not going to jail. I mean you go home, you're like, why did this awesome PowerPoint? Can I please have some mac and cheese? And I want you to see that you've got a strategic role that achieves goals and it starts with the market. And you need a framework that says, here's how we test, here's how we learn, and here's how we drive results. And that's what this iterative, more agile approach will drive. Scale, increase velocity, close more deals, get those blockages out of the funnel, because you're learning as you execute, not just executing to learn. Now I want to thank you for a starting point of today's discussion. And I look forward to hopefully seeing there's some great familiar faces in the room, both companies and individuals. At Pragmatic Marketing, we help companies better understand their roles so they can be that strategic partner. Thank you for your time this morning to kick this off. Rowan and team are doing a great job and you all have a good day and look forward to closing it out with success with the folks here at Pragmatic, our product marketing community. Good job, Rowan.