Go Bold with Competition Like a Sybill PMM

25:32And so I think that would be the coaching component for me is like making sure whatever you're doing, you need to have both of those components for your competitive strategy. Most of the time, the top of funnel one is the one that's missing. We've got battle cards. We've got landing pages. We don't have anything that we do publicly that kind of stokes the interest in the conversation to begin with. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so So if you said, so if step one, coming back to our little playbook that I'm outlining here, if you said step one was that to be clear on your differentiation and step two, you talked about agitating the customer's pain from using the competitor's product.

26:09And then would step three be kind of like, I guess at least outlining what that funnel would look like? Yeah, I think so. I think maybe the best way to put it is to create a full funnel, competitive motion to make sure that if you're amplifying, I think that's, that really is that second step is kind of about the top of funnel and making sure you have somewhere to lead all of that interest and intrigue. So if you're top of funnel, you're amplifying the dissatisfaction, the bottom of funnel, you're kind of, you're proving why you're different. You're actually showing, showing why you're different.

26:43It's, it's the, it's the receipts, if you will, you know, you've, you've, you've made claims. How do you actually like prove and make good on, those claims. Yeah. I really appreciate the way that you're articulating the funnel is thinking about it from a customer journey, but also how they are going through their own decision tree of the David versus the Goliath, the Sybil versus Gong. It's a really helpful way to think about how to build a funnel and how the story unfolds. I think that's a helpful way to think about it. Well, thanks. Honestly, it's been late adopted for me because I really do think most product marketers, we specialize more toward the bottom.

27:25We're close to the product. We think through all the use cases. We've got product explainers and story lane, interactive demos. I think for me, this is where Sybil, being a leaner team where it's like we're a very small marketing team, it's forced me to think through that whole journey. Yeah, yeah, okay. And now I want to go back to, I had a question for you earlier about some comments that you made and some of the examples that you've given on these viral posts that you've done, right? So they're quite bold. I have so many questions about this. Oh, please. How do you do the gut check of, is this too far?

28:06How do you know whether you're crossing the line of like, no, this is bold. This is my conviction versus like, okay, now this is just getting offensive. Not that you've crossed the line. I think you've done actually a really nice job of being as bold as possible while still, what I would say, is maintaining strong conviction in your beliefs. And of course, it's your product, but as you said, you have the receipts to prove it. So I guess talk about how you flirt with that line. Yeah, I think there's a couple of considerations. I mean, any product marketer thinking about this, you have to think about just your team culture and your brand and like, what is your company okay and not okay with?

28:54I'm fortunate enough that like Sybil is a very high, I've never been in a more high autonomy role. Like I report to our CEO. He gives myself and drew a ton of trust, a ton of leeway and a lot of just like, I trust your intuition. And we also knew we wanted to stand out to, we wanted to shape a brand that was spiky in its point of view and stood out and was not. I think the sales tech stuff can get really lost in the sauce with like very, I don't know, jargony sort of language. So like there was like org wise, okay, this checks out. Like you can't just start doing this if it doesn't, if it's not actually like approved and part of the culture.

29:33But then getting down to these like specific tactics, I think there were kind of two very basic filters that I ran. one, is this critique or this competitive tactic actually rooted in the truth about their product and our product? Like, I just, that was like an honest question I asked, like, all right, is even let's take the gong rap thing. I looked through like, is this true? Like, am I saying anything that is actually inaccurate about the product? And that was, I think I deemed that I wasn't. And the comments seemed to affirm that because there was, my comments were full of people being like this was dead accurate.

30:09Like there was a lot of, I think someone commented like, where's the lie on this? And so I think one, that was like a litmus test. And then the second one is I do think it still is possible to overdo it. And so we were, I was talking internally of like, Hey, I'm, I have this idea where I'm going to buy a gong shirt and I'm going to announce on April Fool's day that I'm switching to gong. And we were just like deciding like, should we do it? And we asked like, well, how long ago was it the last time we took like a big swing and we realized the gap between gong wrapped and april fools was six months it's like it is like all right at this rate we're like yeah at this rate we were on part for two like a biannual big swing and like okay this is not all the time it might feel all the time and social might make it feel that way just because there's no one else's not a lot of people are doing this but those were kind of my two litmus tests of like are we doing this too much?

31:05Because we can't only be known as the anti-gong. And then is this based in truth? Like, is there truth about our product that backs this up? Because yeah, if I just say something that's true about the whole category and we're not an exception, then what are we doing here? Versus, or if I'm making up something that is not actually proven true about their product, I don't want to be caught saying that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So helpful to have kind of the filter test before you actually go viral with something. Now, on a similar note, you are choosing to use your personal profile on LinkedIn to launch these.

31:42It's not coming from the Sybil page, which is, as all company pages are, a faceless page. It's coming from Colin Majak. And there has been even debates about this at conferences and everything of that founder-led marketing and using the founder or someone else in the company to help articulate point of view on social media. So I guess talk a little bit about what that decision was like. Was that intentional or did it kind of just start with you being vocal and then it evolved into now you have conversations with your, I think you said your BDR before you actually post something so that it can get into your funnel and which becomes, you know, now a strategic channel.

32:28So I guess talk a little bit about that and like maybe some of the risks and limitations versus, you know, the positive outcomes for you personally. Yeah. So I didn't, I'll say out the gate, I did not set out for my LinkedIn to become a key channel for Sybil. I think it started from just even in terms of how started is that I really like creating content about product marketing in a very like build in public sort of way. Like this is what I'm working on and kind of have done that in varying degrees, depending on the org and how comfortable they are with me sharing. But this sort of started in that, like the, the gong wrapped post, for example, technically six different accounts in the civil carousel mine took off and i think i have some theories on why some of the talia heller actually did a write-up of the whole tactic and she had a hypothesis on why and i think i think she was probably right but i sort of it was sort of part of me like stumbling into oh like there's something about when i attach my face to this and i actually like in a very faced way to be the antithesis of like a civil page, like not faceless, but like, it's me, it's Colin.

33:45I think that draws people's attention in a unique way. And I'm at a spot where I recognize there's pros and cons to it. So like a potential risk here is I got a, I got a direct outreach DM yesterday where someone, they hit like the first thing they said was, Hey, Mr. Gong hater, H number eight, R Gong hater. and then literally someone else was like, oh yeah, I've seen a lot of your content. The whole quote, gong fight me thing is really working for you guys. These are two DMs in the last 48 hours. So the cons are like, am I becoming known as this person who's just picking a fight with gong? That's a potential risk that you take.

34:28The pros are though that I think in a lot of ways, product marketers are uniquely positioned to become the face of the product because they know the message better than anyone. and they know the product better than everyone. Or ideally, they know what matters and how to communicate that product better than anyone. And so I think it has naturally sort of worked where yes, people associate the gong things, but I'm also like constantly posting product updates about Sybil. Like if you look back, like most of it is just classic product marketing of like talking about the product and how it works and what our thinking was.

35:00That's what I've noticed. Yeah, totally. Yeah, there's these moments. With your content, right. Yeah, the moments that get more traction and heat. but I do think that this partially worked because a person was tied to. I don't think it has to be your product marketer. I think picking someone though goes a long way. So like a good example is a company Pylon. They're in the customer success space, actually kind of a similar tool, but in that category. And they very vocally, they're I think series B, series A, series B startup. They very vocally compete against Zendesk to the point where their CEO had the headline on LinkedIn where it said, building the Zendesk killer.

35:42And I think that worked for them. I think they are another kind of example of they came along, they picked their Goliath, they used the luxury that they had of being a smaller brand and were vocal. And then they attached a person to it. So the CEO ended up being the embodiment. For me, it just, I think, worked for my personality. and even I think product marketers tangent, I think product marketers are an interesting, they can be a user of Sybil. They're not like the person we sell to, but like every product marketer I know who has access is like, this thing is so sick. So anyway, it was a little bit of a, a little to quote our friend Bob Ross, it was a little bit of a happy accident, a happy little tree of an accident that I became this kind of face of the brand.

36:26I do think you have to have a face. It just, if you're going to make bold claims to your competitor, It's almost like there's a certain courage of not being a coward. Like someone has to own that. I completely agree. That's exactly what I was going to say. I'm glad you mentioned that. Like having the courage to be bold requires a person's name and face behind it. Yeah. And I think I'm okay with the risk because I stand by the approach I've taken. And there's a risk that someone would say, I would never hire Colin because he was way too aggressive with Gong. I probably wouldn't do this play in every company.

36:58Again, it has to be the right company. right company. You have to be in that kind of hierarchy where they're bigger than you and you're smaller. You have to have a precedent for switching. There's got to be real frustrations you can speak to. But for me, it's proven to be worth it. Got it. Okay. So taking us back to our playbook, we have step one to make sure that you are very clear on your differentiation. differentiation step two was to lean into the customer's frustration with their competitor step three was to build out that full funnel kind of narrative and um maybe not necessarily all every single tactic because as you um you know pointed out sometimes it's just opportunistic and you go with it and then what's kind of wrap us up here like i feel like maybe we kind of got into it a little bit with using you as the person leading it on the social side.

37:58But how do we wrap this all up? Yeah, I think the simplest way to put it would be to put a face on it. Someone has to own it. And if you're a product marketer and you're thinking about the distribution here, it does not have to be you. It can be. For me, it worked out for it to be. Depending on if you have someone, say you're selling to salespeople, if we had the right salesperson in our org who wanted to be kind of this persona public, it could have been them. Or if you sell the customer success, you could have your CSM be this person. And you can find sort of that person. But I think someone tying their face to the whole thing just helps.

38:36It gives a credibility to the whole thing. And people, now people, the kind of psychological element of this is people will see Gong stuff and they will remember their, they will feel a personal connection to me and they will feel like a sense of discontent or frustration at gong just because of yes and that's like you can't do that you can't tap into that if there's not a person because there people feel way more disproportionate loyalty to people than they do to a brand yes yes i'm so glad you called that out yeah there's so much psychological um you know, just facts like coming out of it's using a strategy like this.

39:17I'm sorry, I cut you off. You were going to. No, that's exactly it. It's just using, I think that psychology plays to place your benefit, you know, and again, didn't set out for it, kind of stumbled a lot of this by accident, but I would recommend it. It was a lot of learning as we go. Again, I've never ran anything this aggressive, so it was, I was learning it. And I'd had, didn't know a lot of people who had ran as aggressive of campaigns. There's a lot of learning. Oh, of course. And I feel like with anything that's bold and new, there's going to be learning. The other thing that I was thinking that, again, if you're coaching me through this and I'm trying to run this thing for the first time, I would want someone, whoever's faces behind making these big, bold, sharing these big, bold narratives, I would want their personality to match.

40:06because it couldn't, like if someone was, you know, just had a different temperament and just it wasn't kind of, you know, in their nature to, you know, make some really big, bold, I don't even want to say digs, but like, you know, to lean into some of those, to some of that friction that you might have, like with, you know, another brand. Some people feel uncomfortable being in that position. So I think like to, and you might've mentioned this already, or maybe you mentioned it on our prep call, but finding someone who has the personality fit to share the bold narrative, I think is a really important part of success when you're picking the person who's kind of running some of these.

40:51Totally. I think for me, it just sort of worked out that I like a little bit of conflict. And it's probably dopamine-seeking behavior of some sort, but I like it. I think the whole thing is exciting and fun. So it worked. There are other people who like the idea of this public conflict. Like for example, my wife could never, she's not a product marketer, but this is like, would not be her cup of tea. Um, and I think just being honest about that, if that's not you, then you're, you shouldn't be the person to do this, but there probably is someone, if your CEO honestly doesn't believe in the product enough to be this way, it's like, well, you might have bigger problems.

41:25Um, or if someone at the executive level doesn't believe in the products enough to kind of be that way, you have bigger problems, but someone, if it's not you, it can be someone who's comfortable with that, has a tolerance for that kind of conflict. Yes. Yes. So we need someone with really deep conviction, so deep that they, if they weren't originally comfortable with conflict, they will be. Yeah. And it's, it's so funny calling it conflict, like that. This is the most drama thing. It's like, let's be real. We are selling software to other people who are selling software to other people selling software.

41:58It's like, none of this is that serious. Completely agree. I'm so glad you said that. I don't know. I like to remind myself that if I stop selling Sybil, nobody dies. You know, like this is a... Yeah. I'd call it more like friction than conflict to me. You know, it's a little bit of like, oh, I don't want to offend you. Your product's not good. You know, like it's... Yeah. Which people in other streams do this all the time. It's just like B2B, we're not used to this level of, I don't know, it's like almost, there was like a, there was a really popular rule once upon a time of like, I still hear it.

42:33It's like, don't talk about your competitors. It just gives them attention. And I could not disagree with that take more, particularly in our position. I think, again, flip it. Gong should not give any of their public time to us. They shouldn't, because they have the upper hand. When you have the, when you do not have the upper hand, it would be a miss to not take that opportunity. Yeah. Yep. Totally great. Okay. Last question for you on this topic, Colin. What's one piece of advice that you would want PMMs to walk away with who are trying to go bold with a competitive strategy like this? My advice would probably be to push the boundaries.

43:15I mean, even as we were hinting at before, the boundaries are so tame, actually. When you think about what people are often doing in this space and the stuff that causes like stirs up gossip or controversy and controversy and b2b i would say one pushing that limit and i think second is to take the opportunity that you uniquely have like if you are in this spot you have a unique opportunity your competitor does not and i would highly recommend you you take it it's this is it's it's it's not just a uh it's not just being aggressive for aggressive sake it's a strategy play an advantage that you have that they do not have that I think is really valuable to take that opportunity.

43:57Absolutely. Yeah. Why wouldn't you want to run every opportunity you can to try to get ahead? You know, I would not, you know, obviously not in ways that are ethical and good, but maybe in three words, maybe in three words, the advice is just go for it. Go for it. I love that. Like actually go for it, like do the competitive campaign, do the idea, the unhinged idea that started in Slack, which is how some of these started. So good. Well, thank you so much. This was such a good case study. I'm really eager to hear how some of the listeners put it into practice. So if any listeners out there are executing on something similar, come back.

44:36Tell us how it went. Yes, please message me if you do. All right, okay. So now it's time for the next segment of the show. This is the messaging critique. So this is where we as product marketing experts get to analyze real-world messaging. And the fun part is, Colin, as the guest of my show, you get to pick the company or campaign that we are looking at today. Very quickly, I'm going to outline some ground rules. So first, we're going to pick a company where you understand the target audience really well. Wouldn't be fair for me to analyze messaging on a company that I know nothing about, and I don't know who their target audience is.

45:12So who am I to say whether or not their messaging is effective or not? And then we're going to talk about what's working really well, what's not working at all. and how you'd iterate on it. What advice do you have to the PMM out there to take it to the next level? So without further ado, yeah, please reveal the company that we're looking at today. So I've already talked about them on this call, but I am going to talk about Zendesk. So if you don't know Zendesk, Zendesk is in the customer support space. They have a platform where you can take in customer support tickets, resolve those tickets. And they ran a campaign, I think this was like two or three weeks ago, where this was their headline.

45:52Want to talk to a human? Call your mom. Self-improving AI agents are here. That was the, that was this whole. No. Yeah, we'll call it from henceforth the call your mom campaign. And so that's the campaign. And it was trying to support their AI agents launch. Um, I have my thoughts. What are yours? Okay, I'll start with the positive. I want to follow the rules of what I what I love might be strong. But the positive is the there's a very clear establishing of the alternative. Like they are saying there are there's human customer support. And there are agents like these are the two options. And they are making a case that these self improving AI agents are the better option.

46:47And I do think there's a lot of product marketing that doesn't even name the alternative. And I think even for them, the competition is the alternative in some strange ways. I would probably more the old way of doing it. That's the positive. They've established the alternative. That's actually a really good point. I didn't think about that the first time that I looked at this, and I think you're right. And okay, all right. I mean, it's easier to roast than it is to compliment. So I have my feelings on where we need to maybe make some changes. You're right. That's totally fair. I appreciate that line of thinking.

47:26Okay. So that's what's working well. What is not working well here? So I think there were a couple areas where this misfired. The first one is just customer sentiment. I think the risk they make here is trivializing or minimizing their customers. So their customer is CS people, the people that you would talk to if you had a problem with the product. And there's kind of this like trivializing and almost mocking of that person that I think is a miss, not intended, but I think is a miss. Yeah. I was going to say, I don't think it was intended, but I totally, yes. The second layer I think is an end user sentiment.

48:05I think most people actually still want to talk to humans. Like a lot of people like talking to humans when they have a problem. And so I don't think the right angle is mocking that desire. That is like, that's what the market wants, whether you like it, Zendesk, like that's what a lot of people actually still do prefer. And so mocking, it's probably not the answer. And then I think the third one is probably the, but maybe the one of the bigger issues is just like the sensitivity and, and timing of this is that this campaign launched like two or three weeks before mother's day. And I think even like some of the best brands like Kroger did this recently where like Kroger sent an email where that was a couple of weeks ago that said, Hey, would you like to opt out of mother's day communications?

48:53And they basically said, mother's day is hard for some of us. Do you want to opt out? And I think the same problem would have existed if they said, call your dad. But I do think people have complicated relationships with their parents. People have complicated relationships to Mother's Day. And they stacked those two and managed to hit both of them at the same time, which to me feels just like miss, miss, miss across the board. Yeah, I totally agree. And just to, I think the part that probably, and I might be speaking to this from my own sensitivity. My mom passed away not too long ago. So I can't, thank you.

49:35Yeah, I can't call my mom. And which takes me completely away from whatever message they were trying to communicate. and that's um if i'm look i found that um after we you know we're chatting about this earlier i found the one of the and also if it's still around i'll put it in the in the um in the show notes but i found it looks like maybe zendex has removed the post but someone screenshotted it yeah so but i couldn't find the original post yeah but i have so i've got the screenshot so it'll be in the show notes but um that's exactly what other people had commented on that like you know as you pointed out some people have complicated you know associations with mother's day and it's just really yeah it's just it almost it feels like either someone was um you know who was ever putting this campaign together they were trying to go really bold with the naming the alternative as as you were pointing out, but maybe didn't have some of those filters that you talked about in your own playbook of going bold.

50:45So what advice or how, if you were kind of coaching the PMMs here, how would you help them? How would you help redirect, I guess, kind of the good intentions they had? I think if I were trying to do the same launch and I wanted to keep the alternative, I think I would try to keep that clear alternative, but I would totally change the tone and message and do some like playful self-deprecation. So probably the way I would do it is something like, hey, this is Susan. Everyone, she runs your customer success team. Everyone loves Susan. But Susan can't be everywhere at once. So when there isn't Susan, there are self-improving AI agents to handle all of your customers' needs.

51:27That's the angle that I would take. Like I would actually flip it and say, like, lean into the fact that people like talking to humans and you just name the obvious limitation that's there. You've not attached. I would leave the mothers out of this. That's a good rule of thumb in general of marketing. Unless you, yeah, is don't, don't, don't bring people's moms into it. And I think I would, I would change the whole tone where it's still like, it could be charming and still name that alternative and even elevate your customers. because they're like, oh yeah, I see myself in Susan. For us, our Susan is Sarah.

52:02Our customers freaking love Sarah.

52:06I think Zendesk could come along and say, we're not trying to change that. Totally. Susan's one person. When Susan's not available, you have these AI agents who can handle it. You know what I really love about that idea? And I hope Zendesk hears this episode and takes this idea and then pays us for it. Cheers. Right? Yeah. I need a little extra side stuff. So what they should do to just iterate on your idea even further is to pick real customers that they have who are really incredible at their jobs and then do full-on profiles about them featuring why they're so good at their job. You could have feedback or quotes from some of their peers.

52:51You know what I mean? So it's just like a love shower on that person. Yeah, you can feature 10 different customer success people. It's zendesk.com slash Henry. Zendesk.com slash Susan. And you have pages for all of them. Yes, yes. And it could even be like, we're not kidding. Susan really is a bad A. And you could get, I mean, of course, approved from the customer and the customer's company. But you could show how, oh yeah, she's gotten 10 promotions in the last 10 years of her career. She's gotten this, this, and that, and this award, and this achievement, and the proof behind why she's so amazing.

53:31That way, now you have something that your customers want to share. So it'll help your campaign about your self-improving AI agents. I mean, I don't know if it'd go viral, but it would certainly be something that would leave your customers feeling, as you said, a stronger attachment to. and if we use more of your playbook from earlier you talked about putting a face behind some of these bold claims that you're making and then people then build up these loyalties to the person it's obviously a little bit different because we're not using one person we're using lots of people that's a bit more personalized but then their audiences are going to be more loyal to that person oh 100 % well I can picture the comment section too when they launch it and everyone from that company is like, oh, Susan, we love her.

54:18Yes, exactly. I'm not surprised at all. She's amazing. Yeah, 100%. All right, Zendesk, your move. Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. My Venmo is like... Just kidding. Just kidding. Okay, seriously though, Zendesk, we have some really good ideas for you, so please let us know what you think. yeah I would love it if Zendesk came in sorry for the harsh words earlier if you hear this I know you guys had your own backlash I think from the comment section I think it was well intended I don't think the intention was to be you know I mean again to like the what was good about it is the copy was clear it was like self-improving AI agents is understandable enough at least in my opinion and then like they had very like colloquial copy.

55:12They were trying to be bold. I get all that. Totally. Yeah. It's okay. There's opportunity to correct and we just gave you a really golden idea. So I hope you go with it and pay us for it. All right. So Colin, one thing that I like to make space for on this podcast is a moment of gratitude because as product marketers, we never get to where we are in our careers alone. We're always learning and growing and building off of one another. And frankly, we're all better for it. So before we wrap up, I just want to say genuine thank you for coming on the show and sharing your insights and all the effort and work that you put into prepping for this episode.

55:49I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you. This was fun. Yeah, and in turn, I would love to hear some shout outs from your perspective. Some amazing PMMs who have shaped the awesome PMM that you are today. So let's hear it. Who are the shout outs going to? Okay. A couple stand out. One is the godfather of PMM, Jason Oakley. Jason has, from my most baby days as a PMM, just been very consistently supportive and available and extended resources over and over again. So Jason, you're the man. Thank you. He actually helped me get this job at Civil even. So someone reached out to him saying, hey, we're looking for a PMM.

56:36So good. And Jason referred me. So I literally would not be here if it were not for Jason. Oh, so good. And then another one stands out is Julian Sauvage. I see him out cordial now, but came out through product marketing. Again, someone who's just been very available, just like been someone I could call and ask questions about my career and process stuff with and just is a really good dude. And then Tamara Griminski is in that lineup too. Shout out to Tamara. And then my friend Eric Holland, who I text, Eric Holland of We're Not Marketers fame. I text, he and I text like almost daily. So we've just become like real supports.

57:16Like he's given me a lot of courage to be very bold. I bounced the whole April Fool's Day idea. I bounced off of Eric. So shout out to Eric too. Oh, I love that. You've got a team of like mentors and peers who are, who have not only shaped who you are, but are continue to shape who you are and where you're going as a PMM. So, so grateful for that. They are good people too, by the way. All of them, by the way, have gotten shout outs on the show before. Have they? I'm not original. No, no. But like, if that doesn't tell you how awesome they are. I love it. Yeah. All right. Seriously though. Thank you, Colin, so much.

57:55This was such a great conversation. Thanks, Al. Appreciate it. Yeah. And hey, PMM listeners, if you liked this episode, please share it with a PMM friend and I'd be so grateful if you would leave a review. It helps tremendously with our reach. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take in the next step of your own journey.