The PMM Summit Series: Coaching Hour with Yi Lin Pei

22:33I actually cover in my job search program as well. And to be honest with you, one of the first things I tell people is be sure whatever you're including is of high quality, because sometimes the portfolio can do you a disservice. Like I might have actually progressed you through the interview if I didn't see your portfolio than if I've had seen your portfolio, right? That is so true. Yes, it can actually be the death of you. Absolutely. So what I generally tell people is don't show the portfolio super early on, but show a project that is most relevant for the hiring manager after you've talked to the hiring manager.

23:08And actually, this happened to me. So I was hiring a candidate in my past job. And I had a candidate who I interviewed who was really great. But when I spoke to him, he just seemed like he was more junior, you know, in terms of experience. I had other candidates with more experience. So I said, you know, I'm going to pass on the candidate. But then after a couple of days, the candidate sent me an email to say, hey, I really enjoyed our conversation. I understand that maybe I didn't fully present myself that well in terms of my experience. But I remember from our conversation, what you mentioned about needing more competitive intelligence for whatever you're trying to build right at the company.

23:43And in fact, I actually am sending you a project where I did some competitive intelligence. And I actually did some messaging comparisons as well. I want you to take a look and see if it might be relevant. I opened the thing. It was one of the most impressive competitive intelligence projects I've ever seen, right? The person did an actual analysis of our key competitors. they actually use SEMrush and did a whole bunch of even traffic analysis of keywords analysis and everything and made real suggestions about how we can improve our messaging. I was like, oh my god, I can take this right now and use it.

24:15Of course, I re-interviewed the candidate and hired him. And he's like my one of my star performers. And we're still very good friends today.

24:22Yi Lin Pei:It's pretty crazy. Okay, so fortunes in the follow up and that candidate was hungry for the opportunity and it shows. Yeah, absolutely. So less is more, right? And only show when you feel extremely confident. Yes. And again, context and targeting, because even in how he followed up, it was well, there was the context was there was well targeted. Okay, so back to your list. I feel like I keep taking us down these tangents. So what's next in your list? I think what's next really here is to once you have done all the bullets, right? And following that format, Make sure the bullets line up with what they're asking for in the job description.

25:03In general, I think about four types of experiences you want to make sure you highlight to have a balanced product marketing, like a full stack product marketing profile. You want to make sure your experiences, some of your experiences talk about inbound work. For instance, research, right? Customer research, market research, or competitive research. You want to make sure they talk about positioning and messaging, storytelling, because again, that's key. you're going to talk about product launches, a go-to-market, right? Outbound, as well as enablement. If you're working for a B2B company, talk about sales enablement, customer success enablement, field enablement in general.

25:39But if you're working more for PLG or B2C type of companies, talk more about working with the demand generation team, campaigns, right? Or product activations, onboarding and things like that, that might be more relevant. So make sure you have a breadth of different things that you can cover. because sometimes I notice people might have very good experiences, but it really skews one direction, right? It might just be like a lot of different product launches. I'm like, you don't need three bullets. I'm talking about three separate product launches. That's kind of repetitive, right? But what might be missing, they're like, oh, I just need to show these amazing marquee projects because in my mind, these are the most brilliant things I've done.

26:17I'm like, that's great. But again, relevancy. Did you talk about something else that's relevant for them, but you don't have, right? So that's important to make sure when you scan, the impression you're giving is that this is a balanced candidate who has a full product market experience and also in the areas where we need the most help. Yes.

26:37Yi Lin Pei:Okay. So last question for you on this topic. It sounds like best advice would be to customize a resume for each job that you're applying to, to make sure that it's truly targeted and has the context needed. But I guess what I'm asking is, is it better to keep your target companies similar so that you have less versions of your resume? Or do I create version after version, after version, after version of my resume? Which one do I do? Or both? That's a great question. You answered yourself. Yeah. And so what I tell people to do is, because you have a really good targeting, where most of your companies, the most companies you're reaching out to generally have a similar profile, you could have one base resume.

27:23So I call it like the master, the mother resume, or whatever you want to call it, right? Where you basically have all the things in there, the most important information and everything. And then for each job, you will create a tailored version. But you should spend no more than 30 minutes max to tailor it because you already have the base resume that should match 80 to 90 % of what the job is looking for. Based on your target company. Exactly. Where people have this problem with customizing is when they are not targeted. If you're targeting one company that is one type and then another one that's drastically different, of course you're going to be spending hours rewriting your entire resume.

28:03That is absolutely not effective nor efficient in landing the jobs you want. So again, step number one before we even talk about resume is targeting and then base resume and then customization.

28:15Yi Lin Pei:This is such a cool breakdown. I think this is so, so helpful. So I want to underline that I'm an impression that I'm leaving with as we wrap up this segment. And that's that your resume should not be a list of tasks. It should be a signal that you curate based on the context and targeted content that you put into your resume. And it should showcase how you think, how you communicate, how you drive impact through the skills that you've accumulated as a product marketer over your career. Is there any like last any lasting things you wanted to mention before you wrap up the segment? I mean, you've covered it.

28:54Whatever you just said, that's exactly it. I think that's the most important thing. Just think about the resume as the movie trailer, reverse engineer, think about what they want, and then how your experience fit in, right? And then apply the techniques and tips we just mentioned, then you're good to go, basically.

29:12Yi Lin Pei:I love it. So huge thank you to you for walking us through this and to our anonymous PMM for being brave and letting us use their resume. It's super valuable. All right. So we're going to move on to the second segment of this special edition podcast episode. This segment is called the coaching hot seat. So Yilan, in this segment, we are going to take a look at real challenges that were submitted from PMMs around the world. And I believe these were submitted specifically for this podcast episode. Is that right? That's right. Yes. Okay. So ahead of this podcast, Yilin and I, mostly Yilin, scouted through the product marketing world and real product marketers submitted their challenges that they're facing every day, but either in their careers or in their job search.

30:08Yi Lin Pei:And Yilin spent tireless hours scouring through the submissions to select what she felt like were going to be the most useful to the to the broadest group. So here's how this is going to work. In this segment, I am going to read two different scenarios that was submitted by our listeners. So I'll read the first one. And then you, Lynn, you can give your guidance or coaching as if you're in a real one-on-one coaching session with that PMM. Anything else you wanted to add to that? No, I think that sounds perfect. Since we don't have the other PMM here to respond back to me, I think we're going to be responding back.

30:45We're assuming what they would be asking and saying.

30:49Yi Lin Pei:A little bit of role playing. Okay. So our first listener is Josh. So let me read what Josh submitted. He said, I am completely overwhelmed. This year, we went through multiple rounds of layoffs. Our PMM team went from seven people down to three. Now it feels like everything is falling on me. My VP of marketing doesn't have a product marketing background and keeps tossing random requests at me. Sometimes things that feel completely outside my scope. On top of that, other teams keep pinging me for one pagers and urgent requests that don't seem aligned with any strategy. I honestly don't even know what my priorities are supposed to be for next year.

31:28Yi Lin Pei:I feel burnt out, confused, and like I'm letting everyone down because I can't keep up. What should I be doing? How should I get out of this? Poor Josh, I feel like I've lived the same PMM life before. I bet many of our listeners have too. So Yuen, where do you even begin with someone who's experiencing something like this? Yeah, I mean, this is a tough one. And I feel for Josh, because this is unfortunately, so common this year, many PMMs have been going through the same things, again, with the same things we talked about earlier, right, the macro economic environment, teams cutting back and just wanting each person to do a lot more.

32:03And on top of that, if a VP of marketing or CMO doesn't really have that background, they just kind of dump everything on PMM, who seems to be the catch-all for everything.

32:13Yi Lin Pei:Yes, exactly. Yes. It almost feels like two separate challenges, but I'll let you kind of, you know, state your expertise here. Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, this is a good discussion for sure. And I agree with you, I think is multi-layered. So the way I think about it is the first thing is to really figure out how to resolve the short-term pain that Josh is feeling, right? Let's kind of quickly reduce some of the burning things that's basically the day in and day out doing the work and getting burned out. How do we do that? And to me, that's really about prioritization. What I tell people when I work with them is to literally list out every single project they're working on, no matter how small, right?

32:54Requests from other teams, projects your boss has given you and everything. And list them out and then categorize them into four different categories based on impact versus effort. So this is something I actually kind of created just from, by myself, but really it's a pretty well-known product management framework called the action priority matrix, right? So basically if something is high impact and high effort, then it's a big rock or what you call major project right where you really have to dedicate a lot of time to work on and also it might be helpful for you to break that project into different phases and show results in different phases because for these big projects I find where people get they struggle on is they don't even know where to tackle it because it's so big or they spend forever working on it without showing results right instead of instead they need to be building rapport and visibility across the project at different points in that timeline The second category, which are, in my opinion, my favorite category, are quick wins.

33:53So high impact projects that's tied to the goals, but low effort, right? So it's like maybe creating that highly sought after case study that sales teams really want, right? That's going to make so many people happy and win. That's going to be really great where they want to really spend the time working on. And then, of course, there are the low impact things, right? The low impact that doesn't take a lot of time and the low impact that takes a lot of time, neither of which are really great. So in those cases, they might be delegate, clarifying boundaries, finding other things like AI to help them do certain work.

34:22But the goal would be to remove as much of those projects as possible from their plate or automate as much as possible. But what I find is when people start listing down all of their projects in that worksheet and putting them into these four categories, they realize a whole lot of them, at least 30 percent, are in that low value category, right? That they can then figure out how do they package this and communicate to their manager, which is step number two is figuring out how do you tell people like, hey, these are the things I believe are the most important for the business. And here are the things that I think we can find additional resources to work on.

34:59The way I think about reframing those things is to really focus on finding solutions for how to deal with that problem instead of going to your boss with those problems. Right. You know, it's not helpful to go and say, I can't do this work because I'm overwhelmed. As you can see, my list, I have too much. That's just not very well. Right.

35:17Yi Lin Pei:Yeah, it makes you look really junior. It makes you look like an order taker when you come to them with a task list and say, look how long my task list is. Oh my gosh, I had a PMM on my team once who, when I first, I joined the company and he was on the team that I acquired when I joined the company. And that's how he operated. And you could tell that's what was modeled for him. He was like, oh, I have too much on my plate. And he'd show me this list of stuff. And I'm like, you don't need half of these things. So anyway, just wanted to validate what you were saying about the way that you communicate your priorities based on value and impact, I think is so meaningful and helps you speak with more confidence and will help establish trust from your superiors and manager, I think as well.

36:06Yi Lin Pei:Absolutely. And I think it was a really good point that the task exercise, the listing of the task exercise for you, but you don't want to bring to your boss a list. That is definitely not the right way, right? So take that list, but then turn that into a strong narrative that's tied to the priorities. Say, hey, boss, as we're coming close to Q4 or we're starting Q1, I've thought about how do we spend our time in the best way possible to drive the most value for the company? And here's what I put together in terms of major initiatives that is tied to our goal from the exercise I've been working on.

36:44here's a list. Would you work with me and we can work together to confirm what are the top three to four priorities in your view? Work with them to verify those things, right? And then say, okay, that's great. Given these are the priorities, right? Here's some other things that are left on our plate that we can do. Here's some options I have laid out for how we can still do those things, right? Or delegate them or whatever other options you have, right? To get them done. And then you can say here are different trade-offs of the different options, right? Perhaps it's delegating to a different team.

37:17Perhaps it's communicating to these different places who request these things that is not now. Maybe we have delayed those things. And perhaps it's buying a software that's going to help replace a lot of the manual labor, right? But then when you have those things, now it becomes a solution. And it's about choice versus, hey, I'm complaining about my work. basically.

37:39Yi Lin Pei:Yep. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Okay. So let me just kind of recap this for a minute. You think about all of the projects, everything that you have on your plate and you do this exercise, that matrix that you talked about with impact and value, and you do that for you. You use that to come up with your narrative to how you're going to talk about basically your priorities with your manager and talk through that together. What's left after that? Yeah, so one of the things that's really important to think about is how do you make sure crazy random requests will come your way in the future, right? Because a lot of the work you're given is not even by your manager, to be honest, right?

38:22It's from other teams, you have sales pinging, you want one pager, you might have a laundry list and the backlog of 10 one pagers from yourself.

38:30Yi Lin Pei:Yes. Oh my gosh, I know. So it's Right, right. Or like, you know, product team asking you for some random stuff or support team asking you for FAQs or anything. So you're getting all these different requests from different places. So to me, it's also important to create rules of engagement with these different teams, make it very clear how they can request help from you. What does it look like for you, right? How do you need to communicate when you get those process? So you're creating that level of transparency with them to say, hey, these are the things I generally look at when I am thinking through what are the things to work on and then make sure you're communicating back with them to set the right expectations for when something can be done or if they can be done at all.

39:14And that way you're setting the right expectations so you can remove a lot of those unnecessary work and this burnout for you in the future.

39:21Yi Lin Pei:I really like that idea. And I love how you're encouraging PMMs to set the boundaries and to talk about how they're going to add value with their stakeholders and their peers and their supervisors or superiors, etc. with the rules of engagement. I know me now, I feel very confident in myself and I feel confident setting those boundaries. Me 10 to 15 years ago, I think would have had a really hard time. So like, what are some, like for our maybe softer, more junior PMMs out there who are listening, who really want to set those boundaries, but maybe don't quite have the confidence yet. What are some scripts or like, what are, how can you help encourage some of those PMMs to still set those boundaries or strengthen that muscle a little bit?

40:14Yeah, such a great question. You know, I think it would depend a little bit on whether that you're trying to set the boundary with your own manager, your team, or versus an outside party, right? A third party, like a sales team, cross-functional stakeholders, I mean. When it comes to setting boundaries with your own manager, hopefully you have a good rapport, first of all, because it's really hard to set a boundary when you don't have a... if you're in a toxic relationship with your manager, unfortunately, it's very hard, right? But assuming you guys are in a decent relationship, you respect your manager, they're there to support you and whatnot.

40:50One of the best reframes I learned early on in my own career is when I'm trying to state what I'm thinking about and what I'm looking for, I try to state it from a place of curiosity by asking questions instead of trying to, you know, push my own agenda or like judge whatever the situation might be, right? So let's say one of the scenarios we discussed before you jumped on the podcast was, let's say your manager, you already prioritized with your manager, and then they come back later and say, hey, by the way, here's some other stuff. Yeah, on a list. Happens all the time. which happens all the time 100 what do you do at that point you're like so angry like i would be very angry to say but you already we've already prioritized this why are you adding more right that that's a level of judgment but instead we can say okay well let me take a step back and i say hey you know thanks for sharing these things my way right i'm just kind of curious how would this change our priority would our priority stay the same would we have some time to look at relook at our priority given these new things you've given you've shared my way right there's no judgment there it's pure questions just understand and hopefully that allows you to create a dialogue with your manager to discuss oh wait a minute actually you're right by throwing you these two projects we would have to depart a sense tie something else right that's yeah one way of

42:12Yi Lin Pei:dealing with it um so yeah so reframing it so that you're you're coming at that conversation when you're setting the boundaries with a sense of curiosity, wanting to better yourself, wanting to be, you know, having accountability. I think that's a really smart way to do it, to maintain that relationship. Absolutely. Is there anything else less with this particular with poor Josh who's in this scenario? Any last words of wisdom you want to send off to him? I feel you, Josh. And you're not alone. And I will say this, right? Definitely give the above steps a try, like all the things we've just mentioned on the podcast here.

42:54But if after trying all of those things, you are still super burned out, and you're not getting the support you need, just remember to not to remember, like you have a life outside of work, and then consider if this opportunity is the right one for you, to be honestly, right? Because I'm of the belief that no job is worth killing ourselves over, right? Our health, you know, our mental health, our physical health and everything. So make those decisions for yourself, boundaries that you cannot cross, right? Like, you cannot prioritize your way out of a structural problem. That's true. And a leadership problem at the company.

43:32At some point, no matter how much of this work you do, you just, you're not in the right place. In which case, you make the call to move on.

43:40Yi Lin Pei:That is so true. I'm so glad you said that because there are those situations where it's something you can't fix. It is out of your control. And when you realize it's out of your control and there is a misalignment between that and your values and how you just want to operate your life, it's not worth it. It's just a job. It's just a job. Leave. 100%. I think that's a great answer to our segment here. Okay. Well, there's one more response that I wanted to walk through. So this is from, and it kind of goes along with this conversation around like leadership and relationships. So this is from Elena.

44:20Yi Lin Pei:So Elena writes, I'm in a really tough spot. My leadership team, especially my VP and chief product officer, don't really understand product marketing. My ideas get shut down without explanation. and I feel like I have to justify why PMM should even be involved in strategy. Product and sales only come to me for launch assets or one pagers. I want to be seen as strategic, but I feel invisible and dismissed. I officially feel seen, Elena. I have been there, let me just say. But Yulin, how do you coach someone through something like this? Yeah, this is, again, a very common scenario and I feel for you, right?

44:56Because one of the common things people also ask is just around, how do I become more strategic from being tactical? And going back to the first prompt or segment that we were talking about, product marketing has the added challenge of having to demonstrate its own value and telling people, what do I do? Most companies, most of other fields don't have to. You don't have to. An engineer does not have to explain what I'm doing. What is the role of engineering? A product manager doesn't have to explain that either. But a product marketer has to explain to people, this is what I do. This is what I don't do, basically, right?

45:31So a lot of times, unfortunately, you have the job of setting the right expectations with people and also building a rapport. Because chances are, unless these people or where you are is a very large established company, most people in these roles, they haven't really worked with product marketing that much or know how to work with them. so if we want to be seen in a different light generally we want to understand generally the first step is to understand what do these people actually care about and want right so it's kind of like you know that the the sun true saying in the art of war right it's like know yourself

46:06Yi Lin Pei:know other people right like first you know brilliant right i know right it's like you need to know the other people and what they think about and what they want and then you know what you can deliver for them right and then you say okay that's then how i can solve the problem for you you know it's so last year i actually wrote a guide about how to develop best relationship with sales and how do you become a trusted you know partner with sales and move yourself from like being very tactical to being a respected partner with sales and so i actually talked to sales leaders as part of my process and most sales leaders they said to be honest i just don't feel like product marketers care about sales like they don't understand the sales process they have never been a back carrying rep they have never jumped into a tense situation with a client to understand whether whatever their share with you know half is going to work at all right so how can you ask the respect from sales when you have never really shadowed them or understand the dating life Wow.

47:08Yi Lin Pei:That is so insightful. And for PMMs who, for the most part, we talk about our empathy and how we wear the customer's shoes, but maybe we ought to try on the sales leader's shoes sometime. 100%. Yeah. Like if you're going in the day with a day of the life of sales leader, just ask them, hey, do you mind if I actually even shadow you on some things, right? I don't think many PMs would ask that even. But I think people would be very open. A sales leader would be open like, oh, wow, I've never been asked, but sure, let me show you what my day is like. And then you realize the amount of stress and pressure they're under.

47:45And here's the thing. It is hard to work with sales. My first job was enabling enterprise sales, like a 50-plus enterprise sales team that were selling multimillion-dollar deals in real estate. and then at a moment's notice we would have to fly you know to like uh 5 000 miles away right on a deal or something like that and when you go into their daily lives you're like oh my god this is so stressful no wonder my 50 page slide deck on you know positioning or what sales talk track is not

48:12Yi Lin Pei:going to work for them yeah right right 50 slides but sometimes 100 i know right so and then so when i when i when you begin right you can understand okay whatever you're providing them in terms of materials has to be extremely on point, succinct, sure. And second is you need to be a product champion and product expert. Because if you give them information that is even remotely inaccurate, they would look really bad in front of their prospect, and now you would lose, you know, credibility, right? So but when you focus on those things, those individual things, and do them super well, and you deliver to your partner, you're going to be invaluable.

48:50And over time they're going to invite you to their table. They might call you up and say, hey, Lynn, I have this deal. Can you help me think through, right, what this would look like? Or like, Elle, we actually have a deal review right now. Do you want to join? Because I think the insights you brought on certain deals was really helpful, right?

49:06Yi Lin Pei:I would love to join deal review. That sounds actually really insightful and interesting. I know, right? So that's the point. And then you get your seat at the table. And, you know, I'm just giving an example of sales, but that's true for pretty much every other team. So again, to summarize everything, it's just start with the other party. Who are you trying to build relationship with? Truly understand them, deliver on very few things very, very well, consistently. And then eventually your relationship with them is going to change. Yeah, something you mentioned partnership a few times in how you're explaining how to handle the situation.

49:45Yi Lin Pei:and this might sound a little crazy but it reminds me a little bit about falling in love not I love it not not in a romantic way obviously so let me explain what I mean so like for me and okay first let's talk about romantic love so when something really good happens in my life or something really really stressful like the first person I want to tell is my spouse my husband he's my person. He's my partner. But that didn't happen overnight. I didn't just like, you know, it's not like I met him and then it's like, okay, now I tell you everything. Like, no, but like people, I think form that kind of connection.

50:26Yi Lin Pei:Like people don't form that kind of connection instantly. It happens over time through shared moments, shared wins, shared stresses, shared understanding. And so if I take that same context or that same idea and put it in that business context, I think like when I have, just rattling off some examples, like when I have like a really good campaign idea for a product launch or I was interviewing a customer and I heard a really juicy piece of intel about a competitor, like I can't wait to tell my product partner, my sales partner. And I think something that you mentioned, right, like coming to the table with insights, with coming to them with information that's useful and interesting with their intelligence their world.

51:11So I think it kind of starts with what I'm trying to say here is I think it starts

51:16Yi Lin Pei:with bringing them into your world and, and to have, to try to establish some of those, the shared understanding, the shared trust, the shared experiences that not make you fall in love, but like, you know, that make you build a partnership is what I'm trying to say. So my question to you is like, is that what you're saying? Like that basically a PMM in this situation. So to Elena, like she should shift, shift from being a PMM who builds assets to a PMM who builds partnerships. Is that the mindset? Absolutely. And I think that's such a great framing, right? And I'm glad you brought us back to or sometimes I digress from what I'm saying here.

51:57Yeah, I think that's a great way. And I think the analogy with your partner with your husband makes absolute sense in this scenario. You know, and I think it's, it's listening to them, understand their point of view, but then slowly bring them over to your world, right? 100%. One of the things, just to take the same example, let's say sales come to you to ask for assets, right? It doesn't mean to say, no, I don't build assets. Not a great way of doing that, right? But you can say, hey, that's great. Let me ask you a bunch of questions. Whenever I'm building assets, these are the things I need or I want to know about.

52:28Then you open a dialogue with them to ask more. And then in possibly discussing it, you actually start guiding them. You're literally consulting with them to say, hey, actually, maybe this is not quite the asset you need, right? Yes. Yeah. And that's where the value add comes in. And then eventually they realize, oh, wait a minute, actually. You're right.

52:49Yi Lin Pei:I don't need a one pager. I just need a new talk track for this one slide. Exactly. That's right. So thank you for sharing that analogy. I love it. Okay, so I guess when you understand their problems and when you show that you care about their world and you have those shared wins, then people start pulling you into theirs. And that's where the magic happens. So, Elena, I hope that helps with your situation. And Yulin, thanks for these frameworks. They're invaluable, so helpful. And I feel like it makes me personally feel like I have a better approach to managing some of those tough situations.

53:31Yi Lin Pei:So hopefully it's helpful to all of our listeners as well. And also if your idea or your situation challenge was submitted and we didn't talk about it here, you can still reach out to Yulin and get some coaching. Also, I think you mentioned a couple of things. You mentioned the article that you, the report that you did with sales. So I would love to link it in the show notes too for anyone listening. For each of our segment, I have an asset that I'm happy to share that we just made. Amazing. Thank you. Okay. Now we're transitioning to the last final segment of our show. This is the messaging critique.

54:12Yi Lin Pei:If you know, you know. So as part of the traditional podcast, the Product Marketing Adventures podcast, we do the messaging critique. So this is where as product marketing experts, we analyze real world messaging. But the fun part for this special episode is that we let the product marketing community decide which companies we were going to critique. And when we asked the two companies that came up were Gong and Outreach. So let's get into it. Okay. So if you don't know Gong, Gong has historically been recognized as like the go-to recording customer intelligence platform, like think like sales call recordings.

54:53Yi Lin Pei:And then Outreach has pretty much been hailed as one of the greatest like sales workflow automation tools. But actually, as Yilin and I did our analysis before doing this podcast recording, we learned that there are actually a lot more than that. So one thing I want to note is that this is all about messaging. We are not going to be talking about which product is better. We're not going to talk about future comparisons or anything like that. We are here in the pursuit of learning and refining our craft as PMM. And so no negativity, just a thoughtful, constructive critique. Okay, so let's start with outreach.

55:26Yi Lin Pei:For those of you PMMs who want to follow along, we are going to outreach.io. So Yilin, based on how they present themselves on their website, who do you think their target audience is? Like, who are they talking to? Yeah, great question. Sales and sales reps, sales ops are probably the people who will come up as the main ones in terms of what they're targeting, in my view. And honestly, I've had some experience with outreach before because one of my previous companies actually used it and it was bought by the sales team. So I would say probably sales is their number one persona. I completely agree.

56:03Yi Lin Pei:We have also used it in previous companies. It was used primarily as a tool for the sales team, but I, as a PMM, was helping to create outreach content. So that's where I got my taste of it. So I agree. And if you look at their messaging, it seems like they've positioned themselves as a quote unquote like AI revenue workflow platform. And their messaging seems to be all about execution. And they see the biggest, I guess, like revenue problem, if there is one right for sales, is to be around like inconsistent manual selling motions. So their focus is all about AI agents that actually drive the workflow.

56:43Yi Lin Pei:And so my question to you, Yilin, is what's working really well with their messaging and how they present themselves to their ICP? You know, that's a great question. I would say it's actually quite easy to understand what their main focus is when it comes to like their key sort of value prop. To your point, I think they're really focused, in my view, on productivity and workflow efficiency. right because it's everything they're talking about is it's the end-to-end sales solution and they're talking about workflow they're using words like productivity right increase the number of reps hitting quota faster and if you read down there it talks about the same language over and over so clearly their point of view is if the sales team is more efficient at whatever they're doing across the sell stages, right, then you're going to get higher revenue at the end result.

57:42So that messaging, in my view, is pretty clear.

57:44Yi Lin Pei:I think so, too. Actually, and I like how you pointed out exactly like their point of view. And I think they do a really good job of articulating their point of view on the market, what the customer pain is, and I guess how that customer should solve their pain. Yeah. So I, yeah, I totally agree with you. If you had anything to pick on. What's something you wish the PMM would have done differently, at least in how they present themselves on the website? Yeah, I would think more about capabilities that they can highlight and how because the capability really showcases the how, right? Because right now what they're showcasing a lot is the what, and then the end business outcome, right?

58:25So if you think about it, the value matrix in terms of laddering, it's the features and attributes, it's the capabilities, and then it's the benefits and the business outcomes that's related to that right so i feel like it's jumping a lot from just what it is the feature like you know the product level and feature level straight to revenue but what's missing is that middle part in my view is that how they do it and how is this better than anything else that's out there in the market right like i don't understand because all it's saying is okay great we have a point of view on efficiency is great We need more efficiency.

59:00And how do we achieve that? Basically, it's a bunch of AI agents. But that's what everybody else claims, too. Right. So then how is it really doing that? What's the secret sauce? That's the part I don't really understand. And related to that, what is the core thing that differentiates them from everybody else that they do better than everyone else that is missing again? because when I think about outreach, we probably both know outreach as the enrichment tool for outbound, right? So it's like where we buy data.

59:29Yi Lin Pei:Yeah, for SDRs, we buy data. SDRs, BDRs, yeah. Exactly. And that's probably still what they're best at, in my opinion, right? Because why would you lose your own competitive differentiation and advantage? But I feel like they completely downplayed that, right? It's almost like it's gone from their messaging. That is so true. You know what? Oh my gosh, this is so interesting because there's a lot of, I've seen some chatter. This is all just chatter on LinkedIn right at this point. But with AR that like BDRs and SDRs are going to like eventually essentially go away. I don't know how true that is.

1:00:02Yi Lin Pei:I don't know how soon that is. I don't think I'm quite plugged in enough to that micro market to know. But that could be a reason why that's gone. To your point, back to their like point of view around AI agents. But yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think like there's something about like demystifying like AI agents because everybody has an AI agent. So I think there's a little bit more work to be done there. Absolutely. Again, I don't have all these solutions. I'm just, you know, from a message. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm pointing out, right. Like, I don't know how to solve the AI agent problem, right?

1:00:35They're talking about here. But at least they're sharing their point of view, which is good. I really like that.

1:00:40Yi Lin Pei:Yeah. Yeah. But maybe a little bit more core competency and competitive differentiation in their messaging would help. because again, this is, in my view right now, this category is very competitive, to be honest. Yeah, and everybody's trying to say some other thing. So then what's, why would I choose outreach versus Gong or other software out there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So making the differentiation a little bit more prominent, maybe bringing in some human language and to demystify that like AI component. Overall though, I think it's solid messaging. It's really good overall. Yeah, agreed. Great.

1:01:14Yi Lin Pei:Okay. So now let's jump over to Gong. Okay. Somewhat competitive with outreach in some ways. Some ways they directly compete in other ways they don't. So for those of you who want to follow along, it's gong.io. So Yilin, same thing here. Based on how they present themselves on the website, who's their target audience? Steel sales, in my view. Agreed. Yes. Even though PMMs use Gong Gong a lot. Right. But, you know, and if you think about the revenue centers, right, like it's sales who's buying Gong pretty much all the time. And then usually they ask some licenses for other teams. And, you know, we've had similar softwares in the past as well.

1:01:53And it's always been through sales who buy this tool as well.

1:01:56Yi Lin Pei:Yeah, totally agree. And so if you look at Gong's messaging, they position themselves as like the operating system for revenue teams. And I think this is so interesting in what they're trying to do with that. But basically, they're saying like, hey, it's not just a tool. It's not just call recording, which is what I've always known them for. But that foundational layer for the entire go to market motion. And that to me, I just really like how they're doing that. But I'm curious what you think, like, from your perspective, again, just looking at the messaging, what's working really well in their approach?

1:02:28Yeah, you know, I also think they have a different point of view. But that point of view is also quite obvious. Yes, it's clear.

1:02:35Yi Lin Pei:I love how clear it is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to figure out like, whether their point of view about operating system, I'm not exactly sure if that is the right word per se. But it's definitely a different point of view compared to productivity alone, right? Yeah. And it's almost like this is the brain or like the backbone of the sales team, which has a little bit more strategic feeling versus just productivity. I completely and that's why I think it was very strategic and uh for them to do I'm we're making a lot of assumptions here but but I think it was kind of I think for gong that was like a big bet that they did because maybe like just like us people see gong and they're like oh sales call recordings call recordings call recordings and they were like pigeon-held right into basically being a call recording SaaS offering.

1:03:32Yi Lin Pei:And they're like, no, we're more than that. We're this operating system. It kind of immediately implies something way bigger than that. And you're right. I still don't quite know what it is, but it's certainly something that leaves me intrigued, even though I'm not the ICP. I totally hear you, right? And I think when I'm reading a little bit deeper into some of the ways they're doing that, it became a little bit more obvious because there is a focus on data and intelligence here. Yes, yes. Right, because it's talking about unifying customer insights and then delivering intelligence with that, right?

1:04:05Because ultimately, if you're just having a whole bunch of AI strong together, there's no insights, there's no data. But with rich, rich data, that's first-party data, right? Like, say, from your call recordings, that is extremely powerful because real data from your teams and not just a bunch of AI teams together. together. And so going back to, I'm jumping the gun, because I know you're gonna ask me,

1:04:27Yi Lin Pei:what are the things to improve, right, about their messaging? Yes, that needs to be much more clear about how is this the brain or the operating system? Yeah. Because a lot of the messaging, again, it goes back to something similar, right? When you read deeper, you know, oh, again, it's agent this, agent that, another agent. But when I'm reading all those different things, ultimately, I think their core competency and their competitive differentiation is that original corecording feature that enables a whole lot of data and information to be extracted that then powers actual intelligence beyond just workflow automation.

1:05:04Yi Lin Pei:Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah. It's so funny. I think both companies actually have to, they have opportunity to explore more of the how messaging and their differentiation a little bit more, showcasing it a little bit more. Okay, so these companies play, and I think like, very broadly speaking, like the revenue ops market category, I'm kind of making that up. I don't even know if that's like a market category. But basically, both companies want to be like the system on record for sales teams, like productivity for sales with AI, right? I said this already, but like in some ways they compete, in some ways they don't.

1:05:44Yi Lin Pei:But I guess I want to wrap this up in like key lessons for PMMs here in terms of like when they consider how to position themselves against other vendors in the same market. Like what do you think that big takeaway is here? my view is to really focus on your icp and be very specific and clear on who your icp is and then make sure you are directly speaking to them about why you are the obvious choice to deliver right on their needs specifically the thing is with competition all of the stuff right it's it's helpful to understand what competitors are doing and even when i you know i'm saying like I can't use competitive messaging and everything.

1:06:29But at the end of the day, focusing too much on your competition is distracting and not helpful. Yes. Right? Yes. It's much better for you to focus on your customers and your prospects who matter the most, right? And then write your messaging in human ways around what they care about. And that's...

1:06:46Yi Lin Pei:I completely agree with that. Yeah. So, and I know we talked a little bit about this as we were kind of ahead of time trying to prep for this session, But really for PMMs out there, like don't fall into the us versus them trap, right? Like that's how you get into feature comparison and nobody wants to be stuck in feature comparison with competitors. So you need to think about it as just like you said, Eulon, like what is the customers, your ICP? What is it that their pain is? How do you uniquely solve that pain? It's not about how you do it versus someone else, but how do you do it? And this is where it gets back to like gong and outreach.

1:07:25Yi Lin Pei:the how and being able to articulate it in a superhuman way. And then what are the, what's the outcome of that? What's the benefit of that? And it might be, if you want to do some competitive, throw some competitive in there, you could do that same exercise for your competitors or for the other vendors in your space. But you have to look at it when you're doing that exercise for those other vendors. You have to look at it as if like you work for that competitor because that way you're really getting into like the headspace from, you know, the customer's perspective, of what they're hearing from all the vendors that are out there.

1:07:57Yi Lin Pei:So I guess that's kind of the big takeaway for me is like, you know, how you frame your solution and how you frame your solution is totally different. Like, you know, same thing with like Gong and Outreach. But yeah, anything you wanted to add to that? No, I think you put it beautifully. What you said about really thinking and putting yourself in the shoes of your competitor and thinking from their point of view, right? And then the framing is so important as well. So I don't have anything to add. That's well said. Yeah. And I want to also double down on what we learned, both with Gong and Outreach, as you pointed out, they both have such a clear, strong point of view.

1:08:37Yi Lin Pei:And it's so interesting because they both play in the same space. They both have customers with the same pain, but they have different point of views on how to solve that pain. One is through customer data and one's like, no, no, no, it's workflows. It's all about sales workflows. So it's just really interesting, I think, how both companies do a really fantastic job of clearly stating their point of view on the world. Their narratives are just, like, really great. So shout out to any Gong and Outreach PMMs out there. You've got some fans. You guys are doing a great job. No, I think they all did a great job.

1:09:12Hey, look, we're analyzing their homepage as if they wrote everything. but I'm sure there has been many meetings and back and forth and C-sweets coming in, changing things. 100%. Right. That's the messy part of this, right? So we're... Right. So funny, like where we're talking about it, but we all know the pain of working on these projects. Totally. Internally.

1:09:34Yi Lin Pei:Yes. And PMMs rarely get the opportunity to have a say in what goes on a website homepage. So caveat, take everything we're saying with a grain of salt. 100 % yes okay so Eileen I always try to make space on the show or my podcast for a moment of gratitude because in product marketing we never get here alone we're always doing it with each other and learning from each other so before we wrap up I just want to say genuine thank you so much for sharing your expertise to giving us the rating the resume and all your resume secrets and tips and you know giving Josh and Elena and any PMMs out there who are going through tough situations and sharing all of that guidance is so helpful.

1:10:19Yi Lin Pei:The PMM community is lucky to have you. So thank you so much. Oh, that's my honor. And thank you. They are lucky to have you. And I've absolutely enjoyed our conversation. And I really appreciate the value added insights you have in our podcast, which has made for a really rich discussion. So appreciate what you're doing. Thank you. Yeah, it's so much fun. I just love the product marketing world. It's just great. And on that note, I know none of us get here alone, as I stated, and very often we are shaped by the people that we surround ourselves with. So just wanted to give you a chance to give a shout out to maybe one or two PMMs who have brought you to where you are today and helped you hone your craft as a PMM.

1:11:04Yeah, there are two people. Number one, he's my first boss. His name is Deepak. And he was the person who brought me into PMM when I had no PMM background, gave me a chance to, you know, become one and train me and mentor me on how to do sales enablement, to be honest, and just really think from that clear point of view. And I think to this date, he's one of the people who I think have the absolute best interpersonal skills on building relationship with other teams. And I learned a lot of those techniques actually from him. So absolutely brilliant leader and mentor. The second person I would like to thank is Martina Lunchenko, who wrote the book, Loved, How to Market Tech Products.

1:11:46And so we actually connected on LinkedIn many years ago. I asked some questions. She asked me some questions and just had an informal mentor mentee relationship where she mentored me. And over time, we just became really good friends. And recently I saw her in San Francisco. She's absolutely influenced how I think about product marketing. We talk about product marketing topics all the time. And recently got to do some business partnership together, which is always fun. But more importantly, yeah, but more importantly, she's also somebody who is a important and powerful voice for underrepresented individuals in tech and in product marketing, you know, coming from an immigrant woman of color background, I really resonate with her background.

1:12:32And so just, you know, it's very inspiring to kind of going through that journey because you know part of the reason why I like to go on podcasts and share my voice is also to have that voice right and and have that representation because when I was growing up in my career and and sort of being an early career person I never had role models who looked at me or talked like me right people have an accent and it's okay you know to have that accent. Yeah, feeling confident in your voice. Feeling confident in my voice. Maybe I don't have the typical experience of a product marketer, right? But I'm able to, you know, have this conversation with you.

1:13:13That's very meaningful. And I wouldn't have been here without people like her setting that example and giving me the confidence to do things like this.

1:13:21Yi Lin Pei:Yeah. Oh, I bet they're so proud of you. Oh, I can't, I can't wait. I can't wait till they hear that little shout out. Okay, Yulin, so this is my last question for you. Where else can everyone access your expertise? Is it best to find you on LinkedIn? Yes, absolutely. LinkedIn is the place I post my thoughts on a weekly basis, usually daily. So definitely follow along. And if you want to dig deeper, I have a newsletter where I share more in-depth insights and I write once a month about different topics in product marketing. Feel free to go on my website, sign up. And if you're okay with putting a link there um for my newsletter absolutely yes we will link everything in the show notes don't you guys worry perfect again thank you so much elen and thank you pm listeners for coming on this adventure with us today i hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take in your own journey