Best of Product Marketing (so far) on Presentation Thinking

Mikey: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, aka the Storyteller Study Club, episode 141. This is Mikey Meduski. I'm the founder and CEO of Ghost Ranch Communications, a presentation design firm based in the United States, spread around. Joined by my co host, your favorite Molly Gagin, straight out of Inglewood, Colorado.

What are we going to do today? It's kind of special.

Molly: What's up, Presentation Nation? Good to be back. Back in the recording studio, Mikey. What are we doing today? It's kind of one of those reflective episodes, Mikey, where we have Notice some [00:01:00] patterns from people that we've talked to, some really talented, smart people that we've talked to, and we know for a fact that a lot of Presentation Nation are product marketers, and we end up talking to a lot of product marketers, so this is kind of a really unique best of product marketing so far on presentation thinking, and if this is something that interests you career wise, or you're just getting started in, or certainly find yourself already in, Keep listening because there's some, we're going to round up some of the best episodes that we've had so far and just call out some amazing patterns with the help of a very good friend of the ranch, our very own now Ghost Ranch Executive Director, Head of Product Marketing, Thanks And our favorite Australian Steve Earl, welcome to the cast.

Steve: Thanks, Molly. Thanks, Mikey. Good to be part of the podcast today. And I was, uh, I think number 70.

Molly: Yes. I was just going to say,

Steve: wow, 141. So you've spoken to a lot of presentation thinkers over there.

Molly: Yeah.

Steve: [00:02:00] I'm glad to be part of this one.

Molly: Yeah. And this was cool because as we were revisiting product marketing centered episodes for when we talked to product marketers and creating them for product marketers.

You as a product mark with tons of product marketing experience, halfway through the episodes that we've created so far was, was an amazing, like really pivotal episode and created so many frameworks we've worked together, created the slide zero blog series we've talked about on the cast and all this stuff.

So it's been cool to have. Your perspective contribute to this and then have you revisit our playlist and, you know, spoiler alert, we included you on this playlist episode 70

Steve: look toward to digging in.

Mikey: Yeah,

Molly: yeah,

Mikey: zoom in out to why, why do you think we have so many product marketers on the presentation thinking podcast?

Like, what is it about PMMs that makes them like such great presentation, you know, like minds? Yeah, I

Steve: think it's pretty simple. I mean, the presentation medium is the communication [00:03:00] vehicle for B2B companies and product marketers are sort of in the middle of all of that, whether it's sellers presenting to potential prospects or, you know, executives presenting on stage or even account managers presenting to existing clients.

Presentations is the way communications are done in B2B, love it or hate it. Right. And I'm too. And so product marketers are right in the middle of that and are often expected to kind of work magic. And some are really good at different parts of it, but you know, it's really hard to sort of have the creative side of presentations and also, I guess, the logical side, the left brain, right brain sort of coming together.

But product marketers, You know, right in the middle there of doing all of that. So presentations are really important to product marketers. And I think that's why this whole presentation thinking series has been so popular with product marketers. Yeah, yeah,

Mikey: love that. Well, we're going to do round Robin style, right Molly?

Like we each [00:04:00] dug back into an episode or two. And we're going to call out one of our most favorite takeaways from that episode. So who wants to start? Should we go tallest to shortest?

Molly: Mikey, why don't you, I know you took a listen back to one of our oldest ones on this list. Do you want to kick us off with a certain episode 57, a certain Rukma Sen from

Mikey: Google.

Okay. Rukma. So I was so pumped, A, to be talking to a Google product marketer, you know, because. Uh, we actually haven't worked with Google as a client or anything. So I saw her, she was the MC at the product marketing summit, San Fran, a couple of years ago for a whole day. And then she gave this really good presentation toward the end of the day.

And I was like, Oh my gosh, like I can tell you're one of us. Like you, you take this presentation stuff seriously. So go back, listen to it. But Molly, I think we were just like, so we caught so much joy in speaking with Rukma. She. She's like, don't ask me [00:05:00] how many books I have in my collection. She is like, just a reading junkie, a storytelling junkie.

And it's like really contagious. Like her passion for learning. One of my favorite quotes that I heard her say at the conference and on the podcast was, you can't be too clear. That's not a thing. And so she's like, you just can't like, so when you think you're too clear, you're probably not. And you need to keep going.

Clarify, clarify, clarify, clarify. Distill. And just that brevity, the ability to be brief can only be accomplished if you've got really clear thoughts. And so for marketers, messaging, a lot of times we're trapped in that curse of knowledge. We, we are too deep. We're too close to the, that technical product.

And so Rukma, her episode had some really good gems in there. And I'd love editor Will, if you could play this snippet as well, because we asked Rukma at the very end of that episode, Molly, I don't know if you But we asked [00:06:00] her, what does presentation thinking mean to you?

Rukma: When I was thinking about this a little bit, I was like, wow.

We present ourselves to the world and receive presentations from other people pretty much all of the time. You don't have to be like up on stage delivering a talk to be presenting the way you come across, the way you dress, the way you walk, all of this is presentation, but it also got me thinking about the other meaning.

Or kind of the older way people used to use presentation back in the day, which was, which was a gift, like you formally gifted someone something. And it made me think that a way presentation thinking to me could be just being intentional and thoughtful about what gift are you bringing To any room or interaction, you know, what gift do you want to leave your listeners with?

If you're delivering a talk, what gift are you bringing to your execs in a meeting? [00:07:00] Maybe in that case, it could often be insights at your level, which they don't have visibility into because there's so much higher up. So you're always willing. Able to present something, um, and thinking about it intentionally is, I think, beneficial to you, to the other person in the interaction.

Um, and just, you know, makes for, for a better like connection.

Mikey: So Molly, Steve, yeah, I, I just love her outlook. Like if we can think of presentations as gifts, we think of not only ourselves, but as someone receiving. Something on the end that could help them, whether that's your customer or prospect, you know, that intentionality that Rukma really calls us to, to engage.

It can go so far and it can really set you apart from other people who are just checking the boxes. Doing good enough, you know, same run of the mill presentations every day, just by simply giving it a little more thought, [00:08:00] you're already like in the upper echelon.

Molly: Yeah, and a gift is more memorable than a product.

Like, you're giving an experience that's part of like the holistic narrative. And that's something that really was potent for me as I revisited some episodes. Jump in here with Mr. Harvey Lee episode 108. He is a product marketing creator. He's now an author and a coach as well. And we talked to him shortly after publishing his amazing book, Backstage Pass, a business book that's far from conventional.

And Harvey's story, like, his whole perspective is that his background of being on the road with ACDC in a rock and roll setting And then falling into product marketing, these varied pathways that people fall into product marketing, you know, he started working at like a music label and all this stuff, you know, his background is so fascinating.

But the key takeaway from that is his life informs his work and the holistic [00:09:00] story and the leverage that he's able to, like, position himself from his personal experience and have that translate has really helped his professional growth, you know, so his perspective is that the building, Identifying your experience as a unique entity and understanding how that might apply to a specific audience.

People that might also be interested in music or the industry and like live music and certainly just rock and roll. And then also he became a marketer. So he's like, he's like had this amazing Venn diagram where he's like, I'm 50 percent this and 50 percent this, but holistically it adds up into this amazing niche.

And that's what he built it for.

Harvey Lee: So, you know, I was a typical product marketer. I was doing the research. I had an early research stage insight panel, early, early stage readers. And they really helped me crystallize who this book is for. And actually without them, I was struggling to answer it because When you're a, let's say I'm a company, I'm not making my own products.

You know, I'm an author. I'm [00:10:00] making my own book. The analogy is the same. Sometimes you're not quite, you know, what you're building is valuable and interesting, but you just can't quite crystallize who it's for and why they would care. So the advantage that I had was that my marketing, my product marketing chops really got me through this.

Which has helped me sort of articulate it. And that's why on the front of the book, the words are what they are. It's a business book that's unconventional. So it's positioned as a business book, not a music memoir. It is what it says on the tin. 50 percent rock and roll, 50 percent business, 100 percent true.

So you've got the two audiences showing up on the front cover, and then it wraps around this authentic

Mikey: story. I love that, Molly. And Steve, what about your background? Were you, did you go to school? You're like, I want to be a product marketer. I don't

Steve: think anyone goes to school to be a product marketer.

No. We all come from different backgrounds, more and more coming from the MBA background, uh, business background. But, you know, back in the day I came more from a [00:11:00] technical background, you know, you could argue product management a little bit more technical than that and came into the marketing side through that channel.

So I. Yeah. Absolutely. I think this is a lot about the discipline today. It's still trying to work itself out like, you know, it's such a broad discipline and people can be successful coming from different backgrounds, which is great and opportunity for lots of different people. So, so no, I came from the technical side of the house and probably happy that I landed where I am.

I love being on the product marketing side.

Molly: I think that's definitely one of the key takeaways from this episode is that. Pathways to product marketing are varied because it does zoom out. Product marketing touches so many things and it's like the middleman in so many ways. And it gets that holistic view on everything that's happening.

Steve, any, any connections to the episodes you revisited?

Steve: Yeah, it does. Um, episode 99 was, we had, uh, Shima Bhatt on. Amazing. This made Molly about product marketing, kind of being in the middle, touching lots of different things. The biggest takeaway [00:12:00] for me, she said, you should be thinking about repurposing your presentation content.

Be on the presentation. And the way I think about that is, you know, we should never consider presentations as a one time event, but always, you know, as product marketers always be thinking on the presentation. And Ashima is a product marketer. She's currently at RDoC. She was at RingCentral. We have, RingCentral is a great client of ours.

We have some great, great product marketers at RingCentral we work with. And, and Mikey, you know, we were at the San Francisco Product Marketing Alliance summit just not so long ago. And Esther from Pring Central was, was talking about this topic. I mean, she was, she believes in this idea of any presentation should be thought about in the context of your broader go to market strategy, narrative, even the tools that support that go to market.

The presentation is one of those and should be thought about in the context of all of those things. So I, I, I live that [00:13:00] myself. I think that's such a. It's such a strategic way that product marketers should be thinking about a presentation moment. It should be part of strategy of which there's many moments.

Um, so, so that was my big takeaway from Ashima and that's something I truly believe in and help my teams kind of, um, implement along the way.

Ashima Bhatt: It's not just about creating slides, right? It is empowering everyone to communicate more effectively and telling a story, not just through words, but through visuals.

I always look at presentations as the slides support the speaker, like really everyone's eyes should be on the speaker glancing at the slides, but You should be commanding the room and the presence, you know, your energy, your story, the way that you tell it should be commanding and the presentation is the backup dancer.

So that's the way it should be done. And that's the way it should be thought about. In my opinion, a story lives

Molly: well beyond like presentations and slides. It shows up in every. [00:14:00] Aspect of your company, a good, a well, a well executed story, right?

Mikey: Ashima, she's a badass. And I remember Molly, her, she had a really good answer to our presentation thinking question, like, what does that mean to you?

And I think she really hammered the point of, yeah, it's messaging, but it's also the visuals. And I think she has that rare combination outlook to know that one times one equals three. If you compare those things together, you know, holistically. It's that much more impactful and huge shout out. We're big fans of Ashima.

And then, so one of the episodes I dug back into was with Esther, you know, at the time, I think Esther was Ashima's manager at Ad Ring Central episode 59 on presentation thinking pod. We had. We had Esther on, actually we repurposed this one from, cause I had interviewed her for the product marketing life podcast.

That was called the importance of a holistic approach to messaging. Esther is just one of those. She's like, I don't know how she, she does it. She's so sharp, so fast, so smart, like [00:15:00] lives and breathes marketing, really cool background, really appreciates creativity as well. One of those, like what she calls a mic drop moment.

You know, I think in a, in a space as crowded as, as the work that, you know, RingCentral does where. You've got Zoom, you've got Microsoft Teams, like Really saturated market. The competitors are massive. And then there's all these other up and comers, I'm sure. So it's like, how do you stand out? And, you know, they had this literally a chance to speak on the same stage at a very important industry conference where like the zoom CEO was, was on.

And then RingCentral had their, you know, CTO, COO speak. And then right after that was Microsoft. So like literally sandwiched in between, you know, these two other like keynoters. So you really, how do you stand out? And so we asked Esther, how do you know a keynote or any messaging is working? And so editor will, if you wouldn't mind, like, I, I, I can't say it any better than what, what Esther said here.

So [00:16:00] let's, let's just run that.

Esther Yoon: Let's create a visual theme called CIOs are the new superheroes. And man, let me tell you that that really resonates, right? You bring in your messaging, you combine it with something that's. Relatable on a personal level, culturally relevant, easy to understand, right?

Superheroes versus villains, right? Good versus bad. And then you kind of marry it with your messaging and, and then the visuals, right? We went straight up into, no, let's draw a cape, draw like, you know, put our logo as like the Superman sign on the chest. And then, you know, the things that we're trying to combat in the enterprise, like those are villains.

It's like, Give me a Joker manifestation. Like let's fully run with this. And it really landed well at our, at our keynote.

Mikey: Molly, don't you just love that? Like, how do you quantify that? We don't know, but there is so much qualitative data or signals from a keynote or any sort of messaging that you put out there, Steve, I'm wondering if you ever had that experience where, you know, you, you did a new [00:17:00] product launch or a big keynote, and then.

Internally, people are coming up to you, like asking where they can get those slides or whatnot.

Steve: Yeah, yeah. It's pretty common. Every part market is laughing right now that Mikey, um, they live and breathe that. One example is you've worked so hard with the executive who just delivered a great presentation keynote at the user conference and my phone starts.

Getting messages from sales saying I need to have those slides for my sales presentation next week. And of course, a deck that might work or works really well on stage at a user conference. Might not work so well in the conference room. Sure. It'd be the same. That's the concept of one message, but multiple moments.

So yeah, it's, it really is a common ask, Mikey, that we all get as product marketers from our sales teams. Can I get those slides?

Mikey: Yeah. And I loved how Esther put it that they, she's like, hold on. I need to salesify it, which is that as we talk about it, just like, It's that tailoring of [00:18:00] the moment so that you can actually scale something cohesive, but, but that's actually right for the occasion or the context.

And so I, I, I've latched onto that, like salesification of, of materials as a little, you know, as a term that we always attribute to, to Esther, but it, it makes a lot of sense. It's just what's right for the occasion and for the person actually giving it. I loved that, that episode.

Molly: Tailored to the context for sure.

Going back to that, like, how do you stand out kind of question, Mikey, I thought a lot of that came out with episode 111, really lucky number there, 111. Angel numbers from Marcus Andrews of Pendo and Product Marketing Alliance experience on crafting a new category through narrative design. We were introduced to Marcus's work after taking the product marketing course.

Alliance narrative design course, highly recommend go back and you can hear our experience taking the course there. And this was all about like creating a new category to stand out because there's so much in SAS and B2B stuff right now. [00:19:00] And so it can get lost in the sauce really easily. And Marcus was, you know, afforded the amazing opportunity to, uh, work with HubSpot in those early days, earlier days when they, they really coined that term inbound marketing, which completely separated them from marketing automation or product automation.

Right? So instead of just like regurgitating the same kind of product story, they talked about what's new, like naming the change in the world. That's the kind of that foundational line of the PMA course. And Mark says, POV on narrative design is like, can we speak to something that is coming up and new and that we're, we're meeting that change where it is and we're leaning into that.

And that's the piece that we're going to really hold on to as our, our unique perspective. And that gets people more excited. We love that Marcus like shared some of our favorite, like, you know, nerdy Lord of the Rings formats or, you know, hero's journey. Like, it seems kind of crazy to zoom out that much and like.

Employee, maybe some like, where's the villain? What are the challenges? What are the magical gifts? But like when you do that, even [00:20:00] subconsciously, like people eat that up and it's much more memorable than just again, regurgitating like, all right, yeah, we've got X, Y, Z. We're checking all the boxes that the industry is currently meeting.

But if you can kind of zoom out and see if there's a new change in the world, that'll help. And similarly, once you get that narrative design down, you can use it everywhere else, which he iterates in this quote

Marcus Andrews: that I'll let Will play right now. You know, I do think, I think there's two ways. Like, I think that, you know, Um, you can use narrative design to, uh, define the story for your entire company.

And then what's great about it is that like, once you know the story of your company and like at the CEO level, it makes it very easy to sort of like do marketing sales and marketing because you're just branching off of that story. It's like, okay, we've got this story now let's create some top of funnel content around like the change in the world that we've identified and like bottom of the funnel content around like why it's so hard and like.

Makes everything easier.

Mikey: Molly, I can't believe we had Marcus Andrews on, like, he's such a, [00:21:00] like, he's a, he's a B2B product marketing, like, influencer dude, which is something, like, he does really cool work. And he's clearly just a storytelling nerd as well. Steve, did you ever crack the, like, the hero's journey, that kind of stuff as you were getting to know, getting frameworks?

Steve: Yeah, it's totally the, yeah. The moment where the light bulb came on for me, uh, the hero's journey was, you know, I was taught that with some communication experts back in the day. It actually quite a few years ago, and it made all the difference business mindset. So this really helped me think through the structure of a story.

And there's many, there's a few different structures out there. The hero's journey is one of them, one that I really, really love. But yeah, absolutely. That. That changed a lot for me in terms of how to think through the story, all those things you just said, Mike, how to think through the elements of the story in a way that the audience is going to be able to consume it and get excited about it and, and, and probably [00:22:00] most, most importantly, remember it.

So, so absolutely. I think the storytelling skills still apply. And if they do that, I think it'll make a big difference to how they tell or help their salespeople tell the story. Absolutely. Talk about another episode here. I think there's The flip side to this is something Garrett Denny talked about in episode 97.

Session was on presentation, soft skills, and I'd love to get your perspective on this, but Garrett Denny's a VP of marketing. He was at Crayon that they do competitive intelligence. Great product. I've got it Crayon, but he's now in a company called Onnit enterprise workflow solutions. But he talked about the fact that presentation skills are not innate as presenters, particularly product marketers.

You know, we know from the great research of the product marketing alliance, does every year that when product marketing leaders hire and look for the best product marketers, they're looking for skills like [00:23:00] analytical skills and strategy skills and problem solving skills and good messaging people. And, and.

Certainly we're looking for presentation experience, but that's not in the top four or five skills. So, so product marketers, I think some are really great at presentations, but, but I think the big message I got from that episode was it's okay. Presentation skills are not bad. And I, we can deliver a great presentation by doing good planning, good practice, thinking through the story flow, just as we talked about.

And I think product marketers, you know, can, can really up level their game just by doing really good planning and practice and following a story driven. So I'm not sure what you both think about presentation soft skills, but, but it was a really good episode from Garrett about it's okay. You know, it's, they're not innate.

A lot of us struggle, you know, with presentation.

Molly: It's not formally taught in school. I mean, public speaking, we're always supposed to do some kind of presentation, like, you know, on your elephant [00:24:00] diorama or whatever else you have to, like, give a presentation on. But you're not, unless you're truly seeking that path, like, I think any keynote speaker we've ever talked to is like, no, I didn't, there's no schooling for that.

You know, now there's, of course, like courses and stuff you could take. And people to learn from, but yeah, leaning into those soft skills and I would argue like we hear a lot about improv too and just being able to like think on your feet and reposition and go with the flow is super, super important and then communicate that message to in plain terms to other people.

To lift your veil of like the curse of knowledge, you might be super, super in your own industry and space, but like, how can you communicate that to a customer? How do you communicate that to a broader audience? How do you communicate that to the sales team to get excited, to educate other people about the product or service, whatever it is?

And that's, that's just soft skill. I mean, it's something Mikey and I charged ourselves with, with like starting the podcast, like, can we talk about this? In a podcast form without totally, you know, fumbling it. So, so far, you know, listens are still going [00:25:00] up, but it's just like, it's everything about that is a, is a soft skill.

Communicating in a specific way, building a message for an audience, adjusting for context constantly. And, I mean, emailing is soft skills, that kind of thing. Yeah. Maheet, you've presented more than me. How do you feel that your presentation skills have evolved since starting?

Mikey: They've definitely evolved.

Yeah, just more, more reps, more like, okay, I've been through this. I've seen an audience this size or like, a screen like this or a confidence monitor like that, you know, and so I think more practice, like there's only way, one way to get that experience is just through a lot, a lot more trial. So yeah, I mean, just getting those reps under your belt does help.

It gives you a little more confidence. Then a few dings when you, to the confidence when one goes South, but you're like, you got to get back on it, try, try again. And it's so funny that what stood out to us seeing Garrett working as an MC at those events and so comfortable on stage. [00:26:00] And We should have him on and it turns out he had a background in broadcast journalism.

He was like, he was like the anchorman basically, but the, the point about soft skills is like if you want to have a seat at the table and like bring product marketing more strategically, you know, in with the execs, it's like, That is how you do it. And you have to be able to, to handle it with a lot of times just soft skills are and an ability to persuade others that these ideas are super important and impactful.

Molly: Definitely. Definitely.

Mikey: Well, speaking of someone who did go from product marketer all the way to CMO, you know, Chris Lynch is a sort of one of our favorite, Clients, because he is a tried and true presentation thinker, like such an advocate for storytelling there again, his background was journalism. So I think Chris got a start in journalism and they moved him out to San Francisco as a tech [00:27:00] journalist, he started covering more and more of that.

So clearly knows how to tell a story. And then as he got roped in closer and closer to that space, he's like, Hey, these marketers are making a little more dough than me as a journalist. So, you know, he, he gets in and learns about this thing called product marketing and you know, what stands out to us. And I think this was episode 64 of presentation thinking.

And then again, we had him on that product marketing insider. So. A couple of different convos, we'll link them both, but Chris has seen it all. We basically got in and talked about more or less like the impact that taking presentations more seriously can have on your career. So there again, it's like, Chris is a good example of what can be done.

If you just go a little further, try a little harder. And we talked about this Oracle keynote is a big product marketing keynote, you know, And I asked Chris if he remembers it and he's like, yeah, I remember it, you know, and because it was,

Molly: it was his game changer.

Mikey: It was a game changer. He said it was a game changer for [00:28:00] my career.

You know, if you can listen to that episode, you know, we, we kind of go down nostalgia lane, but one of his points was that, you know, like product demos today are still super important. And like, At a certain stage in the funnel, a buyer needs to see the product. And Chris talks about sort of the trap that a lot of products get into is just that point and click demo.

Here's what it does. Deet, dot, dot. And he calls out that, you know, by not putting narrative around what that product can enable, it's a huge loss to the opportunity, the messaging opportunity to show more like what he calls like painting the vision of what's possible, the art of the possible. So, you know, Chris mentions that demos are still super important.

And so the way that they showed the demo on that, that big career impacting, you know, product keynote. Was by weaving a narrative, you know, like the 60 minute keynote that talked about, like had to [00:29:00] cover 10 different products and countless features was woven with these like really cool personas. And we call them like demo vignettes where, you know, we, we really like weave these beginning, middle end type stories brought the audience into it.

And then afterward, you know, like the SVPs were really pumped, even though it was immensely more work for them. They could have got up there and just like done the thing they do every day, which is show off the product, but they were actually really excited and bought into telling something a lot more engaging.

And for that reason, he, you know, kind of alluded to something of a groundswell of change for the way that that more tech forward, tech driven, like data driven type company started to lean on slideware and storytelling. As opposed to just, you know, showing here's, here's the thing. And so, uh, the impact and the ripple effect was what stood out to me about Chris's, Chris's episode.

Molly: Yeah, and like that was one of the first instances they'd utilize story in that way. Steve, I know you [00:30:00] have experience at Oracle and like, can you speak to like that implementation of story and or like your witnessing of story, not only in Oracle, but in those bigger corporations where Maybe story would seen it be seen as fluff 10 years ago, but now it's been like buzzword of the decade for sure.

Steve: Yeah, I would agree 100 percent with your point about what Chris believes is that a good, a good demo tells a story. You know, I really, there's, you know, I work with some amazing demo narrators at Oracle, you know, I won't say the names, just, What he, what he did with the presentation, again, a demo is a presentation and it should tell a story.

It just happens to be in the context of a product. And, but, but there were definitely, definitely some really effective storytellers and they're the ones whose careers are skyrocketing is because they aren't just about the features and the functions, but the story behind the product, or [00:31:00] at least the product within a story approach of doing that.

And, you know, company like. Like an oracle who's very tech driven, very product driven, that can be challenging sometimes depending on who you're working with, but when you do it well, I think it makes a huge difference and, you know, I've seen it happen many times.

Molly: Incredible. The last one I listened to, I know we've got a few people left on this list, want to make time for all of them, but Tamara Grominski had a really good episode on personal positioning.

And about how, when she got into, first got into product marketing, she had a cool background in publishing and said she's, you know, self proclaimed book nerd, you know, story lovers. That's another common pattern here. She was really disappointed that, you know, her job as a marketer in the beginning was just to hand things off to sales.

It was like, okay, well, here you go. We've got the product. Go, go sell it. Like, and it was like, this is disconnected. There's something that needs to be done. more holistically integrated here. And she says, she's like, I didn't go [00:32:00] into it being like, I didn't want to be like the naysayer of like, you know, there's something wrong with this, but she's like, I didn't go in to be like an influencer or whatever, but she wanted to just like point out the thing that she thought was wrong in the world.

Kind of similar to almost how Marcus, you know, viewed how to spot a change in the world. And so her POV on personal positioning and how to. Use that both within your, your own career and how to pivot and then also implemented into your work and where the personal positioning of your product and, and brand can be.

And I really like what she said about being able to pivot. She has says this a couple of different ways, but you know, she says, write your purpose in pen, but your path in pencil and allow for the story to change both for your personal career and how, how you're integrating it in for your product as well.

Because it's important to allow that evolution to happen. So, she is a big fan of like, always re evaluating and making sure that everything's working and on a regular [00:33:00] basis. And if you don't follow her, kill her follow on LinkedIn for PMM camp. Tamara, we're big fans. And that was, yeah, just really, really resonated for that kind of zoom out look and see how How all the things connect and integrate the story throughout.

Tamara Grominsky: So the last few years, I've really been thinking a lot about what is the intentional story I want to tell when I talk about Samarit. You know, and that's where personal positioning comes in. So, My talk is really about how to define your path. And I love this sentence I have, which is basically like, write your purpose in pen, but your path in pencil.

And so I'm going to be talking to folks a little bit about like, get clear about where you want to go, but don't over index on that, you know, allow yourself to kind of navigate there. But as part of that, we really need to identify like, what is your next best step to get there? Like, what's the next direction you need to move in?

And that's where personal positioning comes in because If you cannot position yourself either internally to get access to the right [00:34:00] projects or promotion externally, to maybe get a new job opportunity, if you're interviewing, or even you think externally to get a speaking spot or whatever it might be, you're never going to stand out.

Steve: I think that's so true, particularly for product marketers, because The role of a product marketer often is different depending on the company you're in, the size of the company, the maturity of the company. You know, are they an early, early stage or late stage? Are they an enterprise? Are they a mid-market?

And, and often a product marketer's role, even though they do lots of things, they tend to spend, spend more time on, on maybe the sales side of the house versus the marketing side. Or maybe they're working more closely with the product teams driving, uh, news about new innovations into the market. So I think that sure.

Kind of pencil your path and be flexible as a product marketer, because I, that's just the nature of our job, how to be adaptable and fit into a company where, where they're most needed.

Molly: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Steve, any thoughts on [00:35:00] revisiting? I know you were the one that was going to revisit your own episode 70.

What did you think listening back? I know we'll let, I just want to read out what we titled it. Steve Earl on the work before your presentation, starting line. Any reflections on

Steve: what we talked about? It was like a long time ago.

Molly: I know, it was, Ken. And look at us now.

Steve: Look at us now. 71 episodes.

Molly: I know.

Steve: That's crazy. You know, I think the key takeaway, you know, and I still believe this is all this talk about presentations, you know, that episode particularly was about the most important work that happens happens before you write the first slide. That was sort of the key takeaway in my point in that, that particular podcast.

One of that is, you know, sometimes this is pretty obvious, but understanding your audience, obviously kind of who you're presenting to. And Mikey, I think early on in this podcast, you talked about the gift, right? That is a [00:36:00] gift. When we present gifts at, at, you know, at different times of the year, we think about what the receiver of the gift needs or wants, right?

And the best gifts are those that really, you know, fit with what the, the person you're giving the gift to is interested in. So this presentation is the same, right? Understanding your audience, understanding their plans, all those things that product marketers know. Yeah, is, is, is something that should be really clear before you start that first slide.

Secondly, know what you're trying to achieve, right? And then work backwards from that. So yeah, there's a lot of things before you even write that first slide about your audience and your, I guess, the outcomes you want to achieve. That you should be really clear about and not just you, you know, talk with your stakeholders, talk with your, you know, um, your colleagues, your managers about, do I understand the audience?

And quite often I've found when managing teams that I start with these questions, you know, and the person in my team or the person I'm helping doesn't really have a clear picture of the. [00:37:00] The who or the why, and without that, I think, you know, the chances of giving a gift that, that is well received, you know, is, is, um, fall short a little bit.

So that, that was sort of the, the key part. I think the second half, it kind of gets into one of the storytelling is call it the what and the how, sort of the ingredients that will ultimately go into the story itself. You know, I think I quoted, I pulled it from the podcast that Seth Godin said, marketing is no longer about the stuff you make.

But about the stories you tell, how part of the prep is all about the ingredients that'll shape that story. And, and my advice to all product marketers is to figure this out and get it validated by your stakeholders before you even start, you know, crafting slides.

Molly: Steve, what I loved about your episode, and we get into it with people that have a take or a unique POV on different formats, but it's kind of that execution.

It's like one thing to say, like, yeah, interview your story. Make it work for the audience and the context, but there's some amazing tips on execution and really setting that [00:38:00] up, especially if you've never done that before. So definitely revisit episode 70 or, you know, check out the Ghost Ranch vlog where we have the whole series on your slide zero perspective.

But there's some really, we love, Mikey, I like your phrase, we're not a framework, we're framework agnostic. So we love a different tool because they work for, different tools work for different people. So try out a bunch of different kinds, but if you're kind of looking for a fresh one or you need some new inspiration.

Go revisit episode 70 with Steve.

Mikey: I would say, must listen episode. And the fact that Steve coined the term, slide zero,

Music: and it's like such a

Mikey: brilliant term. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. Like first, before you dive into this pitch, like tell me what you're trying to say again, especially if you're, you know, it's someone on your team who's looking for guidance.

You got to have a strategy in place. So

Music: yeah,

Mikey: love the term slide zero and all the work that kind of came out of it. So a great man named Steve Earl also once said. Half of the battle is selling internally, right? Getting buy in, something like that. Steve, I think you put [00:39:00] it way cooler than that, but question to y'all, Molly, Steve, how many presentations do you think occur like externally versus internally at a company?

I'm sure it depends on the industry, the type of the company.

Molly: Yeah. I, yeah, well, I'd be so curious to know, to see like a ratio diagram of that, like depending on what kind of company, how many are internal versus external. I would imagine that like really big companies where there's tons of internal teams that all want to get aligned on story and narrative that there's probably quite a few internal and then maybe just a few outputs for like bigger public keynotes.

But that's just my initial.

Steve: I would say more internal than external.

Molly: Yeah, more internal than external.

Steve: At least that's my experience and would love to hear.

Mikey: Yeah. Well, hey, well, so Jen Jones, Chief Marketing Officer at Commerce Tools, she was on the pod for episode 60. I think the title of the product marketing life one that we had her on was empathy, networking and storytelling, the three keys to product marketing success.

[00:40:00] So the story that I reminded Jen of when she was at Oracle. Was like the first time I saw her name in my inbox was for a request for a battle card. And at the time I was like, what the hell is a battle card? You know, I was like, and so it turns out product marketers do something called sales enablement.

And which means they, they help the sales team speak to, you know, any given situation and ultimately prepare them to sell products. And so a battle card is this really dense one or two page sheet. Of things that they might hear and ways that they can or should respond to it. And they can get, as you can imagine, maybe it, uh, a single solution kind of like outfit, it's kind of easy.

Like there's, I sell this one gadget and this is what I, how I speak to it. But if you're at a selling, you know, a large portfolio of many products with many bells and whistles to variety of personas, that battle card can get really And we talked [00:41:00] about Jen, like, Jen, why do you take These internal materials so seriously and I love just kind of listening to her response because she actually did remember.

She's like, I remember that battle card. So We'll let will kind of run this.

Jen Jones: So I think it comes from a, a standpoint of having some empathy that it's easier for people to retain and learn new information when it's a very consistent, clear format. And I think that's where good design can really come into play.

And using that battle card example, we've all seen terrible examples of battle cards where like the font is eight points and you know, on this competitor the first. Side is all about, you know, what their, what our benefits are against them or how we beat them. But then on this other one, we have a completely different format because we have their latest media clips and, you know, and there's no, there's no consistency there.

So I think if you can create internal materials for your sales team, where they always know if I go to the. You know, page two on the top, right? That's where I'm going to get my top three key points. And it just makes it [00:42:00] easier to consume, to remember. We're not asking them to remember facts. We're asking them to remember format and have it at their fingertips for when they need it.

So I think that's an example of where good design can really help make complex and voluminous information more consumable.

Mikey: So there was Jen Jones says it so well, just like that, that sheer empathy for the seller is what I think separates. Jen from so many others in marketing and product marketing is just like acknowledging that holy cow, these sellers do not have an easy job, especially in a really complicated tech space.

So. Trying to acknowledge that they'll have a better time if we can come up with a really consistent, easy to use design format. And so I think it's one of the, the first people we've had on who actually talks about not just like how something looks, but how something functions. And I think that is just such a critical distinction.

And once again, thanks to Jen for, for being so smart, so empathetic and then sharing that, that genius with the [00:43:00] greater community.

Molly: Yeah, well, guys, what an incredible playlist we have here of the best of PM so far on Presentation Thinking. I'm wondering before we get into the Spice Cabinet, if we have some, just want to call out the emerging patterns from all, uh, let's see, 10 of these, these episodes that we've had so far.

Steve: Mm hmm. Are we throwing some? Throw

Molly: them out there. Throw it out,

Steve: Steve. I would start with And I think we saw this a lot at the Product Marketing Alliance events that we were at. I think that the concept of storytelling is gone from being a buzzword to actually being an effective tool for product marketers or anyone that's, you know, doing presentations.

I think storytelling is the way to deliver a message. I think it's,

Molly: Mm

Steve: hmm. Yeah,

Molly: for me it's like storytelling is beyond that buzzword isn't just a buzzword it informs everything for your from your presentation to the materials you use and it's [00:44:00] like the way you talk to your salespeople it just is like that glue that really holds everything together.

And helps de silo a lot of things, if that's an issue that your company is having.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: It's that connector.

Mikey: That's, I think, same deal here, it's, it's, I think these product marketers, who happen to be presentation thinkers, are the ones who zoom out and see the greater context for any type of message they're trying to deliver.

And it goes back to a lot of the fundamentals of what Steve proposed in slide zero. It's having that understanding of when, where, and who this is going to, you know, like be played to what's after that, you know, and, and just thinking really strategically, not just about this one off like moment, but how it all works together.

Molly: And think about like your, I think the other kind of interesting piece of this too, that's emerging is that the pathways to product marketing are so varied and have, you know, good storytelling is authentic and plays off of like [00:45:00] good communication and soft skills. And based off of experience too. So.

Utilize and leverage whatever story you have so that you can implement that into your work, you know, not to have blur the lines of bad boundaries between work and life, but just to understand that, like, good storytelling starts with, like, your personal experience and like, you know, how they, that first rule of writing, they say, tell the truth.

So what can be truthful? Name the truth, name the change in the world. There's a lot of ways to kind of. I think like look inwards on your personal journey and certainly we always think it's interesting to ask that question, right, Maggie? First thing when people get on, we're like, how'd you land here? No one's studying product marketing.

So I think that's just a really interesting pattern to kind of look into.

Mikey: Yeah. Was it Jen Jones? She studied neuroscience or something and you know, we

Molly: got like such a background. Yeah.

Mikey: Yeah. Yeah.

Molly: Editing, publishing, journalism, media, rocket and roll, like, you know, Harvey Lee's working with ACDC. Yeah. Yeah.

That was a pretty good one. In London. It's incredible. So it's just really cool to see. [00:46:00] And then of course, of course, build for the audience, build for the context, cater, cater, cater, cater. Once the story is down, that's

Mikey: always shows up. Let's go into the spice cabinet, because I want to, I want to talk about some spices that we may encounter in London.

Cause the three of us. Three best friends, we're going to London, product marketing summit, what, early December?

Music: Yeah.

Mikey: Yeah. Steve, you used to live there for like four or five years? I did, yeah. Alright, alright. What are like three things that we must do or eat or drink while we're in London? Some spices

Molly: we might encounter.

Steve: Uh, well, spice is the right word. I know Molly loves a good Indian dish. You can't get an Indian food outside of India. Yeah,

Molly: yeah,

Steve: of course. Wine for me is, boom, Indian meal.

Molly: I can't wait. I'm so excited. Yeah. Dishoom is my favorite in London, but it's been a year, so I'm open to, open to, uh, recommendations.

Steve: I don't think you can go wrong, but we'll find a good

Mikey: one.

Steve: I can't wait. Yeah.

Mikey: I'm excited. PMMs, if you're [00:47:00] going to be out in London, December 4th and 5th, you're Be sure to come say hi. We'd love, we'd love to see you.

Steve: And bring your best Indian restaurant. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely.

Molly: And also to plug, if you have a product marketer in your life on your team, or if you are that product marketer that you think, especially after revisiting some of these like epic quotes and stuff on, on our best of product marketing playlist, we would love to talk to them.

We'd love to learn from them. We learn with everyone. It's great networking, so please don't hesitate to reach out Molly at ghostranch. com as always. Let us know.

Mikey: And you'll get to come share with the world what your walkout song is. Which is super important,

Molly: which speaking of, I know all three of us have shared various walkout songs on the podcast in the past, which makes this a very difficult segment to align for.

But in the context of product marketing, what do we think like? What do we, maybe what do we think is the best product marketing walkout song?

Mikey: I, I do remember a few of theirs, like, Jen Jones [00:48:00] was Metallica, Ride the Lightning. And I think of course, uh, Chris Lynch was, uh, uh, Phish, like Tweezer Reprise or something like that.

Those are the ones I, I remember distinctly.

Molly: Such a range.

Mikey: Well, mine was sort of, How We

Steve: Should Feel.

Molly: Yeah. Beautiful day by you two. I had that out. Beautiful day. Beautiful

Steve: day. By you two. That's the way we should be feeling. Totally good .

Molly: Yeah. Always happen.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: We've had such a range.

Mikey: Was Harvey, was Harvey's bad Outta hell? Oh for sure. Yeah. HCC Yeah. It was. It was.

Molly: And she was, was Taylor Swift. You know, we had, we had such a mix Yeah. Of current pop and success and still good storytelling.

Tomorrow is walking on sunshine.

Mikey: Oh yeah. She nailed it. Casey

Molly: and That was Garrett,

Mikey: who was, was his bony bear or something? I forget who said that one. It was like, Oh man, you could put everyone to sleep. He took it

Molly: down a notch. Yeah. [00:49:00] But that's, that's, I'm a big Boney Bear fan, but that's, I, it was a Midwest thing, yeah.

Yes, yeah