What Makes a Great First Product Marketing Hire (and Who to Avoid)

If you’re an early-stage enterprise B2B SaaS company, your first product marketing hire can *literally* change the trajectory of your company. 

But HOLY COW is it hard to find the right person. It requires a special blend of product mindset and commercial instinct, visionary and pragmatic thinking, strategic orientation and…just getting stuff done. 

I’ve hired or worked with dozens of product marketers over the past 10+ years. And I’ve found that most standouts come from “non-traditional” backgrounds. For example:

• The solutions engineer for a digital product analytics platform
• A customer success leader for a B2B customer analytics solution
• A cybersecurity product manager who became increasingly interested in go-to-market challenges

Each of these folks went on to become phenomenally successful product marketers.

What do these roles have in common?

1. They’re bilingual. They speak the language of customers – and your solution. This helps them bridge the two and identify gaps.
2. They know the importance of understanding the details…so they can then back out and simplify the message.
3. They understand the most important internal functions *outside of marketing.* They win credibility with sales, product, and CS because they know what makes these teams tick.

On the other hand, here are four common “first product marketing leader misfires” for an early-stage enterprise B2B company:

Barry the BigCo Blowhard: His resume is impressive, with product marketing stints at Microsoft and Snowflake. Your investors love him. Spends a lot of time talking about how we need to “nail our story.” Hasn’t written website copy in 10+ years. His first order of business will be opening JDs for PMMs specializing in competitive research, ecosystem, enablement, and pricing.

Francesca the Framework Fanatic: Develops complicated frameworks for jobs to be done by persona, sales messaging by stage, Porter’s 5 forces, SWOT analysis, the conjoined triangles of success, etc. Wonders why the rest of the company doesn’t use them more.

Sal the Sales Sycophant: Spends most of his time making custom decks for the sales team and pushing the product team for one-off feature requests from prospects to “get the deal over the finish line.”

Carla the Consensus Champion: Loves alignment meetings – with marketing, product, CS. Spends most of her time on these meetings. At a certain point, you feel…incredibly aligned. But things still aren’t humming, and you sense a lack of strategic energy and direction.

Each of these folks can be a great product marketing leader. But they’re not right FOR YOU. 

Want more? Check out my complete guide to hiring your first product marketer or for more individualized advice, get in touch for a free coaching session.

Further Reading

• The complete guide to hiring your first product marketer
• Whom should product marketing report to? A short quiz for your startup
• Why most product launch campaigns fail (and how to make your next one a success)
• The complete guide to building your first enterprise B2B marketing team