Sell Trust like an Okta PMM

0:02Hi friends, welcome to Product Marketing Adventures, the only show that takes you beyond theory and into the real execution of product marketing. My name is Elle Grossenbacher, your trusted guide and host of this show. In each episode, I bring in expert product marketers to co-host two segments of this show. First, a case study example of their work, followed by a messaging critique for companies we admire. So if you're a PMM looking for practical guidance and inspiration, you're in the right place. Are you ready? Let's go.

0:41In the world of B2B, moving up market means landing larger, more complex customers. Think like Fortune 1000 or global enterprise accounts. These deals are often high value, high stakes, and come with really long sales cycles. And they're really complex with multi-threaded buying committees. And in my experience from scrappy startups to scaled enterprises, cracking into that world is never easy. It takes way more than just a great product. It takes trust, which brings me to our topic for today, how to build trust with that up market segment to unlock growth. With that, it is my pleasure to welcome Kevin Goff to the show.

1:20So Kevin is one of the most creative problem solvers in the product marketing community. He was the first PMM for what's known today as Google Cloud, where he launched game-changing products like Google Workspaces and Chromebooks for business and education. Since then, he's led category-defining efforts at companies like Okta, Asana, and Grammarly, helping each one to rethink how they show up in the market and build trust with customers. And before all of that, Kevin actually stepped out of college to start a digital accessibility compliance company, which went on to be acquired by KKR in 2022.

1:57Oh, and fun fact, he also sang on the Edward Scissorhands movie soundtrack as a kid. Kevin, I'm thrilled you're here. Welcome to the show.

2:07Kevin Gough:Thanks so much, Elle. Excited to dig in? Yeah, likewise. A little bummed we're not digging into the Edward Scissorhands experience. We'll have to chat about that another time. I know. Well, maybe this will be a good voice warm-up for me. I love it. All right. Well, let's dive right in. I can't imagine anyone would not know this, but just to keep listeners up to speed, can you give a brief overview of Okta for us? Sure. So Okta makes it easy to sign into all your workplace applications. It keeps them secure and makes sure the right people have access to the right applications. Awesome. Thanks. So Okta, of course, is part of the case study that we'll be discussing today.

2:49So with that, the topic that we'll be diving into around that case study is building trust with the upmarket segment. And I'll just say this isn't a fluffy brand topic that I think a lot of marketers may think it is. So for the first segment of the show, let's talk through that case study a bit more. What was going on at Okta when you realized you needed to completely over all the messaging and the go-to-market strategy for that upmarket segment?

3:18Kevin Gough:Yeah, definitely. So first off, you know, it's funny we're on a product marketing show, but this is not a product, right? Trust is not a product per se, but it is something that we are kind of insight was we need to market trust the concept just like we market a product. So some of the same tools and techniques. And so to walk you through what you said, Okta was doing great in the bid market, but we were trying to move up market to really sell to those large enterprises. And Microsoft was our main competitor. They had 20-year relationships. They had earned credibility. Some people had built their careers on it.

3:54Kevin Gough:And so our deals were stalling because our target customers really weren't willing to make the jump to a relatively new vendor. So we really had to gain the trust of the buying committee. And what we did was really a holistic approach. So this was a company-wide initiative. There was something, everything from brand to sales. But the question was, how can product marketing contribute to it? And so that's where we came in and we could walk through some of those activities. And ultimately, the goal was really how do we uplift conversions across the funnel? We actually did a before and after measurement of brand trust scores.

4:31Kevin Gough:So how do we improve those and then increase win rates against Microsoft specifically in that enterprise category? I love that. So, man, talk about going up against a Goliath. Like Microsoft is huge. And while Okta, of course, now has a very respectable brand and really strong recognition in the market, I could imagine how back then, not that that was that long ago, but could have been pretty hard if you're trying to win with those big enterprises. And you mentioned so much that I want to dig into. You talked about how it was a holistic approach and it was a company-wide initiative. And you didn't just slap on, you know, hey, we're secure, some kind of badge, right?

5:10You went so much deeper than that. It sounds like you tackled this from like product, sales, marketing, and potentially even, you know, analysts and so many different angles, all while staying consistent on a core narrative. So I want to dig a little bit deeper on how you landed on this. I guess, like, what was part of that analysis for assessing the situation? Like, why did you why trust was the main core value that you wanted to anchor on as a company?

5:39Kevin Gough:Yeah, certainly. Well, you know, I think it was it was looking at our sales data. And what we saw was we had a superior product. If you even did kind of side-by-side comparisons, people preferred our product capabilities. But we saw just our win rates were not where we wanted them to be. We also did some market research and understood sentiment analysis of Okta compared to Microsoft. And we also looked at some of the claims that competitors were making in the market, claims about uptime or compliance. And we recognized that we weren't really at parity with some of these claims, even though maybe our product could deliver the same amount of compliance or same amount of uptime.

6:25Kevin Gough:So it was really looking at both market signals, but also looking at the state of our product. And we really felt our product was ready for the enterprise. So how do we make market perception match market reality? Got it. Okay. And it sounds like multiple members of the team and potentially even third parties, you did so much analysis and it's analysis from sales and feedback from sales, looking at your win rates. All of that told a story that, hey, we have our product can do this. Our product can solve the problem that the customer has. We just need to step up to the plate so that they can rely on us for the long haul like they can with a big beast like Microsoft.

7:11Kevin Gough:Right. There was I mean, there was kind of a vendor consolidation. Right. People wanted to choose a few strategic vendors. So our idea was how could we be one of the top five vendors that someone chooses to have a long-term and hopefully million-dollar relationship with? Yeah, right. Absolutely. So when you think about it with your team, then focusing on, I guess, product marketing's role moving forward, you have this very compelling assessment with all this data. And the team across the entire, when I say the team, I mean the entire company is rallying around this. What was, I guess, the task at hand just for product marketing?

7:54I guess, how did you get started? What was the big question in your mind? Well, really, it circles back to thinking about trust as a product, right?

8:03Kevin Gough:So if we were to market a product, if we were going to go to market with a product, what are the components of an amazing product launch or product messaging? And taking that, you know, something that's very tangible, like product marketing, and applying it to something that's a little bit less tangible, like trust. So really, it starts just like when you're starting to market a new product with thinking about the buying committee. and who are you actually trying to sell to and what do they actually care about? And that's true for products, but it was also true for trust. So different members of the buying committee, which we had mapped out, from engineering to product to finance and compliance, we realized they had different values or different things that they cared about when you talked about the concept of trust.

8:51Got it. Okay. I want to talk more about the buying committee process. And I feel like it's worth saying again, when you thought about product marketing's role and looking at this non-tangible thing like trust and looking at it as a product, like what's required, that dedication to, I guess, like redefining that experience from the customer's perspective and how the customer may experience what trust looks and feels like. So I would love to now turn this into a playbook and say that I'm a PMM facing some kind of like, maybe it's like late stage friction or trying to move up market, whatever. And I've done that research and benchmarking and that big assessment that maybe you've done or done in partnership with various folks across the team.

9:40And now I'm realizing I need to build out a go-to-market strategy and some messaging around some key value, whether that's trust or quality or even authenticity. Like, where do I start? What's step one? It sounds like mapping something. You started to talk about buying committees, but I don't want to get too far ahead. Like, what's step one?

9:57Kevin Gough:Sure, certainly. So I really think it is about, you know, we all talk about ICP and then firmographics and personas, but it's really understanding as you move up market, especially to the enterprise, there's a broader set of people in the buying committee as compared to mid-market. So one, we were really expanding our buying committee. It might have been different layers within the IT team, not just the directors, but the VPs and the CIOs. It was also expanding cross-functionally. So you had chief compliance officers, for example, and chief legal officers. You had very sophisticated procurement teams.

10:32Kevin Gough:So first we had to kind of map out this broader set of buyers and then that contextualization. So I'll just give you a couple examples. When we talk about trust for the product team, they actually cared about uptime guarantees. So they cared that the product was going to be up 99.99 % of the time. So if they had a big spike in traffic on their brand new Uber competitor, that they wouldn't lose any of those signups. So, you know, that was their kind of definition of trust. Whereas the engineering team actually cared about APIs and API documentation. and let's say if we move from version 1.2 of the API to 1.4, that it wouldn't break any of their code or any of their integration.

11:16Kevin Gough:So that's what they meant by trust. And so we came to realize that different stakeholders really had different metrics for trust. So we really had to contextualize that kind of fuzzy concept and a lot of specificity for the various stakeholders. Yes. And what you're saying makes a lot of sense too, because I think earlier in our conversation, just a few moments ago as we were talking about what does it mean to move up market and what that challenge is. You mentioned that in the up market segment, these companies are really looking for consolidation and they're looking to get more with this idea of best of breed.

11:53And I know we're going to get into more of that a little bit later, but what you're saying, it makes a lot of sense now then to dig deeper into this more complex, sophisticated buying committee and looking at it from each perspective of, you know, how does this person think about trust? And what about this person? It makes a lot of sense. Okay. So let's say as a PMM, I'm, you know, on this journey, and I've accomplished step one, I've done all of the mapping and analysis on that buying committee. What's next? What's step two?

12:22Kevin Gough:Yeah. So step two, I really think is creating, I call it like a trust ecosystem or your ecosystem around your organization. So you've all had seen the cliche of like a used car salesperson saying, hey, trust me or something like that. The reality is your brand, your statements can only go so far. So you need to start to develop and cultivate these third party proof points or very data grounded proof points. So an example would be a product level proof point. So we launched an updated trust.okta.com site that had historical information about our uptime and had an updated guarantee. I think it was three nines instead of two nines.

13:04Kevin Gough:And even that uptime guarantee was something that we had to actually go to bat for internally. So we had to talk to the engineering team. We had to talk to the legal team. We had to talk to the finance team because there were some risks in terms of service level agreements and we might have to credit back some amount of the purchase price if we didn't actually meet those uptime guarantees. So product marketing, we really need to make the case that this would help increase sales and move into the enterprise to offset any financial risk or legal risk that we might be exposing by being more specific in even our uptime, for example.

13:43Yeah, got it. It's so helpful. So there's all kinds of different validation points from maybe third parties that you can look at. I love, by the way, and I know this too, We're going to get into more later, but building out a separate site to house all the strong validation that you're, that you're building makes a lot of sense. And right. It's, it's that trying to say without saying like, don't just take it from us. Like, don't just take my word for it. Okay. So once you get that validation going, how do you take all that work that you've done with the persona and the buy team and put it all together in a story that's, you know, backed by evidence, you know, in addition to that, all that third party data and like, you know, even bringing customers into the net mix?

14:24Like, what's the next step?

14:26Kevin Gough:Yeah, so you know, you raise a good point. So I'd say it's more than just you providing that proof. It's things like any third party certifications you have, you think of FedRAMP or HIPAA type of certifications that we also had to kind of advocate as product marketing to get its brand association. So we actually forged some partnerships in collaboration with partner marketing with other companies who are actually competing with Microsoft. So you think of Box or Slack or Zoom. I think we called ourselves the Velvet Alliance, right? And we were kind of the best of breed. And so we also got some validation of, hey, if someone used Zoom and they liked it, maybe they'd want to use Octa.

15:05Kevin Gough:So that also helped in that kind of trust ecosystem. And then I'd say step three is not just those third parties, but really how to get your customers engaged and really kind of trying to tie your trust points that you're trying to demonstrate with some of the business outcomes that your customer actually cares about. So not about efficiency, but really about those business outcomes and how they're really trusting you to help deliver those business outcomes. I love that. I love that. So it's, there's so many opportunities for the third party component, but then taking what the customer, what's meaningful to the customer and framing of all of your capabilities and, you know, the differentiator of your product, rather than starting with that, starting with, well, what's really meaningful to our customer and their business and what they're trying to achieve.

15:56We do that a lot at Cisco as well, across the company, or at least across marketing. We always frame everything that we're doing around business outcomes for the customer. So I can attest that that is a very effective strategy from a PMM perspective. Okay. So bringing it back to our step-by-step process, we've got mapping and contextualizing. We've got the buyer team. We've got building out the validation points. Maybe that's with third parties and maybe it's with metrics that you can provide with the, like you gave the uptime example. And then we have the bringing customers on board, getting them engaged and really framing the story around their business outcomes.

16:39I guess as you're thinking about all of this, and especially with the validation with third parties and customers, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about analysts. So tell me, what role do analysts play in all of this?

16:56Kevin Gough:Sure, certainly. Well, as you move up market, analysts are increasingly critical. large companies, one, maybe don't have the time to evaluate all the different vendors in an ecosystem. And so they look to their hopefully well-paid analysts to do some of that vetting for them. And there's a little bit of risk mitigation, honestly, too, where you can say, hey, I made this choice because Gartner or Forrester also put them in the leaders quadrants of the magic quadrant. So there's a little bit of bias towards that as well. So I'd say analysts is definitely a long game. My strategy that I've found works well, and also I think works well for the analysts, is you both want to listen and share.

17:39Kevin Gough:So analysts do have a broad-based insights into a market. They're talking with all of your competitors. They're talking with all of your customers. So they can share a lot of insights in terms of product roadmap, differentiation, even things like messaging. They can say, well, this message is dead. People aren't interested in that. So I always want to listen and learn from them up front. But I'm also, to be honest, always planting little seeds, even in those listening sessions, to try to tease out those core bits of differentiation that we have against a competitor, especially one like Microsoft, where they've probably had a long-term lucrative relationship with a Microsoft-type vendor.

18:21Kevin Gough:So I'd say it's a long game in terms of changing vendor perception, but one of the tricks or tips, I would say, is really focus on trying to get a question or two that you can influence in one of the magic quadrants. For example, for Okta, we really did a great job with integrations. We had literally thousands of integrations, which made it very easy to sign in to all these new cloud apps. And that was something that we were much better than our competitors on. So we were successful in getting that question in one of the magic quadrants that really helped improve our score and our perception. And ultimately, we became a leader in the access management magic quadrant.

19:04That's so strategic. So I totally agree. The magic quadrant strategy from a vendor perspective, it starts way before you actually get the questionnaire from Gartner.

19:17Kevin Gough:or, you know, magic quadrant or whatever equivalent. Forest or wave. Yeah. Yeah. IDC. Yeah, all of them. And I think it's so strategic to think about when you plant those seeds and the way that you were able to do it with your differentiators so that you ended up getting your differentiator as a question on the questionnaire as just really smart thinking. Okay. So it sounds like step four would have been like building out that analyst strategy, strategy, which maybe you should, from a timeline perspective, now that I'm thinking about this, you know, some of these things are happening in parallel, right?

19:52It's not like you do one check, then you do the other one check. Like you have to be thinking from a timing perspective, some of these things are happening, you know, either earlier on in the process. I can imagine, for example, like planting those seeds with Gartner. It's an ongoing strategy. You just have to make sure all that goodness that you're doing in the first few steps with like mapping out the buyer team and building out the validation and the customer objectives, right? Like you're bringing that into the analyst strategy, right? Like, is that kind of what you guys did at Okta?

20:24Kevin Gough:Yeah, well, you know, honestly, I think it became a year-long initiative for us because there are things, I mean, you think of some other long lead times, like to do the uptime guarantee, engineering needed to do a little work to get the certifications. we actually had to apply and get audited for SOC type 2 or HIPAA or FedRAMP. So I think that there is, of course, there's some quick wins. I think the customer stories like a JetBlue case study that says they trust us with 1 ,000 flights a day, that's something you can do in a month, whereas some of these other things are longer lead time. So I wouldn't say don't start until you have everything, but I think it's probably going to be a little bit more of a rolling thunder as you're rolling this out.

21:11Yeah. Yeah. Helpful tip. Okay. So once you get all of this strategy in place and you have some of those quick wins, as well as the long-term plan all in place, what does this look like from a customer's perspective?

21:25Kevin Gough:Sure. So I think really to make this or any initiative of successful. It's about how to deputize the entire go-to-market organization. So you're kind of getting the same message across all surfaces. I mean, very explicitly and visually, we read it our website, we chose some really rich purples, you know, and kind of financial services type imagery that said, hey, you know, trust us, we're serious. But it was also about the sales team and giving them a trust playbook with specific assets and collaterals around compliance that they could actually present to customers. It was partnering with the customer success team as well.

22:08Kevin Gough:So how could we give the customer success team information around these enhanced capabilities that might drive improved renewal rates or expansion into areas of the business that they hadn't quite been comfortable trusting Okta previously. So that I think was part of the success was everyone was kind of a trust ambassador for the company. I love that. Everyone was so involved. And when you do that, especially earlier on, as it sounds like you guys did this with building out the go to market strategy, everyone got to, I guess, like see that plan as it was coming to fruition. And And I would be willing to assume that even take part in shaping it.

22:51So then as you go and do that step five of, to use your words, deputizing the entire go-to-market organization, it's not the first time they're seeing or hearing it. As in, I don't know about you, but I've certainly experienced, I would say, even mistakes that I've made, like not looping sales in early enough when I'm building a strategy. And then I go to do some sales enablement and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on. And then I get great feedback, but it's feedback I should have and wish that I would have gotten earlier on. So it's good then because then by the time you go and launch, they're eager, willing, and they have an appetite for this great content that you're putting together like that playbook, the trust playbook you mentioned, which sounds really cool and helpful for the team.