Use a PMM AI agent like a Docebo PMM

25:39Emily Pick:And what happens if I do this? And what happens if I play with it like that? And I feel like it's really analogous to like when you're molding clay or I don't know if you've ever mixed paint before, but when you're mixing paint with some of the most basic colors, Like, well, what happens if I add a little bit more blue or a little bit more green? And sometimes you go a little too far in the wrong direction. You're like, oh, not that. Because that accidentally happens. We'll pull a Bob Ross and be like, make this a happy tree here. Yes. Okay. So once you've done the analysis, like what happens then?

26:14Yes. So once I got all of the output that I was looking for, which was essentially a full audit of our messaging across this segment. of how we were positioning today, how much that actually resonated with the expectations that our prospects had coming in. If that was being reflected in the questions that they were asking, the things they wanted to see, really the pains that they expressed during discovery are these things that we're actually connecting with them. And we did find some disconnects. So it was not a fruitless effort. Certainly there were some things where we're like, oh, okay, that's actually not our product strength today.

26:53It might be in the future based on where we know our roadmap is going. But for what we can do today and how far ahead we're positioning, let's maybe not lean into some of these directions because that's actually, say, one of our competitors' differentiators. So we don't want to go head to head on something that we know we're not the strongest in. So instead, how do we pivot the conversations so that we're talking about the things where we lead and that we know that they care about? So ultimately what I pulled together was a document with updated messaging, with updated use case needs, who the personas were, what the KPIs that they are generally metriced on, what are our value drivers associated with each of those, how do we message those things, and then how does that change by industry or vertical.

27:45And all of that within two hours.

27:48Emily Pick:Two hours. Yes. My boss, I shipped it to my boss at the end of the workday because I'm in Pacific time zone and everybody else is in Eastern. And I was like, it's amazing. I was like, here you go. I was like, tell me if it's garbage or not. I've been here like a month and a half at this point, a month. So in my first time, again, in the industry. So I was like, I'm going based on what I think I know, but I need somebody who's a little bit more seasoned to tell me if the things that I think I know are correct. He was like, this is not the level of depth I expected or the time frame we expected.

28:26We thought you were going to be stuck on this for an entire week. And so I handed that off to him for validation. we also validated with a few of our key stakeholders across the business that, hey, these are things that we would talk about. These are things that we hear about from our customers. This is where we are strong and where we get the best reaction. And then we're able to feed that back again to our BDR and our demand gen teams. And we are pretty early in the process, but we are starting to update a lot of our ads, a lot of our top of funnel messaging just around these value props and these pinpoints and these kind of solutions focused messaging that we put together.

29:07So the output or at least the results as far as the quantitative metrics on the results of this DBB, but really the time saving from a PMN perspective, incredible.

29:21Emily Pick:Can I just say you mentioned this and I don't know, maybe you're just kind of like speaking off the cuff a little bit, but like your manager saying or your boss saying, yeah, I thought you'd get back to us in a week. I'm like, a week? Without any of these tools, try a month. Yeah. No, we've got a week with the tools. We did not think. But again, so much hinged on having the right information, having the right tools in the tech stack, and then being able to, and this is a great, I saw somebody post about this on LinkedIn recently where they were like, hey, it's really great that we have the tools.

29:56How do we start training the systems thinking for how do we tie these tools together and use them in a way that we're A, leveraging their strengths and B, we're coming up with kind of a trusted output because a lot of people may not seem, may not think to combine, you know, the four or five different tools that I was immediately like, Ooh, I know I have this. I know I have this. I know this is what it's good so that I can get all of that data I need for the analysis. And then to even be able to be like, oh, I should make sure that I have these custom prompts set and that I have a custom GPT set up with all of the context immediately woven in.

30:41Emily Pick:With experience, a seasoned PMM can figure this out, right? And I say that because with the experience, you know exactly what the journey should look like. And when I say journey, I mean like the journey of like your playbook that you just spelled out for us. You know exactly what inputs you need. You know exactly what the questions you need to ask, regardless of whatever tools you have at your disposal. You as an experienced, seasoned PMM know how to do the analysis to get the information or to get the result that you need or to answer the question at hand, right? And for your case, it was, you know, do we have a messaging gap for this particular segment?

31:21Emily Pick:And then the other experience that comes into play is just experience with the tools. So now you know what tools are out there because you've educated yourself and you've, you know, played around with them. You've gotten, also gotten some trainings, which you're lucky to have. I think that's kind of what it comes down to, at least for now in terms of, you know. Yeah, I agree. I think also one thing it comes down to is truly exploring the tools in your stack and not just thinking about them from a surface level. A good example is Glean. It's one of my absolute favorite tools. I actually have a friend who works there as an AE.

32:03We work together at Clary. He and I will send text messages just kind of bouncing ideas off of one another as far as what are things that we can do. when most people think about Glean, they think about enterprise search behind the firewall. And that is like truly my number one use case. It's funny, my friend Harjip, he's like, so many other use cases. I'm like, yeah, I know that. But this is the one that I use 90 % of my day. But like the ability to set up agents in Glean, I think is one of the biggest differentiators and some of the most savvy with AI PMMs that I know have been really diving into these tools beyond those like surface level use cases.

32:45Like we have a tool called OneUp that we use, our RSC team uses it for RFPs and they fully manage it. And it's a wonderful tool that we can also use and that I think people don't always think about what other tech do you maybe have in your company that you could get a seat in? Because there are secondary use cases that are incredible for PMMs.

33:11Emily Pick:Yeah. And that was part of your step two process and suggestion, right? When you were saying to identify the, um, like, so your first step was to identify the inputs, but then the second was to understand, like accessing the data, but you said to understand the tools and to ask whoever, ask your employer like what tools do I have available for this or and if you don't want to if that's too broad of a question maybe it's like you know what categories like you as the PMM should know what all who all the players are in those particular categories like for example call recording and ask do we have a gong or a clary or xyz yes and that was a lot of times it's I'll get like a random octa notification that will be like you have been added to this tool and I'm like well tell me more.

34:00Yeah. Ooh, what's that one? Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. Like even little things like I'm like, Oh, you gave me Tableau access.

34:07Emily Pick:Yeah. Well, do you know how I'm going to slice and dice that data? You don't even know I'm going to be using all this.

34:16Emily Pick:It's so funny. Okay. So back to your process. I think you might've gotten into this already, but you, now you have this beautiful report and then is the next step to like shop it around you just sent sounds like you just sent it off straight to your boss obviously right away but then is there a like a process or part of the step that you would say is to like meet with the stakeholders like with demand gen did you actually like physically get in like a virtual room and talk about it we shopped it around and said hey uh we also uh met with some of our friends over on the sales side of the house and also on the product team just to be like, hey, do these hit?

34:55Can this resonate? Also, this is the direction that we're going as a company. So let's hope it resonates. But yes, we got in the room. We got their blessing. We really didn't even make too many tweaks, like pretty minor, which is fantastic. So once we got that approved, now it's with the demand gen team. And like I said, they're starting the process of updating our ads, of getting some other top of funnel assets out the door that are kind of associated with this. And we know that it's going to be a while typically before you start to see any results off of that. But we're hoping that as we influence those opts as they come in, we'll see a bit more qualified buyer.

35:41Yeah.

35:42Emily Pick:So would you say that that's the last step is just to validate after you? So the validation actually isn't necessarily the blessing from your stakeholders. It's like the feedback from the market. Like, OK, well, now let's test it. This is the thing, right? Like marketing kind of never dies. It's never done. Never done. It's never done. It might be off your plate for a minute, but I'm going to have to. A campaign will end, but the story is still kind of evolving. It will. Yeah, exactly. And we're going to continue. And we'll see like what worked, what didn't work. Realistically, we changed nothing else in this process aside from the message.

36:20So if you're looking at an A-B test, the before versus the after, we should get some pretty solid results. Obviously, everything is not completely same, same, but we will continue to see as the results come in. Once we start seeing those results, we'll start tweaking, we'll start optimizing. optimizing we'll probably start this process all over again um yeah if you can use that agent and

36:45Emily Pick:the the process with your all your tools that you've already followed yeah i it's now that i know how to do it um probably hey who knows maybe we'll get it down to an hour and 45 minutes instead of two hours right you just keep i keep getting it faster and faster i love it it's so it's so modern PMM. Every day I am in awe. I'm simultaneously terrified of AI and so in awe of it. So I hate it for so many reasons and love it for so many reasons. I know. I think you are not, you're in company in those feelings for sure. Okay. Well, this is my last question for you before we move on to the next segment of the show.

37:28Emily Pick:What advice do you have for a product marketer who's trying to build an AI agent or like leverage some of these tools specifically to do like a message gap analysis? Just start. Like I said, I loved your clay analogy. Sometimes you don't know where it's going until it starts going. Simultaneously, don't be afraid to advocate for yourself to get a seat if there is a tech within your stack that you want to use. I think that there is immense value here. And if you can take it and prove the case of, hey, this is something that we can use to think of that increase of 6 % to 7%, even if we got it down to 3 % to 4%, what does that 3 % look like in terms of value?

38:22What does that 3 % of additional revenue to look like for this company. I think being able to frame it in the types of outcomes that you're trying to drive can help you get access to the tooling that you need. But like I said, also just dive in, just get going. The longer you wait to learn how to use these tools, the longer you wait how to use AI, the further behind you get somebody else who is learning how to do this already.

38:48Emily Pick:Exactly. Yeah. And that's not to be foreboding. It's just the way the market's moving. Like I said, I recently joined Echebo in the interview process. I was talking to a couple other companies at the time as well. And the number one question everybody asked was, how are you using AI? This isn't just something that can help you today. It's something that can help you with your career down the line. Absolutely. I love the way that you phrased that. And it can sound really daunting for someone who's never done it before or seen how it's done to, hey, go build an AI agent. I was like, what? A Glean is, I won't say it's shockingly easy, but they have so much documentation and their team is so wonderful.

39:31If you can find a contact there, if you can speak with your, if you can get your team to connect with the CSM for your account. Like we had multiple, like we had the Glean CMO come and chat with us at Clary, which isn't to say they'll pop in for everybody, but they saw the value in marketing teams building their own agents and they have plenty of people on staff who are willing. And I'm sure that's the same for pretty much any of your AI partners.

40:02Emily Pick:Yeah. And what I think, what I'll compare it to is like with any fear that you have, you've built it up in your head to be bigger than it actually is. So like my - your agent doesn't work, it's just going to pop off and say, does it work? That's what I was going to say. What's the worst that could happen? Oh, that didn't work. Yeah, it's fine. It's okay. Try again. Yeah. You're like, oh no, now I need to submit a ticket somewhere because I don't know what I'm doing. Whatever. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. That's fine. Career is not over. And yeah, you still have time left in the day because it's AI and it only took an hour.

40:40Right. Exactly.

40:41Emily Pick:Okay. Well, this was so fun. Thank you so much for sharing such an amazing use case. And I'm so excited for the validation for you and the message gap. I hope it delivers some great results. All right. Now it's time for the next segment of our show. This is the messaging critique. It's so fun. It's where we as product marketing experts get to analyze real world messaging. And the fun part is Emily as my guest. You get to pick the company that we critique. So before we get started, I'm just going to list a few ground rules for anybody who may be new to this segment or new to the show. First, Emily is going to share the company that we're going to talk about.

41:24Emily Pick:And for this one, I try to focus on a company where either we are the customer or we know the ICP really well because it wouldn't be fair to critique messaging on a customer with an ICP that we don't even know. Like I could never critique like cybersecurity, a cybersecurity product because I don't really know that use case. Not a way. Yeah. Emily, you're going to tell me something that you're loving about it, something you wish the PMM would have done differently. And then we're just going to creatively talk about it in ways that that PMM can take the narrative to the next level. So without further ado, do you want to share the company that we are critiquing today?

42:03Emily Pick:I want us to critique with love Granola. So they are an AI note taker and I was really introduced to them since I joined Echebo and I no longer know what my days would look like without Granola really listening in on most every call. Truly. It's also to be perfectly honest, again, I work, I'm in the Pacific time zone. All of my team is in the Eastern time zone. And then also the, all of my product team is in Italy. So from a hours perspective, I tend to be a bit behind that I knew coming in at some point I was going to sleep through a 6am meeting. And that happened yesterday. It happened yesterday.

42:49Emily Pick:So it has happened to all of us. Trust me. There's not a human being on the face of the earth. I realized my mistake when I was like eating a bagel at 645. And I was like, looking at my calendar and I was like, hold on. There was a meeting 45 minutes ago. And I was like, oh, that was actually a part of that. And so I kind of went to my team's lecture and I was like, hey, did anybody record that call? And they're like, no, but we have the granola notes. And so sent me the notes. I love it. I didn't, I didn't need a recording. I got everything that I needed out of the granola notes. That's awesome.

43:23That's awesome. Okay.

43:24Emily Pick:So for those of you who want to follow along, we're going to granola.ai. That's G-R-A-N-O-L-A.ai. Okay. So now that we have a good sense of what the product is, walk us through their messaging. What's standing out to you? I love just how simple and straightforward their message is. having come from the rev tech industry and everybody has some version of a call recorder these days to be perfectly frank it's pretty commoditized there's so many options to choose from and what I love about granola is that they're literally like hey we're an AI note taker for people in back-to-back meetings I don't need any more information than that that's exactly the scenario that I am in.

44:14And that is exactly what I need help with. I have so many back-to-back calls. I think also one thing I really value when I'm in calls, when I'm in a customer call, when I'm in a call with my product team, I like to be present in the moment. And I like to be able to ask questions without being distracted by taking my notes over to the side of the screen. Every so often I will, when it's something super important, we're like, oh, I really need that nuance or that, that context. But for the most part, I love that with granola, I can be present in my meeting. And I think that that's something that's actually underrated that people don't think about.

44:52And if I were kind of angling the message at granola, I think that there are some very more emotionally resonant messages that you can add because a I love, I'm not also, I mean, I do generally have a harder time critiquing other product marketers' outputs just because, like we said, we don't have the full context. We don't know what they're being asked to do. We don't know what their mandates have been from leadership. And I think for what they have on the site today, it's great. I think that they have options to deepen it. And I think that there are some of those, like I said, emotionally resonant angles that they could take around things like, like, hey, be present in your meetings.

45:38I think that's where when I look at what they have today, I'm like, yes, but also why you versus a competitor? Because again, everyone seems to have some sort of call recorder, some sort of note taker. What is it about granolas that is special or unique?

45:55Emily Pick:I think that's such a clever tip hitting in on the emotional aspect of it. I'm imagining like, as someone who's also been in like back-to-back meetings, how I want to be present and how different, how some of those meetings, it's really hard to like context switch as well. So often when I'm in a meeting, I'll have missed the last one. If it's like a recurring meeting, because I had a different meeting that I had to attend instead. So if it's like, Oh, I didn't have time to watch the recording because that was, if I watch a recording, then I might, that's like having another meeting. And if I already have back to back meetings, then I need a meeting to watch the meeting recording.

46:32Emily Pick:And it's just Like basically, right? Because I have to block off my calendar so that I actually have time to watch the recording. And yeah, I can like scan through the notes. Like there are so many great angles that I feel like they could play with in their messaging. Like what are the scenarios in which you would be very thankful to have a tool like this? I think we're obviously thinking it from the lens of the PMM. But what is it from the lens of the sales guy or the sales gal, the sales they? uh, whoever it is that, um, like they're in back-to-back meetings. What are they missing? What are those key components?

47:10I think about if I'm going to go into a conversation, I'm in back-to-backs with different prospects. Like I have forgotten, or, oh, this is a great one. Think about like a recruiter. Think about a recruiter who is, or a hiring manager who is out there trying to like keep track of all these people.

47:30Emily Pick:Right. Like how do you, I will say one of my favorite things and like i don't know if if everybody's seen like the granola unwrapped they're kind of their take on the spotify yeah yeah crunch on their home page on their yes yes yes which is again such great i'm like please continue to enjoy like i think one of the things that makes me so sad for a lot of the enterprise companies out there is the way that even leaves creativity because you must sound buttoned up and professional. And I love that granola gets to keep the creative. You get to have crunched, like wonderful, how fantastic that you get to play with things and be like that unique.

48:12I think that when I see my notes from granola,

48:16Emily Pick:they are shockingly accurate. They summarize conversations so that it's more human and less like robotic yeah i feel like granola really understands the context of the conversations and understands the sentiment and intonations and really where are we pointing the emphasis of these conversations which i haven't necessarily seen on a lot of other tools so i was i was just gonna say if they like really like start pulling more from that like i think they have a wall of like testimonials, which is great. But like, I think these are the kind of stories that you you don't necessarily drag out of people from a LinkedIn post or from a Twitter post or whatever.

48:58I think that they have an opportunity to like really tee in on how are the users using you today? And how is that special? Or what is it that makes it uniquely relevant to their day? I totally agree with you.

49:14Emily Pick:Yeah. I mean, overall, they do such a great job telling their story. I mean, like even on their website, how they show kind of like the before and after and the way they talk about how it works. And, um, you know, basically they're doing a really good job of show, don't tell, or, or actually, which I prefer show and tell, because I think in marketing, you have to do show and tell, got to make it like stupid easy for your customers to know what you, you don't want to leave. You don't want to get your customers do the work, you know? Yes. And I think there's also like so many companies are so eager to expand and become platforms.

49:48And like when that happens is when your messaging tends to get diluted. And I think that's one of the perks of solely focusing on, you know, call notes today. You do one thing at a time. I would say who knows how they're going to evolve in the future. I see they've got some agents and workflows in the works. but I'm like when I go to granola's website I know what they do immediately sometimes the

50:15Emily Pick:simple message gets overridden in favor of butt words um and unleashed and unlocked and it's you know powered by something yeah they they tell you a lot without telling you anything and I feel like I went to granola and I was like yes AI powered note-taking for people in back-to-back meetings. Thank you. Done. Stupid. Simple. Done. Easy. I get it. Yeah, I know. I love it. Well, great job, Granola PMMs. We love your narrative. We're big fans. We're big fans. Yes. Great job. All right. So Emily, one thing I like to make space for and this podcast is a moment of gratitude because in product marketing, we never get to where we are alone.

50:59Emily Pick:We're always stealing each other's playbooks and iterating on them and learning from each other and we're all better for it. So before we wrap up, I just want to say a quick thank you for taking time to do this episode with me. It does take prep work beyond this conversation and that's you being generous with your time and willing to share with the PMM community. So thank you so much for one, just being a badass and then two, being willing to share. Well, obviously thank you for creating a space for PMMs to share their stories. I know you and I chatted when we finished up with one of our prep calls the other day.

51:37How do people learn? How do we pass on things? Over generation, that's through storytelling, right? And one of the reasons I got started posting on LinkedIn in the first place is because I was a founding PMM at a Series A startup. And I just wanted to know if I was doing things right or if people had better ways. And I really hadn't found a place where I was able to do that to that point. And LinkedIn became that place. And I love seeing other people's stories. And I love podcasts like yours where people are coming in and they're telling you, I tried this this way. It did or didn't work. And being able to really share the learnings and kind of be, hey, here's how I failed.

52:25So you don't have to. It's that building in public, but really for your own career.

52:30Emily Pick:I love it. Yeah. It's my favorite part of being a part of the PMM community. Everyone is so willing to share and teach. It's just so lovely to be here. Who has brought you to this point in your career? Who are the PMMs? I literally just wrote a LinkedIn post recently about the people who've shaped my career. PMM. And I am very fortunate to have worked with some incredible leaders, people who have kind of given me the real talk I've needed when I was early on in my career and still trying to figure out what to do with the people who have helped guide me, who've given me best practices, resources.

53:11So I want to first, sorry, it's going to be a list. First and foremost, David Tishgart and Taizzi Skogstad. They were my PMM leaders at a little company at Series B, became Series C while I was there, a startup called Data.World. Really, I had been a solo PMM before that and had not had direct guidance on how to become a PMM. And those two were the ones that really gave me the first foundation. I transitioned from content marketing into PMM. And Taizzi really gave me a kick in the pants where she was like, hey, you're trying to be a content marketer with a product focus and you need to become a real product marketer.

53:50And I remember just being a little bit dumbfounded that day. But then I was like, she's right. Like, I got a there's a lot more that I can and should be doing rather than just writing content. So I'm very thankful for them. Then Sonia Mowry, she is actually currently the director of product marketing over at skill jar which is one of the chamber's uh competitors to agree so it's been fun um now that we now that we get how funny against each other but um sonia was my uh vp of pmm at clear bits and we only got to work together for a short time but no one has probably given me more playbooks and frameworks than sonia and she had a lot of belief in me and a lot of uh like freedom she gave me a lot of freedom, but also gave me a lot of guidelines to work within.

54:41So my friend Maggie, she started out as my boss at Rattle.

54:45Emily Pick:We weren't together very long there either. I might be the angel of death. I'm not sure. But after she left, she became one of my really close friends and mentors that I've been able to bounce things off of. So we're still in touch. We worked together for maybe two months. Well, she lives in the Bahamas, which is not a bad connection to have. So I've been able to go visit her there. And then also just at Clary, I had the opportunity to work under quite a few different PMM leaders that super appreciative of Julian Savage, Ryan Boe, Ava Cavell, April Rossa. Each of them gave me something that I have walked away with.

55:24And I am so appreciative of all of them. And we are who we are because of the people who put their faith in us and teach us and train us. And now I'm currently reporting into Ben Battaglia at the Chabo. And I love Ben. He's wonderful. He is an incredible advocate. He, again, somebody who gives me a lot of freedom and also isn't afraid to give me feedback. So I think like sometimes you get bosses that just kind of pat you on the back and tell you to go on your way. And he is not that person. He will absolutely be like, hey, I think we should do this this way. And I'm like, great, cool. Let's do it.

56:00but yeah, always the people who I've been very fortunate to have leaders who push me to be better. And I just have to say, thank you.

56:08Emily Pick:I know I've said this a few times, but you are so lucky. I truly like I put that list together for that LinkedIn post. I was like, damn, I had some great leaders. Yeah. I am an amalgamation of all of them. So that's, that's how I got here today. And I wouldn't be here without them. oh i love that yeah big hug and shout out to all those amazing pm leaders and friends um and i know we've mentioned linkedin a few times now as well is that the best place for our listeners to find you that would be me i am like not on any other socials which is weird to be like linkedin is my only single media and tiktok but nobody follows each other on tiktok tiktok is for aimless scrolling of strangers.

56:52Emily Pick:So yes, LinkedIn would be LinkedIn would be the place. I love it. Well, thank you again, Emily. This has been such a wonderful conversation. And thank you PMM listeners 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.

57:20you