Dan Galante

I covered the Product Marketing Community event in New York. Product Marketing Community was founded by Product Marketers for Product Marketers.

Attendees of Product Marketing Community events take interactive workshops led by product marketing leaders and network with their peers.

The event covered how to: build and execute: go-to-market strategy, buyer insights, messaging, content, and sales enablement.

Product Marketing Community founder Rowan Noronha kicked off the event.

Currently VP of Product Marketing for Zix, Rowan has led product marketing for North America (Office of the CFO) at SAP and Cognizant. He also serves as an Advisor to SAAS startups.

Here are takeaways on go-to-market strategy, developing buyer insights, and sales enablement.

Marketers need to develop and deploy a buyer-centric go-to-market strategy.

It is time for marketers to ask better questions about buyers.

Businesses should identify their ideal audience for their offering. Data from this analysis can be used to target better prospects and improve go-to-market results.

Only certain target customers will buy due to internal and external factors.

To grow revenue, businesses need to develop and use better competitive insights. Developing these insights entails examining everything about the competition to identify: strengths, weaknesses, competitor priorities, growing, and under-served markets.

Product Marketing involves more than just supporting the Marketing and Product Management teams. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all play a role in growing the business and serving customers.

Product Marketers serve as market experts and translators for teams from across the organization.

What is Product Marketing?

Product Marketing is the discipline of bringing a product to market and nurturing its success. Businesses need to create and market products people want to buy. To do that, they need to use the Pragmatic Framework.

Product Marketers are taking on some Product Manager responsibilities.

Product Marketing needs a separate brief.

Johnathan Hinz of Seismeic shares his insights on sales enablement and its role in marketing.

The lack of Sales and Marketing alignment is due in part to the inadequate amount of customer value mapping relating to the number of buyers types.

Product Marketing Community New York was a great event.

I covered the Product Marketing Community event in New York. Product Marketing Community was founded by Product Marketers for Product Marketers.

Attendees of Product Marketing Community events take interactive workshops led by product marketing leaders and network with their peers.

The event covered how to: build and execute: go-to-market strategy, buyer insights, messaging and content and sales enablement.

Product Marketing Community founder Rowan Noronha kicked off the event. 

Currently VP of Product Marketing for Zix, Rowan has led product marketing for North America (Office of the CFO) at SAP and Cognizant. He also serves as an Advisor to SAAS startups.

Here are takeaways on go-to-market strategy, developing buyer insights, and sales enablement.

Marketers need to develop and deploy a buyer-centric go-to-market strategy.

It is time for marketers to ask better questions about buyers.

Businesses should identify their ideal audience for their offering. Data from this analysis can be used to target better prospects and improve go-to-market results.

Only certain target customers will buy due to internal and external factors.

To grow revenue, businesses need to develop and use better competitive insights. Developing these insights entails examining everything about the competition to identify: strengths, weaknesses, competitor priorities, growing, and under-served markets.

Product Marketing involves more than just supporting the Marketing and Product Management teams. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all play a role in growing the business and serving customers.

Product Marketers serve as market experts and translators for teams from across the organization.

What is Product Marketing?

Product Marketing is the discipline of bringing a product to market and nurturing its success. Businesses need to create and market products people want to buy. To do that, they need to use the Pragamtic Framework.

Product Marketers are taking on some Product Manager responsibilities.

Product Marketing needs a separate brief.

Johnathan Hinz of Seismeic shares his insights on sales enablement and its role in marketing.

The lack of Sales and Marketing alignment is due in part to the inadequate amount of customer value mapping relating to the number of buyers types.

Product Marketing Community New York was a great event.

Things are changing in the automotive industry. These changes are from the way vehicles are bought and sold. Vehicle offerings are also different. Vehicles went from gas combustion engines to hybrid vehicles which means a split between gas and electric. Now there is going to be a shift to all-electric vehicles or EVs. The adoption of EVs will accelerate as more charging stations become available.

Source: Derived registration counts by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Experian Information Solutions https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10861

“This figure illustrates the population breakdown of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) registered in the United States as of Dec. 31, 2020. Most of the vehicles are flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs), but those generally operate primarily on conventional gasoline. FFVs were produced and sold as a way for vehicle manufacturers to meet their fuel economy requirements. Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) are the second-largest population by fuel type, accounting for 70% of the AFV population when excluding FFVs. Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) include all-electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and account for about 30% of the AFV population when excluding FFVs.”

I covered The New York Auto Show which was back after a two-year pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year’s auto show had different types of cars, trucks, and SUVs. The show was made up mostly of electronic vehicles and hybrid vehicles. This change is because of changes in the industry and US government policy to improve the environment. Starting in 2026, all gas vehicles will need to get 50 miles to the gallon to be sold in the US. Gas engines are being phased out.  The industry pledges to sell only electric vehicles or EVs by 2035. This is a global trend.

This is information that came out of the World Traffic Symposium, at the New York Auto Show.

Guest Speakers included:

Jennifer Homendy, Chair, National Transportation Safety Board

Andrew Wishnia, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate Policy, U.S. Department of Transportation

Dr. Steven Cliff, Deputy Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

David Strickland, Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs, GM

Mark F. Schroeder, Commissioner, NYS DMV, Governor’s Representative for Highway Safety

I did a survey on LinkedIn on how people find and buy vehicles. The results are here.

People are buying and selling cars online but many sales are still happening at dealerships.

According to the New York International Auto Show, here are the demographics of people who attended and bought cars at the auto show over the last 10 years.

How do you feel about electric vehicles? How do you find and buy vehicles?

Share your thoughts.

Sales processes include the following: customer development,   prospecting, discovery calls, closing deals, cross-selling, upselling, post-sales implementation, customer experience, obtaining referrals, and testimonials.

What is the hardest part of the sales process?

I surveyed my LinkedIn audience to find out.

Survey Results

Of those surveyed, 53 % said closing deals was the hardest part of the Sales Process, followed by understanding market fit at 22%, Calling on buyers, and knowing their needs at 19% with the lowest being cross-selling, referrals, testimonials, or other reasons at 6%.

Based on these findings, I have included nine ways to enable sales teams to close more deals.

9 Strategies to Empower and Enable Sales Teams to Make more Sales

1.Have Sales and Marketing Management discuss Sales Cycle mapping out Sales, Marketing, and the Customer Journey.

2. Have Marketing go with Sales on calls to observe customer interactions regularly.

3. Take notes from Sales calls to develop answers to customer objections.

4. Role play with the Sales to get better at objection handling.

5. Develop an on-demand LMS for Sales including Decks, Videos, Sales Training materials, Product training materials, Scripts, and FAQs.

6. Use feedback from Sales calls and objections to improve Sales and Marketing Collateral.

7. Assign readings on sales strategy and techniques.

8. Conduct market research to show how is your products and services are better than the competitor. Present market research creating a chart that Sales can refer to when dealing with customers.

9. Develop buyer personas to understand customer buying motives. Share the buyer personas with Sales.

What is the hardest part of the sales process?

How did you fix your sales process?

Share your thoughts.