3 Great Ways to Evaluate Your Product Marketing Manager

December 7, 2010

Start-up and expansion stage software companies hire Product Marketing Managers for a reason.

At that point in their development, deriving competitive advantage through product positioning can be critical. It’s the product marketing manager’s job to make sure the company’s solution stands out from the pack and supersedes rival products in what can be highly competitive market segments.

Of course, there’s a lot that goes in to successful product positioning. But let’s assume that you’ve got a sound product ready to sell in a market that needs it. The performance of a SaaS company’s Product Marketing Manager can be the difference between generating enough leads and closing enough deals to thrive, or simply treading water with the rest of the competition.

So how do you evaluate that Product Marketing Manager’s performance? It’s often measured by the number of leads that person generates. But this system of measurement can be faulty.

First, if a lead constitutes a response from a marketing e-mail or direct mail campaign, how much does it say about the performance of the Product Marketing Manager? Second, generating a large number of leads does not mean that a large number of deals will be closed. As such, is that a true predictor of your Product Marketing Manager’s impact? And lastly, even the definition of a lead seems to be inconsistent among sales professionals.

So, if lead generation is not the best measure of a Product Marketing Manager’s performance, how else should he/she be evaluated?

The short answer is that Product Marketing Managers should not be evaluated on individual deals. Too many other factors exist that can better describe their contributions to the overall success of their products in the market. According to David Daniels of Pragmatic Marketing, one way to measure performance is to look at outcomes or the revenues generated from those leads.

In his blog post, Daniels describes some other practical ways to evaluate Product Marketing Managers’ performance. Here are a few of his suggestions:

Are They Experts on Your Buyers?

Companies often have plenty of employees who are product experts. But what about buyer experts? One way to evaluate your Product Marketing Managers is to ask them to fill the role of expert on your buyers. Outcomes are sometimes directly linked to buyer expertise. Because Product Marketing Managers don’t interact much with real buyers in the market, encourage them to interact with potential buyers to find out more about them.

To do that, set a quota that requires them to interact with potential buyers and write reports on what they learn. You can start with eight to 10 interactions per quarter and gradually increase that number as the Product Marketing Manager becomes more comfortable with the process. Keep in mind that “interactions” shouldn’t be conducted as part of sales calls.

Product Marketing Managers who are able to do this well will not only acquire a better grasp of their buyers’ mindsets, they’ll also learn firsthand those buyers’ purchase behaviors and what they’re looking for in products.

Can They Identify Correct Bottlenecks?

One great way to evaluate Product Marketing Managers is to judge how well they’re able to analyze deals. They should be able to pinpoint where they might be struggling and determine how they can correct any blockages in the sales funnel. Rather than over-analyzing a single deal, a good Product Marketing Manager can recognize patterns over a series of deals and draw conclusions from them.

Removing such bottlenecks is critical to improving sales throughout, and increasing the volume of deals your sales team can deliver. Mastering this quality will have a stronger, longer-term impact on sales.

Do They Take Ownership of Win/Loss Analysis?

A good Product Marketing Manager is one that can classify win/loss patterns and devise recommendations that result in dramatic revenue growths. Successfully taking ownership of this process will require Product Marketing Managers to collaborate with Product Managers. This relationship will lead to exchanging insight from both perspectives, which is an important step in any company’s long-term success.

The key is to not to measure your Product Marketing Managers based simply on lead generation. This evaluation is too simplistic and sometimes unrelated to a person’s real contribution to the company.

Keep in mind the things you really want your Product Marketing Manager to accomplish relative to product positioning, and evaluate them on their performances in those categories. As you better understand your Product Marketing Manager’s performance, you’ll be able to better direct and organize his/her responsibilities. This will lead to better product positioning and ultimately a growth strategy based on competitive advantage.

Co-Founder

Faria Rahman is the Co-Founder of <a href="https://www.treemarc.com/">Treemarc</a> which, uses machine learning to make it easy for businesses to order custom packaging and product nesting in a few minutes. Previously, she was a Senior Associate at Northbridge Financial Corporation, a leading commercial property and casualty insurance management company offering a wide range of innovative solutions to Canadian businesses. Faria also worked at OpenView from 2010 to 2011 where she was part of the Market Research team.