In this episode, Sahil Sethi, author of Product Marketing Level Up and Vice President of Global Product Marketing at Freshworks, joins Louise Liu to discuss the attributes and qualities that define great product marketers. Sahil also shares his thoughts on how to hone the skills of velocity and integrated marketing in practice.
Listen to the full interview above or read on for the highlights from the conversation.
If you truly want to excel in product marketing, we need to keep learning, and that can only come with a growth mindset.
This is Product Marketing Episode 56: Sahil Sethi – Product Marketing Level Up
Episode Highlights
Can you tell us how your product marketing experience influenced the recommendations and the insights that you have put together inside the book, Product Marketing Level Up?
A few things happened. I’ve been doing product marketing for a while, and I know for many people, it appears like a relatively new profession or a new function. But from my perspective, product marketing has been around for a fairly long time. I was lucky to have started with large company like Microsoft that has been nurturing this function for a very long time. And I know product marketing is new and a lot of startups and, and growing traction. But I thought that there is a lot of expertise and insights on product marketing that seems to be on the, on the core functional side of product marketing, on messaging, on enablement, on launches, which is extremely good for someone who’s trying to break in.
But there wasn’t a whole lot of advice and expertise on some of the soft skill sides of product marketing. How do you collaborate with other teams? How do you bring a growth mindset? How do you create an execution mindset? How do you bring a bias to action? We all know these are essential skills. to being a successful product marketer, whether you are starting or whether you’re a leader, but I felt like there wasn’t much conversation around that. And it wasn’t a lot of contextual conversation around that.
I think the other change that has happened in my own perspective over the last few years is I transitioned from people management to being an executive. And I realized I was sitting in discussions where I’m not evaluating or looking at or reviewing one individual’s performance, but I’m sitting in like calibration discussions or performance discussions for all people in marketing, for demand gen, for brand, for corporate marketing, for product marketing, of course.
And I realized There are some common themes to how product marketing should behave or should show up And the perception they want to create if they truly want to have a seat at the table if they truly want to have higher Influence and higher impact for their own career The conversations and the expectations from a career perspective were always about these soft skills.
They were about initiative. They were about ownership They were about accountability, they were about coachability. And somehow the world of product marketing wasn’t talking about that. And that’s what led to me thinking about this book in the first place. This book is essentially all about the top leadership skills and qualities and attributes and soft skills that, in my opinion, define what exceptional product marketing looks like. Not just good. But great and exceptional product marketing. So that’s where this came about.
You emphasize the importance of mentors in the product marketing career. What is the role these mentors have played in your career and how they can be beneficial for other product marketers as well?
I’m a big believer that everybody needs a teacher in their lives. We’ve had teachers at school for academics. Every athlete needs a teacher. Even your CEOs and founders and executives have executive coaches and leadership coaches. So I start from the belief that everybody needs a teacher in their lives. You don’t just become successful doing things yourself . Luke Skywalker needed a Yoda. Every Jedi needs a Yoda to guide them. And so, one of the biggest messages in the book is go find a teacher that could be a coach, that could be a mentor, that could be your manager.
In most cases, it is your manager. That could be somebody else in your company. That could be a good Samaritan. That could be a who you find that could be a previous manager. But I’ve personally benefited a lot from having these connections. I don’t bucket them into words because I think the word “mentor” has a different connotation, or “manager” has a different connotation, but you should always have someone in your professional career where you can reach out to them for help.
It could be help on the function that you’re leading. “I need to do some messaging. Can you guide me?” It could be help on navigating the organization. It could be help on some of your mindsets and how to think about not being a victim, for example, is a mindset. Growth mindset is a mindset and sometimes you need somebody externally to help you unshackle yourself.
But that’s a team that I often talk about in the book. No matter what challenge you’re facing, always, you’re never alone. Find someone who can help you with that challenge, even though sometimes we feel the accountability. In reality, there are people who are willing to help you if you only ask for help. And so if there is one big takeaway from the book is never be hesitant or never shy away from asking for help. And I strongly urge everybody to find a mentor at work or outside of work. I’m sure you have one in your network. who can truly help you be successful.
Why do you think having a high velocity mindset is important and how it contributes to being a successful product marketer?
Velocity is one of the attributes, or soft skills, that one needs to be a successful product marketer. In fact, it’s an attribute that one needs to be a successful executive or professional in any field.
Particularly in product marketing, velocity is crucial. So, what is velocity? If you remember from physics, velocity is the idea that you need to go fast, but also in the right direction. That’s why I choose to use the word velocity and not just speed. Everyone appreciates the desire to go fast. Nobody likes to be slow, especially when it comes to creating the right impact in your career. Market information is changing so fast, customer information is changing so fast, and your own internal priorities may require you to go fast. Having a bias for action and the ability to move fast is a wonderful skill that every PMM should have, but it needs to be paired with a sense of direction.
This sense of direction comes from having the right prioritization. Sometimes you may not be prioritizing your own tasks but working on the company’s priorities, and that’s okay. It’s important to have a sense of where the company wants you to go, what the company is trying to achieve, and what alignment we have. Sometimes you need to slow down to go fast. You might spend a week or two truly understanding what we are trying to do before taking action and marching in that direction. If there isn’t a sense of prioritization and you’re given orders without direction, you have the opportunity to create that prioritization and focus. You can ask questions and provide a sense of where we are going and why we are doing what we are doing, sharing those assumptions.
It’s really important to establish the direction first and then work with speed. These two need to go together. Many of us are good at moving things fast, but sometimes we break things or work in silos without collaborating with others, which is not ideal. On the other hand, some are great at collaboration and asking questions but may be slow at executing tasks. The secret to being a successful and exceptional PMM is marrying collaboration, a bias for action, and speed with a sense of direction.
These are soft skills, a mindset, and a behavior. It’s about asking the right questions, showing up in the right manner, and being productive. All these things are encapsulated in the idea of velocity. Having velocity as a superpower makes a big difference in whether you are a 10X PMM or an aspiring PMM.
In your book, you discuss how the proliferation of channels can create a danger of a siloed marketing approach and how product marketing can be central to uniting different teams. Tell us more about the integrated marketing as a skill.
The term integrated marketing isn’t new; it’s been around forever, even in the B2C world. The idea of integrated marketing is that your channels, tactics, and messaging are really integrated and blend well with each other, showing up consistently across different platforms. However, I don’t think this term has been applied to the B2B world very effectively, and if it has, it’s not uniform across every company.
We, as product marketers, have a unique role to play in this. Particularly in organizations where there is a proliferation of channel experts—someone’s an expert in SEO, another in webinars and video, someone else in field and ABM tactics, and another manages the website. These are all extremely smart people, but they need guidance. This guidance can come from product marketing, providing clarity on the ICP we are targeting, the message we are trying to convey, and how this message changes based on where the audience is in their buying journey.
Sometimes the message is about what you offer, sometimes it’s about why it’s different, and sometimes it’s about the customer’s problems. We, as product marketers, have the opportunity to move beyond messaging and positioning, providing a view into the customer journey for the rest of the marketing team so they can integrate their efforts in a uniform motion. This could also mean running or orchestrating an integrated marketing campaign.
A parallel I often draw is with sales plays for sales reps. For example, you create a messaging framework or a pitch deck, and then a sales play, which includes a sequence of emails, a pitch, an offer, and a demo for buyers who meet certain criteria. It’s common for product marketing, especially in sales-led motions, to orchestrate an entire sales play. Similarly, we can orchestrate an entire integrated marketing campaign.
It’s essentially the same thing, except there are no sales reps involved—just different marketing channels. You take your messaging framework and help orchestrate the right kind of marketing assets behind a campaign that solves a particular problem. This could be around a theme, like the current campaigns on AI. Product marketing has the opportunity to own, orchestrate, and drive these campaigns because they understand the persona, have a strategic view of the different marketing channels, and the customer buying journey.
When I say level up integrated marketing, I’m asking us to level up all the components. Do you understand the customer pain points and the buying journey? Do you understand the role of different marketing channels and activities in the pursuit of a buying journey? Every company is struggling with this right now. Consumer spending habits have changed, and many organizations are redefining their ICP, customer pain points, and rediscovering product-market fit. What you thought was happening from an integrated perspective may not be true anymore, and it needs a new set of orchestration. This is where product marketing can absolutely help.
So, I tell everyone, if you want to be an exceptional product marketer, don’t just stop at creating messaging or defining personas. Orchestrate its applicability to the rest of the growth and marketing channels by thinking of marketing as an integrated set of activities. That was the thinking behind the skill set there.
In your opinion, to be exceptional at product marketing, which skill is the most important one?
It’s growth mindset. I strongly believe in this and have practiced it all my life. We all need a growth mindset in our lives. A growth mindset is what will help us become better, even if we’re lacking in other skills. Particularly in product marketing, my career has been diverse. One quarter, I was doing launches and enablement; the next, I was working on sales plays and campaigns; and another quarter, I was focused on messaging and event support.
After the first year, the company faced new challenges, and we were doing different kinds of activities, leveling up in terms of process. I don’t think I would have been able to keep up without a growth mindset, a learning mindset. This is really important. By definition, we as PMMs are somewhat generalists. There are many functions where you become deep experts in a certain discipline, but for us, it’s crucial to remain generalists.
We can specialize and have our own superpowers, but to truly excel in product marketing, we need to keep learning new skills and qualities. This can only come with a growth mindset. So, that’s the most important skill out there.
About Guest
Sahil specializes in scaling SaaS companies looking to scale beyond $100M+ ARR. Privileged to learn from the best at SaaS leaders like Betterup, Klaviyo, Qualtrics and Microsoft. Supported massive exits (Klaviyo (IPO), Qualtrics (SAP acquisition and IPO ) and Cloud Technology Partners (acquired by HPE)
Deep experience in both PLG and sales led growth, with the ability to successfully stitch both types of GTM motions. He has helped rebrand products, uplevel demand-gen, simplify messaging, modernize pricing, build winning sales plays, deliver launch keynotes and led analyst briefings
Sahil is also a published author. Wrote a book “Product Marketing Level Up” aimed at helping marketers looking to level up their product marketing craft and career.
