The Cranky Product Manager is SUPER LAZY these days. Once again, she’s letting someone else do the work – the Cranky Marketer – the dude/dudette in charge of Marketing at a B2B tech company. This is part TWO of three (see part one here).
This post is a longie but a goodie, so check it.
—————-
The Cranky Marketer on The Problem with Sales and Senior Management
While I really had a tough time with Engineering when I was a Product Manager, it was nothing compared to the problems I have with Sales, now that I’m in Marketing.
As individuals, most salespeople are pretty decent folk. There are a few assholes in every company who don’t give a sh*t about who they abuse en route to meeting quota, but when it’s getting late in the quarter or the economy sours, and account reps are hustling to hit their number, even the normal ones turn into the highest paid set of babies and whiners you’ve ever seen.
And while they’ll blame everyone in sight if needed, a lot of the complaints point to Marketing.
“There weren’t enough leads.
“The lead quality was sh*t.”
“I needed new success stories. The existing ones aren’t relevant to my prospects.”
And my favorite of all:
“My territory is different than other territories. The standard collateral doesn’t apply to my patch. What else have we got?”
And while this is clearly an exercise in creative excuse making, Sr. Management never fails to give in to this crap and an edict comes down from above to generate more “quality” leads, “refresh” the collateral etc. And the downward spiral continues.
There are ways to address this, but most companies don’t have the patience, skill set or culture to fix the problem. They’re too caught up in the quarterly tactical objectives than to do what is right.
First of all, even in companies where there are way too many leads – and believe it or not, I once worked in a company where even an order taker could meet quota – a number of reps complained there weren’t enough leads.
Why is it that no matter how good the lead generation programs, 98% of leads end up in the dustbin? And isn’t it such an amazing coincidence that no matter what company, no matter what product, 49 out of 50 people who are counted as leads turn out to be uninterested or unable to buy the product? What are the odds of that?
Here’s a novel idea: put some accountability on the sales people beyond simply “making their number”. I’m pretty sure some territories are better than others, but there’s no way all sales reps are doing their jobs even moderately well.
I’ve seen sales reps who can’t tell you what business their prospects are in, what the business issues are for some of their larger opportunities or whether any channel partners have in roads at a prospect and can help move the deal forward. Forget about channel conflict or compensation issues for while. The question here is whether or not the rep even has a clue about the dynamics of the account. But that’s rarely analyzed. It’s time consuming to actually keep on top of sales reps. It’s a lot easier to tell Marketing to do a better job.
For many reps it’s simply a numbers game. With enough leads, even a very unsophisticated approach can yield results. And instead of trying to maximize the value of the deal, they’ll discount more to close the deal sooner. But then, they’re compensated on quarterly revenue so why not take a smaller amount now right?
So it’s not their fault. It’s Sr. Management who set up the sales compensation plan that forces them to behave that way. And that compensation plan along with Management’s tacit consent of the “big baby” behavior, in turn forces Marketing to fall into line and ensure the reps are properly “fed and nurtured”.
Moving beyond the sales issues, it turns out that virtually every Sr. Executive wants to be a Marketer. Yup, absolutely true. Why else do they forward emails they receive from competitors to the Marketing department, with comments like “FYI, check out the messaging in this email I just received.” Or, “Has your team seen what X is doing lately?”
OK, thanks Mr. CFO. First, I’m glad you are taking such an interest in our competitors that you’ve decided to surreptitiously add yourself to their marketing database. But do I forward you links to our competitors’ 10K statements pointing out how much better they are doing financially than we are? Or how about this Mr. CTO? Maybe I should start forwarding the patents our competitors are filing, you know, just as an FYI.
And I hate nothing more than the Sr. Exec who decided to spend 5 minutes actually reading our website, and then starts making suggestion on how to “tweak” it. Listen, those pages on the website have been like that for the last 9 months. What took you so long to send your suggestions forward? Needed a bit of time to think about them? Thanks, but we’re way ahead of you.
By the way, we don’t “tweak” anything in Marketing. We have a plan and we’re trying to execute on it. We’re measuring our work at every stage in more detail than any other part of the business. I’ve got so many metrics and measurements I could unload on you, you’d think you’re an actuary.
And one more thing. The website isn’t simply a “website”, its a freaking web application. It’s got integrations into our CRM, bug tracking and order processing systems. The Partner and Customer portals are sitting atop a home-grown CMS (cuz the company was too cheap to let us license a real one) and both portals are tied back into our Identity Management System. There is a lot of content on the site that we have update regularly. It’s a critical part of our business operation.
And yet, we have to keep it up and running with no budget, on second rate servers and without full support from IT. Why? Because they’ve decided they’ll only support the “back end” databases etc, but the “front end” belongs to Marketing. Gee, silly me. I thought we all worked for the same company.
I could keep going but I’m sure you get the point. Somewhere between having to baby sit the sales team, let everyone think they are a marketer, and maintain a complex web application with only a minimal development staff, we still have to do our marketing jobs. And none of this includes all the crap we have to put up with from Product Management.
I’ll get to that in the next installment.
Also in The Cranky Marketer Goes Off
- Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Goes Off (Part 1)
- Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Goes Off – Part Deux
- The Cranky Product Manager bitchslaps the Cranky Marketer
- Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Part 3 – The Problem with Product Management
{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes to the first part. No to the second part.
I promise I didn’t write this, but oh how I wish I had! http://bit.ly/NfqdK
Cranky Marketing going off. Good stuff: http://tinyurl.com/cnre82
RT @peechie I promise I didn’t write this, but oh how I wish I had! http://bit.ly/NfqdK (ditto!)
Cranky Marketer, you are a bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter person. But I must be too, because I swear you broke into my brain and copied down my rantings. Well done.
My personal favorites are engineers who think that they can do marketing in their spare time. “Hey, I just thought up a nifty slogan! I could be in marketing.”
BTW. The recent Facebook debacle regarding the homepage changes was an obvious result of part time marketing. “Oh, we might get disrupted by Twitter and we’ve heard that’s really bad. Let’s arbitrarily change the interface to 170 Million users. After all we are the uber-kinden who created Facebook, we must be right.”
The children who run Facebook should Google “New Coke Debacle” to learn what was happening in the world of marketing when they were learning about the wonders of the potty.
OMG: THis could be my company and my sales team… http://tinyurl.com/cnre82
@crankypm Great post from bitter bitter bitter product marketer. I’d swear it was me speaking. http://bit.ly/6n7Dt
Why not create a webpage for each sales rep. Then, a webpage for each lead and its progress toward a sale. Make each outcome a webpage as well. If done correctly, these pages would track their progress towards a close. You could even put in a page for each discount. Eventually, if you turn your web analytics loose on these pages, you’d see where the problems were.
Then, you could send an email to the sales manager asking them to tweak so and so.
A sales rep is just another touchpoint. We metric touchpoints don’t we?
You have hit the nail on the head — the good news is that such a variety of issues lands in product marketing/management, the bad news is that such a variety issues lands in product marketing/management. Salespeople, because they are dealing with actual paying customers, are the gatekeepers to the ultimate metric, revenue. Only the most disciplined companies seem to resist the siren call of short term revenue the others will give at least some deference to what Sales is saying, neglecting the opportunity cost of using strategic resources to execute tactics. When a marketeer is actually a key part of a real sale, he/she is viewed as a hero and “in touch” with the customer.
Most senior managers got where they are, at least partially, by having a strong ego. Since a lot of marketing is a soft art (hard to make a conclusive argument re: a new effort until the metrics come in) and marketing seems like “fun,” guess who’s opinion has to be considered?
You are right, though, everyone seems to feel that they are entitled to an opinion.
The Cranky Sales Engineer, amused by the whining of those safely sheltered from the revenue stream, offers this counter argument:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OTgb3KO7QM
David, The Cranky Product Manager must admit she’s having difficulty understanding your proposal.
What problem are you trying to solve by having one webpage per sales rep? Is they idea that the sales rep would use the page, or is it the sales rep’s customers? And if it’s the customer, do they use the page before or after contact with the sales person. And what exactly would be on the page? And similarly, what problem does having a webpage per lead solve? Who uses it, etc….?
And who would be responsible for creating all these pages and keeping them up to date, and eventually decommissioning them when the deal is closed or lost?
Seems like you’re trying to attack the problem of not knowing where the friction in the sales pipeline is via metrics. But in this case, the CPM doesn’t think the Cranky Marketer doesn’t suffer from a lack of metrics – sounds like he’s got plenty.
Or is the Cranky Product Manager just totally not getting it? (It has been a long, long week).
Cranky Sales Engineer, if the Cranky Product Manager has to watch that pathetic video one more time she’s going to BEAT YOUR ASS.
Pretty much ever SalesDroid the CPM has ever met thinks he’s/she’s Gawd’s Freakin’ Gift to his/her company. And not just an ordinary gift. A gift as in a brand-new pink BMW convertible for your Sweet Sixteen birthday party — THAT type of gift.
So THANK YOU, OH YE INTERNETS, because we now have a video pandering to the egomaniacal streak present in all Droids. THANK GAWD.
New Guest post on the Cranky Product Manager blog: The Cranky Marketer Goes Off Part Deux. http://bit.ly/6n7Dt
I live this every day. Everyone else knows better. I love big group meetings with all the directors and VPs and everyone gets to cut your marketing plan to bits. Most of the time I’m trying to position products that have been self generated by R&D and they now want you to make them an instant hit. “Hey, this stuff is cool, why are you not marketing it right.”
I complain about having to spoon feed sales with every bit of information and book several meetings to accommodate their schedules. I complain and am told “its our job to spoon feed sales”
It is comforting to have others in the same boat yet disturbing the mass dysfunction in the industry.
Unfortunately for me, I’m beyond cranky, I’m seriously looking for a career change.
@DavidWLocke – OK dude, the CrankyPM did not understand your comment. Pls read her response. http://tinyurl.com/cnre82
The Cranky Sales Engineer has noticed that love of “long-term thinking” runs in direct inverse proportion to responsibility for generating revenue, and/or being paid against quota.
It is our job to spoon feed sales. Have you ever been a salesperson? Seriously the only job harder is being the mother of two very small children.
Marketing has lead gen covered with metrics. Once a lead goes to sales, what happens to the lead becomes a matter of excuses, rather than notes in an explicit record.
I’ve seen sales drop a retained customer that called them to place an order. They did this because the commission didn’t justify the effort. The rest of the company made sacrifices to foster the customer relationship and retain that customer. I know that this sounds OK to the sales reps you tell the story to, but it’s a clear indication that the structure of the sales force and the compensation plan needs to be changed. Sales gets away with this stuff, because excusses are all you have left when you haven’t made your numbers.
As for the data that would go on those pages, you would put anything on them, and if you don’t find any statistical correlation between the data items, collect other data until you do find correlation. A/B test the sales reps. It might even help the sales reps find the spot where they make their best numbers. Sales reps that don’t make their draw move on to another company. The next rep in the door fills that spot. Baseball teams are not run this way. Sales reps are not interchangeable. We won’t get to optimization, if we don’t start capturing data.
I imagine cleaning sewers or picking crops is pretty hard, too. Point is, there are a lot of hard jobs out there and a lot of people’s efforts go into making a successful technology company. The totality of the efforts makes a company customer-oriented and a desirable source of products or services. An accountable environment where everyone, their efforts, and their expertise is respected usually makes for the best chance of long-term success. As this article points out, there are lots of opportunities for disrespect; it is better to err on the other side in our daily dealings. Maybe we can make better lives and better companies at the same time……
@LPC, in fact I have been in sales and R&D. Also, in fact, @Ken Pomper, I’ve been a dishwasher and worked on a farm. I will say I’ve had more respect doing some of these other jobs than I see in this current position. It’s not always like this but I’ve been in enough organizations to see how almost everyone thinks “if only our marketing were better, boy those guys/gals are lame”. You know what’s harder than sales? Putting up with constant disrespect, under appreciation and whining and complaining from all levels of the company.
Ken, thanks for reminding me to stay in the upside. It’s too easy to fall into a world where the bad has driven out the good.
Bill, sales killed a company I worked at. They killed it with ego. They killed it with an inability to project an obvious slow down through the sales funnel. The mano-el-mano sales culture kept marketing limited, so when we needed marketing, it wasn’t there. Still, some of those people were great friends. My sales story is one guy, exactly one. It only takes one person to change your view of the world.
Cranky, where metrics are missing, the world that runs on metrics insists that nothing else matters. So here we have the sales process, which definately is a tough nut to crack on metrics. If it doesn’t become more explicit and deliver metrics that work, the sales rep will follow the print shop into history. Not being in sales, I wouldn’t know what to metric. And, yes, metrics can become a game, so that is to be avoided. The metrics would change from one sales methodology to the next.
@DavidWLocke
Hello. Yes, it’s actually me, the author of this short series. Want to respond to a number of the comments.
@Steve — Thx. And wait until you see what I pull from your very neurons about Product Managers.
@DavidLocke — I’m with CrankyPM, I don’t get the web page thing. We already have something like you describe. It’s call the CRM system! Leads go in there, Opps are tracked there, communications are linked to the opps, reporting and analysis is done there.
The problem is that the people putting in the data are the sales reps and *some* of them are not all that truthful. And there is no way to double check everything. Some validation can be done via Win/Loss but that is after the fact and never happens in reality.
The only metric that counts and is absolutely trackable is $$$ of closed deals. Other derivative metrics such as average deal size, time to close, opp/deal ratio etc. can be reported on but in times like these, the “Closed – No Budget” reason for lost deals is especially popular and completely renders those derivative metrics useless.
The internal call to action — Marketing, more leads please! or Marketing new and improved positioning! or Marketing additional collateral! or Marketing, update the website cuz our competitors did! etc. etc.
BTW David, are you an engineer? In my view, only an Engineer could conceive of that web page idea when CRM has been around forever and the issues of the data in the CRM system are well known by everyone who uses any CRM system.
@Bill_the_PM — We should commiserate over some drinks. Perhaps a Cranky Marketers Support Group is needed. What alternate career are you considering? Perhaps I’m 6-9 months behind you in career course correction mode.
@Ken Pomper — you may have an alternate career opportunity as one of the following: diplomat, divorce counselor, hostage negotiator.
@Cranky SE — Boy do I want to give you a good smackdown. I’ve explicitly refrained from talking about SEs cause you guys are already getting abused by the sales reps, but your comments lead me to think otherwise.
If you want some abuse from Marketing, I’m game. Don’t make me go there or you’ll regret it. As someone said above, I’m bitter, and trust me, there’s more than enough bitterness to send some daggers your way.
@everyone else reading this….keep the comments coming. Thx.
Wow, I have refrained so far, but this one cuts close to my heart. Bill_the_PM is my hero. I too started way back washing dishes, pumping gas, and slaving in the kitchen to work my way through school.
The beating that I take on a daily basis from the sales team is inexcusable. Yes, the economy is sucking bad. Yes, companies don’t have much money to spend. Yes, you hate the leads I get from trade shows and tools like GlobalSpec. You want your leads pre-qualified, and pretty much ready to place an order. No up front screening, no demoing, no competitive response. Just a bonafide, 3 day closing. Well, you get about three of those a year (out of the 150 units you need to sell to make your plan)
However, when I dare to track the progress of a lead, and find that nearly 1,200 north american leads alone have been allowed to age 90 days WITHOUT A SINGLE FOLLOWUP (phone call, email, post card, carrier pigeon, etc), and when I touch a couple to find that they BOUGHT a competitors tool because they NEVER heard from us (meaning YOU), I am going to get uppity, I am going to flame you in front of your peers, and I am going to hold you accountable.
As much as we in Marketing hate the “Few Good Expenses” video clip, I never tire of watching “Glengarry Glenross”. Way too many sales staff need the third place prize…
@Cranky Marketer, I know about CRM systems. There is still a gap between what gets tracked in a CRM system and what actually happens during a sales presentation. Given that sales reps throw away retained customers all the time, those CRM metrics don’t seem to work. Yes, revenues is the ultimate metric, and the ultimate smokescreen, particularly during a recession.
If I was a sales rep, I wouldn’t be reading the Cranky PM blog, would I. The only engineer I know that spent three months in sales came back to engineering saying the stuff doesn’t sell itself. But, then there were sales reps that couldn’t sell it either. Imagine if it did sell itself, and we didn’t need sales reps. That’s not going to happen.
As for the excuse generation factory, sales reps that can sell don’t play the excuse game. They are too busy selling. So it’s the sales reps that can’t sell that play the blame game. But, sales is a club and all of you have to stick together, or do you?
I don’t have a problem with sales reps. Where they get away with murder, it’s a sales management problem. Blunt instruments like revenues will never tune a sales force to the sublties, anymore than typical requirements elicitation tunes to the UI to fitness with the user’s meaning. Blunt all round.
The sales reps I’ve known couldn’t “market,” so CRM systems become suspect. I realize that sales thinks they market. Marketers do forget to sell, but only in B2C, do they think they can sell. Marketing doesn’t canabolize sales like sales does marketing.
Sales reps I’ve known couldn’t actually nurture relationships either, but again, blame that on the compensation plan and sale force structure.
All I know is that if you depend on a sales force alone, you are fine until a recesssion or late market, and then you are dead. When nobody is buying, a sales rep can’t sell. Call it a lesson from the dot bust.
Well, any of your three suggestions for me is starting to sound good. Above, I wanted to say why things are the way they and how they might work better, based on real “community,” not the kind of “community” that is bandied about these days.
The most annoying thing about the some of the “input” that PMs get is its banality, presented as original, but said a zillion times before, predictable and already accounted for in the decision-making/resource allocation process. I think that the average PM could have stickies on his/her monitor with the usual “input” all ready to go when the going gets tough. Unfortunately, an answer is required…. again… and again.
@gander – thanks for the support! Although I am not responsible directly for leads, I generate the content for the lead generation programs. We get the same sort of feedback and I think the same lack of follow through exists.
@Cranky Marketer – as for career change, that has been a challenge. I’ve turned down a couple of other product management offers (I am currently a PMM, formerly PM) – too much of the same thing. I’m thinking something like community manager (a lot of companies are seeing the value in cultivating a community) or perhaps back into a development role. It’s amazing at this stage of my career that the main thing you fought for early on, experience, is now a detriment. I’ve actually knocked off 5 years from my resume and avoided a clear indication of when I actually started!
I would tell anyone going into product marketing/management, to be sure the marketing switch is for you. Once you go over, it’s tough to go back. People seem to think you checked your brain and skills at the door of the marketing department.
oops, posted as BillG, == Bill_The_PM :-)
Actually its now Bill_The_PMM.
Wow. I’m sorry I missed this one when it first got posted.
I’ve worked in marketing my entire career and if my attitude towards my sales teams was anything like yours, I would have (and should have) been fired.
Marketing works for sales. Get over it. If 98% of your “leads” end up in the dustbin then I would hazard a guess that you either have a serious lead gen problem, your definition of “lead” is wrong, or you don’t have the right level of visibility into your pipeline to know what is happening to that 98%. Either way, there is a serious problem and it’s your job to fix it.
Sales always wants more from marketing and yes, some of it isn’t what they really need but in the end if sales is broken, it’s marketing’s job to figure out what the real underlying problems are and fix them. If you can’t get your head around that, you need to pack up your stuff and go on back to product management and leave the real hard work of marketing to the marketers.
April
@April not sure who specifically you are targeting your comments to since there are many comments here. Marketing’s role is not just lead generation. In fact, I did not dispute that we work for sales but marketing also works for the whole company in terms of strategy, seeking new directions, exploring business models, branding, etc.
Many of the comments are discussing the lack of respect for each other’s role in the company. The lack of respect leads to resentment and lack of cooperation and inevitably bad business. Hopefully, the Cranky PM is not the site where people put up or shut up like you do.
April.
Wow, what hostility. Dont’ want to get into a fight with you so all I’ll say is the following:
1. Marketing does NOT “work for” Sales. Marketing works for the company as does Sales. Each has responsibilities they must uphold.
2. I’ll decide where I will and will not work, thank you very much! As you are a career Marketer, maybe I hit a sore spot with you or you think I’m disparaging your lifelong profession. Well, now it’s also *my* profession, and there are problems in technology Marketing that need to be discussed and addressed.
3. This is a CRANKY blog. It’s not a “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya around the campfire” blog. It’s meant to be over-the-top and “in your face”. Just as the CrankyPM is an alter-ego of a real person, so is the Cranky Marketer. Don’t take it all 100% literally.
Hi Bill_the_PM – the comments were directed at the post, not the commenters. I couldn’t agree with you more that Sales and Marketing need to respect each other.
Hey Cranky Marketer – no need to get defensive, I’m just saying that dismissing sales as incompetent is no way be successful in Marketing (which I’m sure you’re finding out). You aren’t “dismissing my profession” in that post (at least that wasn’t how I read it), I just disagree with how you do marketing. A lot of what you position as someone else’s responsibility I would argue you should own.
I get that it’s supposed to be funny and I do my fair share of complaining about sales but seriously, if 98% of your leads end up in the dustbin, cranky or not, marketing has a problem.
April
@April: “If you can’t get your head around that, you need to pack up your stuff and go on back to product management and leave the real hard work of marketing to the marketers.”
Could I? Please! Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d! O god, I could be bound in the ProdMgmt nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space… I guess the key problem is that there is no real way to divide the two – nor should there be, really.
Marketing works for sales? While I have always appreciated my sales brethren, you’re asking Marketing has to provide a structure through which the sales team can sell, but if they start _reporting_ to sales, you’ll end up with a different set of collateral and, god forbid, product features (see prev. graf) for each and every prospect they try to woo. Having marketing work for sales would be like telling B.A. Baracus he works for Hannibal– a bad idea.
So, I put it to you, April: Don’t you get cranky working with sales sometimes? A-Leads close at a many-times higher rate if they are contacted within 48 hours, is that in marketing’s purview to make sure they tag them in that time?
Hi Justin,
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think marketing should report to sales (yipes!), but we certainly do work for the sales force. That doesn’t mean you never disagree or complain about each other, it just means that sales is a customer of marketing (and not so much the other way around).
I also totally agree with you that the lines between product management and product marketing are blurry (or in the case of small companies don’t exist at all).
I worked at a company once where leads weren’t being followed up on fast enough (if they were followed up on at all) and I fixed it. First of all, the reason most of the leads weren’t followed up on is because they weren’t really “leads” they were just prospects. We had an inside sales rep do follow-up and further qualify leads that weren’t considered “A” leads. As for the “A” leads, once I figured out that not all of those were being followed up on, I started doing a weekly report to the CEO that listed which reps weren’t following up on which leads (the reps were copied). That lasted about a month before suddenly, that report wasn’t needed anymore.
My point is, in this case the problem was partly that the “leads” were crap and the reps didn’t follow up on any of them as a result. In my mind it’s marketing’s job to close the loop and figure out how to maximize the value out of the leads that are created, not just throw them over the transom to the sales force and complain when they aren’t doing what we hoped they would do.
April
I’ve done just about everything, PM, R&D, Support, and now PreSales. Let me tell you, I am in heaven now. Best job ever. The Cranky Sales Engineer may have things to complain about – we’re human right? – but I’m not buying most of it.
@Happy_Sales_Engineer.
Geesh. Now everyone will want to do it. Shhhhhh!
Whoa, brawl breaking out in the comments b/w the Cranky Marketer & @aprildunford . 27 comments and counting. http://bit.ly/6n7Dt
Hey, anyone actually contract a company to perform win/loss analysis? (emphasis on ‘loss’)
Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. And if you’re in a pissing match with Sales, they’ll bring a bunch of numbers with dollar signs. If you just bring a lead-gen report, you didn’t bring a knife, you brought a spoon.
As the post already points out, under-utilization of leads can be dismissed off-hand by saying they were low-quality. And if you don’t have data to contradict that, it’s your word versus the folks who bring in the moohla. An objective win/loss report will show why deals were lost, and it will highlight whether it’s more about the individual salespeople vs other factors. Try to make sure you get this allocated in your marketing budget every quarter.
I also think PMs and PMMs try to care about far more people in the sales force than they should. Quota = natural selection.
On that last point, the argument goes like this. If the entire sales force has access to the same collateral, same demos, same references, etc. why do some people exceed quota every quarter while others flounder? You can’t pin that on PM and PMM.
Of course, if even your top sales folks are saying that PM and PMM are doing a crappy job, it’s time to take your lumps.
All that said, I hate to say it, but in all but one company I’ve worked at, the Marketing team didn’t seem worth the cubicle space they occupied. I’ve only had the pleasure of working with one marketing director who was really on top of his marketing plan, value props and messaging, lead gen activities, channels and partner activities. He wasn’t a “product expert”, but he articulated the product positioning and value props so clearly and forcefully, he didn’t need to be a product expert in order to be successful. He would say them with such confidence and conviction, prospects just ate it up – and they wouldn’t be put-off when he would defer detailed questions to an SE or PM.
My 2 cents is that to be a successful PMM and not fall into the space-wasting-fluff-regurgitator category, you need exactly that sort of aggressive self-marketing both internally and externally. Know your message, stick to it, speak it with conviction, and back up your existence with metrics with dollar signs.