Create An ICP like an Adobe PMM
Have you ever launched a campaign that went nowhere, or spent months chasing accounts that never convert? That's what happens when you don't have an ideal customer profile (ICP). When you’re marketing to everyone, you’re truly connecting with no one.
Today, I’m bringing you a product marketing expert with an amazing ICP story, Chris Piwinski. As product marketing lead at Adobe's Frame io, he is someone who truly gets both sales and product marketing at a deep level - because he's lived both worlds. Starting his career in sales at LinkedIn, Chris learned from some of the best sales leaders in the game while selling sales navigators to sales leaders. That experience gave him an inside look at what makes high performing sales organizations tick.
He’s not just customer obsessed; he's sales obsessed, building top tier enablement programs, shaping sales strategies, and getting in front of customers to truly understand their needs. He’s spent years perfecting the art of aligning sales strategies and marketing initiatives with customer needs—and he’s here to share it all with you.
The Power of a Well-Defined ICP
Chris kicks things off by sharing a startling, yet common scenario: launching campaigns without an ICP is like fishing without knowing what’s in the water. The result? Wasted time, resources, and perhaps a weary team. Instead, Chris suggests a well-crafted ICP helps you connect meaningfully with your audience by focusing your efforts on the people most likely to benefit from your product.
A Sales-Informed Approach
Drawing from his rich experiences at companies like LinkedIn and Twilio, Chris talks about the importance of leveraging sales data. He advocates for a deep dive into win-loss analysis to determine where your business is succeeding and how those successes can be replicated and expanded. This data not only informs your ICP but also provides the foundation for crafting a narrative that resonates internally with your team, and externally with your potential customers.
The Human Element: Customer Conversations
While hard data is crucial, Chris believes in marrying this with anecdotal insights from customer conversations. Using tools like Gong, which record and analyze sales calls, Chris listens to genuine customer interaction to extract key insights. This allows him to rest his internal and external pitches not on assumptions but on the authentic voice of the customer.
Crafting and Deploying Your ICP Strategy
Once you've built the foundation with solid data and customer insights, the next step is internal selling. Chris reveals that his strategy involved first convincing internal stakeholders—such as marketing and sales teams—by presenting a compelling, data-backed narrative. This buy-in is essential for aligning various departmental efforts and ensuring everyone marches to the beat of the same drum.
Driving External Engagement
Armed with a signed-off plan, the next phase was external engagement. Chris describes how they targeted key personas within their identified accounts, tailoring messages to speak directly to their unique needs and pain points. The strategy, while seemingly intricate, boiled down to presenting the right message to the right person at the right time.
From Insights to Execution
The real brilliance of Chris’s approach lies in its simplicity: use existing content creatively, leverage your brand's assets, and empower sales teams with targeted messaging. This streamlined approach not only maximized existing resources but also ensured that every stakeholder—from BDRs to AEs—was equipped with precisely what they needed to succeed.
Chris’s story reminds us that the pursuit of crafting a perfect ICP is less about chasing the mythical “silver bullet” and more about understanding the people you are trying to reach. As Chris aptly puts it, “Be customer obsessed.” Understand their world, listen to them, and let their needs guide your marketing efforts.
Chris leaves us with a vital piece of advice: fall in love with your customers. Let them lead you to the answers. This customer-centric approach not only fuels better marketing campaigns but also builds genuine, lasting connections.
Chris’s expertise has been shaped by a community of remarkable product marketers, which he shares with us, and I know you’ll be incredibly inspired to take his insights into the next steps of your own journey.
LINKS:
Connect with Chris:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherpiwinski/
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:00] Elle: Have you ever launched a campaign that went nowhere or spent months chasing accounts that never convert? That's what happens when you don't have an ideal customer profile or an ICP Marketing without one is kind of like phishing without knowing what's in the water.
[00:01:00] You might get lucky, but you'll waste a lot of time and resources without a clear ICP. You're marketing to everyone, which really means you're truly connecting with no one. Luckily, today I've brought you a product marketing expert with an amazing IP ICP story. Chris Polinsky product marketing lead at Adobe's Frame io.
You guys, let me tell you why I'm so excited to have Chris on the show. First of all, he is someone who truly gets both sales and product marketing at a deep level because he's lived both worlds. he started his career in sales at LinkedIn, learning from some of the best sales leaders in the game while selling sales navigator to well sales leaders. That experience gave him an inside look at what makes high performing sales organizations tick.
But Chris didn't stop there at companies like Twilio and Adobe. He found his passion for builders [00:02:00] and became enamored with how developers creatively solve problems. And he's not just customer obsessed, he's sales obsessed, building top tier enablement programs, shaping sales strategies, and getting in front of customers to truly understand their needs.
Oh, and if you need great, proof that great marketers know how to craft unforgettable moments. Chris is your guy. He leveraged his marketing and sales savvy to pull off an epic marriage proposal at Chipotle, tapping into the same skills that set him apart as a marketer. He linked in, networked his way into Chipotle's PR team, and orchestrated a seamless, seamlessly executed brand aligned proposal.
Complete with a photographer. Cake music, both their families and all at their go-to spot. Now that is creative problem solving at its finest.
Chris, welcome to the show.
[00:02:56] Chris: Elle, thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and it's always good to, [00:03:00] good
to talk with you.
[00:03:01] Elle: Yeah, we're gonna have to share some of those pictures and videos at Chipotle with the audience. what an inspiration.
[00:03:08] Chris: It's, uh, unfortunately all over Google, so, uh, plenty, plenty. One search can get anyone there.
[00:03:13] Elle: I love it. Okay, well let's dive right in. Uh, I think we all know what Adobe is, so tell us more about what's your role, what products do you care for?
[00:03:22] Chris: Yeah, so I focus on enterprise, uh, product marketing within Frame io and so. Quick, like one-liner of what Frame is, it's a cloud collaboration platform, but it's built specifically for creatives. So if we think about that, like creative teams, when they're going to launch anything from like, uh, campaigns, commercials, ads, things like that, they have to store their assets for work in progress projects, right?
Video, photo design, files, docs and more. And then control access to like their internal team, so their, their peers. External agencies, their executives, freelancers, and so they can do all of that within frame io. So a really like secure [00:04:00] place to store and collaborate, when these projects are, are work in progress for the creative
teams.
[00:04:05] Elle: Ah, that's super helpful. Thanks for framing that up. our subject for today is around this, concept of an having an ICP strategy. So tell us more about what was going on with Frame IO when you realized you needed to rethink that ICP strategy and reengage with the buy team. Yeah.
[00:04:25] Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things, actually, one of the first projects I. Went down or paths I went down. When I started at Frame io was just looking at our win-loss data and kind of what was happening in the market with, with frame io for the enterprise space specifically. But one of the initiatives that came up is our business unit really wanted to re-accelerate, or like accelerate our run rate business, right?
And so. For anyone out there who might not know what run rate business is, think about it more as the shorter sales cycle, more transactional sometimes looked at as logo acquisition, but for us it was [00:05:00] also departmental. So specific departments, especially like I mentioned, what frame is the creative teams, they typically have a set amount of budget that's smaller than let's say A CMO, for example, right?
But there are great opportunities to land frame in there. a much faster pace and eventually grow into what we call at Adobe transformational deals across the, the organization. So we really wanted to focus on accounts where we had limited to no frame usage or penetration, and we wanted to get in there, get in with the creative teams, with the ideal users, and then, actually expand from there.
So that, that is kind of like the situation that we wanted to dive in at the
start there.
[00:05:40] Elle: Yeah. Yeah. You can always expect a good result when you find the right user and you hit 'em with the right information. So, can you help us help the audience really understand what this could look like? So walk us through a hypothetical example of what an ICP might look like in this world.
[00:05:56] Chris: Yeah.
so this is where I like to spend the most of my time because I [00:06:00] think coming from a sales background, I always like to start with sales as a channel for marketing and, and product marketing. And so if I think about, like, I'll go kind of high level and then into an example I. the way I went to like approach this was, let's first look at our internal sales data, right?
Which is basic. Where are we winning? what are the verticals? Where do we see higher win rates? As, as much as we can find quality data, And that was a big piece. And for us, like Frame started like really within the media and entertainment space, but we're rapidly expanding into like what we call at a high level brands, which could be like retail, financial services, uh, healthcare, manufacturing, et cetera.
And so, you know, we see that the win rates are actually like growing there and there's a good, good opportunity. And so it's like, okay, that's great. And then within that, what are the titles or the personas within there where we're seeing wins? So, you know, you could take a look at. All of your wind data, and this is where I like to, you know, focus heavily on the wind data, where we win and not only look at who, what are the companies that [00:07:00] we're, we're winning?
What is the trend from the previous year to this, or like the two years ago to this year to look at like year over year analysis, but also the titles and the personas, and start grouping those into categories of who are we talking to. That's actually driving these deals forward. and so that's what we're able to do.
And then I think one of the most important pieces, like while that's objective and data driven based on what we have in our CRM and other systems, the beauty with something like Gong or the call recorders these days is you can listen to customer calls. And so from there, what you want to do is you actually want to.
Pick some of those customers where you have wins, and that's what we did is, hey, let's pick an ideal customer as we start to mold it based on the data. And let's actually, instead of just listening to calls across a bunch of customers, let's focus in on 1, 2, 3 customers and actually listen to calls all the way through the sales cycle.
And not only see when that champion's involved, but who else they're getting involved. How they're navigating. you know, those conversations and, and frankly like where sales reps are running into challenges because you have to establish a champion, then you have to go find users who are gonna love the [00:08:00] product.
And then you probably have to go up to the ultimate budget holder and, and pitch an ROI story, especially if finance or procurement gets in or, or IT, and security. Right. So from there you can really get a feel for the buyer journey and where the personas enter in the buyer journey. and that is like a big unlock for us.
'cause ultimately then what you end up doing is you go, okay, if I can take a step back and know that I not only need to market my product to a specific company, but I actually need to market different. Iterations or flavors of messaging to different personas. So my create my video creative leader is gonna wanna know one thing.
the creative director who might be overseeing the entire creative campaign. they might want to hear a little bit of different thing it and security is gonna wanna know that. Our commercial is not gonna leak before it is meant to launch and go out there. and then finance is gonna want to know ROI as as well as an executive, you know, and A CMO is gonna wanna know how do we differentiate our brand and move faster.
And so we actually took these flavors and said, let's focus on a narrow [00:09:00] audience instead of go going after our entire, countless, let's go after accounts that fit within this ICP. Let's go after the different. personas within that and let's actually tweak our messaging based on who we're talking to.
And that actually like really created quality pipeline and accelerated how fast we were able to move those deals. So that's what we delve into. Now, if you were to like, take a look at like an example, 'cause it's like, okay, your world, what is that? Like let's say I had Chris Clothing Inc.
Right? Which is a global retail company. And so it's like, okay. I know retail is a good place we want to focus on, but within there, I wanna dive into the personas. So I'm gonna go find the folks, the creatives in charge of video there, right? And I'm gonna understand, like, I'm gonna look at their website and are they putting videos on their website, on their social channels?
Do I see them on tv, on commercials, those different pieces. 'cause I know that they're focused on really creating quality video. But then I also know they're probably selling like budget for video to their creative director who comes from a design [00:10:00] background. So I need to talk to them about speed, quality, differentiation, those pieces.
They're ultimately reporting up to A CMO. They need to know about what's driving the brand forward. I. and then I know I have to put in a flavor of it who is gonna be focused on security and finance, who's gonna be like, Hey, we have to actually like figure out budget for this. How are you gonna justify it?
So I'm gonna take all those different angles of Chris Clothing Inc. And understand, hey, you're creating a ton of video content. I'm seeing it go out across commercials, across YouTube, across these different channels, and I can go in with these insights to the right personas to really craft my messaging
and do so, add sales,
things like that.
[00:10:38] Elle: Got it. Okay. So for you it was really about identifying the right company to target as part of that ICP and then building the buy team. And trying to use some of the insights that you got about that company to engage with some of those members of the buy team. And then, what [00:11:00] did you guys do after that?
Like what happened after you built out that buy team? You had the right messaging for the right persona for every member of the buy team. What did you guys do with all of that
insight?
[00:11:11] Chris: Yeah. I think there's really like two phases, right? That especially at large organizations, you have to go through, right? You have to sell internally and then sell externally. I. Uh, it's what I always say it is product marketing's role. So like the first phase is like sell internally, right?
So I go through and me and my team go through all of this data and we see, hey, we have like a great idea of out of all of the accounts that exist that we want sellers and marketing team to go after. This set group of accounts that represent the largest opportunity. That doesn't mean anything. If I'm the only one who knows that, or my team's the only one that knows that, then we have to go to the head of marketing who we have to convince to deploy a campaign and, and actually have everyone focus around this and, and take a more targeted approach instead of.
You know, the evergreen stuff that's going on or in addition to, but I also need to get the [00:12:00] sales leader on board as well, right? And so this is where taking a data-driven approach and like that objective approach of sales data, product usage data where you can, and crafting the right story to actually go pitch and sell internally and say, Hey, I.
Let's focus this effort really like, we can unlock a lot here. And so that's what we did. We went to the head of marketing, went to the head of sales. They were really excited about it. We got their buy-in to go after it. And then after that you have, you know, this brief that you create that is the overview, the analysis, what the messaging would look like, who the personas are, so everyone can sign off on this brief.
And then that becomes your source of truth for what you're gonna go and deploy and expand upon. And so from there, you're spinning up working with teams to spin up, landing pages, different ads, pulling in what case studies you can use to help fuel those ads and those landing pages. Going to the business development reps, the BDR team, and equipping them with messaging within their sequences, going to the sales team, letting them know who they're going to be talking to and how to.
really get, overcome [00:13:00] objections at different stages, and so you have this source of truth that ends up kind of spreading out
throughout.
[00:13:05] Elle: Yeah. So from doing this super, maybe it wasn't super intensive, but you had a super thorough, I will say, data analysis to craft the perfect ICP. Understand the buy team. You, you leveraged that to create a hyper targeted. Marketing campaign that empowered both the campaign's, demand gen side of the house as well as your sellers.
very, very creative. Now, what if I were a PMM that wanted to try to replicate this in my role? Right? So I'm trying to go through the steps that you outlined. You talked about. Uh, being data intensive, you talked about gong calls. let's back up a minute and just very quickly outline what the steps would be for PMM to replicate this.
Like one, I think you said data. So talk to me about data. Like what about the data do I need to look at?
[00:13:58] Chris: Yeah. So first you have [00:14:00] to develop your own conviction, right? And data is the best way to do it. data is always like an imperfect thing, but it does get you, down the path, which is how you kind of develop your point of view. So I'd say first, analyze the sales data. Right. Sales data unlocks a lot of insight into what's going well.
especially if you're looking at like what to target. So you should look at wins and losses For this, we focused heavily on wins because we wanna see how do we put gasoline on the fire of
what's working.
[00:14:28] Elle: Yeah. You wanna know why you
win? Yeah.
[00:14:31] Chris: that's exactly right. Right. And so, 'cause you're also making a trade off of like, we are actually making a decision to not focus.
On some area that we could focus on. So it's like where do we win and how do we accelerate that? And frankly, you're not gonna get buy-in internally if you don't come with data, because that is the way you actually get folks to, to think differently about things. So that's sales data. You can layer in product data where you have it, that's always like a, a, a great kicker of like how your product's being used.
but [00:15:00] find that data piece that helps start your story. That's the
first step.
[00:15:03] Elle: Got it. Got it. Okay. And you mentioned Gong calls. How do Gong calls play a role?
[00:15:08] Chris: So I, and again, I think this is me coming from a sales background, is I love talking to customers and I love hearing from customers. And frankly, like one of the, the interesting pieces of product marketing is like, we need to be able to speak internally on behalf of our customers, and we need to speak our customer's language.
And so. You know, with, Gong and these other platforms that do the call recordings, it's, it's become amazing because I can be walking my dogs and I can
listen to
any
calls. Right.
[00:15:36] Elle: Yeah. It's such a powerful insight for pmms. It's like un unlimited customer conversations at your fingertips.
[00:15:42] Chris: it's, the best. And like all these platforms,
again, there's a
lot of
great
ones. and the nice thing too is they now have like AI insights, so they actually, I. Do these little summary of notes and you can like pull out the ones you want to go listen to. But, but the whole point being is you can actually hear how customers are talking about their problem, [00:16:00] talking about who they have to get buy-in from.
And so that is establishing the voice of the customer. So now I have this data that gives me my perspective on where to focus on, and I'm going into this meeting with, again, head of marketing, head of sales, maybe head of product. And I'm not saying. Hey, this is what Chris believes. I'm saying, Hey, this is what this company is saying and this company is saying, and here's what our data says.
So it's like a, it, it creates a story of don't take it from me. Do we wanna like replicate this with similar
lookalike
customers?
[00:16:30] Elle: that's right. Validation.
[00:16:31] Chris: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:16:32] Elle: Yeah. Right, exactly. So I wanna circle back to something that you mentioned earlier that I thought was such a good idea. It probably took a lot of time. I imagine a lot of calls, a lot of deal cycles that that I've been exposed to can sometimes be lengthy and there's a lot of calls involved.
But you mentioned that you would hone in on two or three customers, and you would listen to every sales conversation from deal open to deal close. I'm curious, anything surprising from that as [00:17:00] just as a PMM, that's a lot of sales conversations to listen into and you really get insight to the entire deals cycle.
What, what did you learn? Anything insightful or surprising?
[00:17:11] Chris: So first, I agree it does take a lot of time and you have to find you know, go for a walk, listen to a few calls. Don't be afraid to skip the 10 minute call. That's gonna go nowhere. But I would challenge any product marketers listening to this to say like, how many deals have you been on from start to finish to really understand what your customer, it's the only way to do it, in my opinion.
So it, it is a worth it grind out work. The interesting insight that I came up with is. and, and this might seem so obvious, but it's important to call it, these are people. These are real people with real problems that have life outside of work. And the thing is, is they have very limited time. We all have such limited time.
We're so busy, and so people's time is valuable. And so as a product marketer, my job is to get to the value. As quick as possible and help my [00:18:00] salespeople in this instance get to the value as quick as possible and really give them the so what. And so I had this kind of enlightened moment, if you will, of everything I do that goes external.
I should have that thought. This person has very little time and I need to really value it. So it's like every ad, every blog, every customer story, and every event that we're bringing people to. Am I providing them value? Am I giving them that takeaway that's not just clickbait and in it for me, but it's like they're coming away with something actionable.
That's what I've like obsessed about
since going through an
exercise like
[00:18:37] Elle: And, and how quickly can you get to the value
when you're looking at their time as, being something of a, that they're giving to you?
[00:18:45] Chris: it's exactly right. Right. And again, it's like attention spans are down, time is down. And like, I want you build trust by providing value. And that's, that's really
what our job is.
[00:18:56] Elle: Yeah, exactly. So, okay, you did this huge [00:19:00] data analysis on your, your sales data. You focused in on why you win. You blended that with voice of customer from sales conversations. And then you shot this around to your marketing leaders, to the sales leaders. You've got buy-in, you've built out the campaign.
This must have been monstrous to roll out with a lot of different stakeholders across sales and marketing. I guess like talk through like what did the rollout process look like? You know, did, how did you enable sales? Did you have to do like road, internal road shows or workshops? You know, like maybe what kind of content did you have to prepare for the salespeople?
[00:19:39] Chris: Yeah. Yeah, well, you know better than anyone, some of the values of, companies like Twilio is write it down. So I think the first thing is, what I mentioned was this the source of truth. Where is the source of truth that anyone can go to, to understand what this initiative is? And, and again, going back, even selling internally, the so what behind it?
Why are we making this bed? So that first doc that we went in and get buy-in, [00:20:00] and sometimes it turns into a deck, it's so important and people go back to it. And then you're exactly right. It does become a bit of a road show. so again, the marketing team you mentioned like campaign marketing growth, like those different folks, you get them on a call and you go through it, right?
The part that's important for them. And then you branch off into, okay, I need help with ad creation, creative that's gonna go into those, those types of pieces. I'll get into that more in a second. Sales is the same way. I like to branch off BDR from, account executives because I think it's a slightly different thing.
So then I like to do A BDR enablement with the BDR manager. I like to do sales enablement with the sales leaders because they need to be bought in, as well. And so it does feel like a lot, but in those three conversations, if you manage your time well, you can get a lot done. You just have to be very specific with what they get.
The, thing that I think is really important for folks to look at, 'cause you go, oh, this is a whole new campaign. We're spinning up. We actually used a lot of previous content
we had, and so you [00:21:00] can, like Retap Creative, you had content, you had, we looked at case studies and I, me and my team read through case studies and we're like, okay, we have these four personas we want to go after.
Where do we have quotes from those personas and what case studies, and then what creative do we have in those case studies? Okay, great. Those are ads. Quote from that persona, the creative from that persona and like that was able to be reused. So we didn't need to go find a new case study. Right. You probably have a lot of the information and then a lot of the creative and the content.
'cause we have Frame and Adobe really has a best in class
creative team,
so
anything we produce is, is, is, top notch.
It's, I mean, it's like
one of the
coolest things ever.
Yeah, it's amazing. Like people produce unreal stuff, so like, we're not gonna go create it on our own, like as a product marketing team.
so reuse is good. And then again, like emails and, and BDR, like a lot of that messaging is how do we give them that structure to, uh, kind of spin and create their own, pieces of it, well.
[00:21:57] Elle: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that you included [00:22:00] BDRs. 'cause sometimes I feel like they're left out of the enablement process, but they're so critical in terms of getting foot in the door.
[00:22:08] Chris: there's some of my
favorite. I
started as A
BDR.
[00:22:11] Elle: Yeah. They're full of energy. Love it. Love to the BDRs.
[00:22:15] Chris: It's a hard job. It's a very hard job, so I, I have a
lot of respect
for, for
[00:22:20] Elle: I believe it. I believe it. Okay. So after you launched, what did this look like from a customer's perspective? Like what kind of content was included in the scope of the campaign?
[00:22:29] Chris: Yeah. So I, I think this is the part that like, was the coolest to me. 'cause it was a, a kind of like circle the wagon in the right way, type of a strategy, right? So if we go back to like. Crisp Clothing Inc. Let's say that was within our target account list, right? A CMO is getting specific ads that are targeted.
They're probably not getting the initial outreach from sales or BDRs 'cause they're too high up and we know we need to build a champion, but they're getting like brand differentiation, those types of messaging. a little bit later in the process. But like we really, from [00:23:00] the start, it was like.
Video creatives and creative leaders or creative ops leaders getting a set message, having BDRs hit them with a very specific message. We were actually sending them a lot around case studies and proof, so it is again, like a, don't take it from us. We were leading with insights and things that would be like, here's someone in a similar company in a similar or role.
Doing it. We should talk about how you could do this for your org. So really insights driven messaging and ads. And then like I said, as we open the door, we're not turning off the engine. That's, our job's not done there. We know that eventually this is gonna go to A CMO. So at that point, yes, we do want them to get ads.
We do want them to start seeing frame in our brand, in their messaging. And the same thing that we started talking about is, um. IT and procurement. Very similar thing like security type messaging and, and ROI type messaging because at some point someone internally is going to have to sell that. And, and the thing that I always go back to with our team is those folks, they [00:24:00] are best in class creatives.
They were never hired to be sellers. Selling stuff internally is hard. We have challenges selling
stuff internally, so like we know they're gonna be putting themselves on the line at some point when we're not in the room. So how do we help surround it and build that story for them? And then we had ROI calculators and presentations that they could share internally at the right time to build that
[00:24:21] Elle: Very cool. So empowering the champion as well. Yeah, very smart.
What I think is so sophisticated is that you have this buy team that you've identified, and then you have this, hyper targeted content that ladders up to each member of the buy team, but timing of everything. When you're doing an A BM campaign, that must be so sophisticated.
'cause you have, however, X number of accounts, I'm just gonna throw out a hundred. Even if you have thousands, right? You have that many accounts, but then that many individual stakeholders within those accounts that you're trying to engage with, but you wanna hit 'em at the right [00:25:00] time, that's appropriate for that specific account.
I guess how did you do that? Like, how did you figure that out? I realize it's probably a multi-pronged solution across. Sales and marketing, but any insights you can share?
[00:25:11] Chris: I mean, I think there's a lot of great systems to like, systematically run those programs now. And a lot of folks on my marketing team a lot smarter than me who can help. You know, we, we've always heard the, the message wherever you go of like engage the right person at the right time with the right message.
And so, you know, luckily there's a lot of technology out there to go and do that the right way. It's never going to be. Perfect. But again, I think like going back to being able to even look at personas and lead with the right message is a big piece of it, right? Because like I think sometimes we go, oh, okay, like we want to talk about how great our product is.
It. no one cares. We, they want to know what it's gonna do for them. And I think, you know, I'm pretty realistic in knowing that like A CMO is probably not gonna like, just cold want to talk to us or, you know, even a chief creative officer, like they're gonna need to build up something [00:26:00] internally. And so our thing is like, hey, when you go into these accounts, even as A BDR, it's like.
Instead of focusing any messages on maybe that like C-suite at the start, like, let's go director level, let's go manager level, let's do the creative technologist, now let's do the video creative and let's massage those messages. And then we have a team that can turn on the engine of the CMOs and build that case.
And at that
point, account executive gets involved too, and they kind of have the clout sales leaders can get involved and reached out. And now we have this executive level engagement
that we can
pull
on.
[00:26:30] Elle: It is so sophisticated, so coordinated. I love it. So great. okay, last question for you on this topic, Chris. Let's say, um, you know, for our product marketers out there who are working on it, ICP strategy, they're so inspired by your story. They wanna go out and, and build a campaign for their ICP or a narrative.
What advice do you have for them?
[00:26:53] Chris: Be customer obsessed, like fall in love with your customers. they will take you to. what the answer is honestly, I think [00:27:00] sometimes we try to like over-engineer our own thought process and stuff around these and, and find that like silver bullet. Just understand your customers, listen to them and they will tell you exactly what you need to do.
So just be
obsessed with them.
[00:27:14] Elle: I love it. You wear the customer's shoes. It's such a great value. Okay. All right, so now it is time for our next segment. This is such a fun segment. It's the message critique. so Chris, this is where we as product marketing experts get to analyze real world messaging. Um, here's the fun part.
You, my guests get to choose the company. Uh, so before we get started, I wanna share some ground rules. So you're gonna pick the company, we're gonna talk through three things. First, you're gonna tell me one thing that you love about the company's product or messaging, like what's working, what's really standing out about the product.
And then second, you're gonna share something you wish the PMM maybe would've done differently. Maybe it's something that could have made the message clearer or stronger, more impactful. Use a customer [00:28:00] story. It could be any number of things. And then third. tell me how they can iterate or take the message to the next level or their creative campaigns.
They could do cool content, they could think about, something of that nature. so no negativity, just a thoughtful, constructive, super fun critique. Ready to go.
[00:28:16] Chris: Yep. This is perfect. Let's do
it.
[00:28:19] Elle: Okay. So tell me about a product or company that may have caught your attention. I.
[00:28:24] Chris: Okay. I am going to go with one that has been on my mind, quite a lot lately. It's superhuman. Have you heard of Superhuman? I.
[00:28:33] Elle: Only when you mentioned it to me the other day, but I have not otherwise had not heard of them. So I'm going to superhuman.com.
[00:28:39] Chris: Go to superhuman.com. It is, you know, if you wanna know what it is, big line here. But it is the most productive email app ever made.
which is intriguing, but it's basically, better way to go about your email. that's like the simple way that I would put it. I don't use it. I've just heard about it and I've been looking at them, [00:29:00] quite a bit from a product standpoint, which is
interesting.
[00:29:02] Elle: So I pull up their homepage and super clean, very crisp. Their big headline is say, four hours per person every single week. So that tells me right away, okay, the value is gonna be time save. But tell me more about the messaging. What are you loving about it?
[00:29:19] Chris: Yeah, so this one's interesting because the headline doesn't say what it is, but it gives you the, so what, which I think is actually really interesting. So save four hours that brings me in. I like that. so I do feel the, so what there, and then that, first line that I mentioned, it's the most productive email app ever made.
Very
mean, my, my big thing is I do not need to scroll to actually figure out objectively. What it is, I now know what it is and the so what behind it without having a scroll, whether I'm on my laptop or I'm on my phone, it's all above the fold.
and I get it. And then, you know, I think it's supported here. Collaborate faster, get more done with AI powered email. would say like that kind of got pulled with the, say four hours as [00:30:00] well. I like the idea of collaboration. AI powered email. I think everyone's putting AI and they're either H one or H two.
but very descriptive is, is what I like and very easy to
consume
at
the
[00:30:09] Elle: I love that. I love that. One thing, curious about your perspective on this feedback that I've gotten multiple times in my career is, to avoid using absolute language. So for example, they have Superhuman, is the most productive email app ever, ever made? that's a pretty bold statement. Well, I'm just curious your thoughts on it.
[00:30:29] Chris: I agree. I think it is bold. It's a good point. I think, back it with data and so I think like one of the, one of the pieces I'd say here is like, you have such a great stat with save four hours per person every single week. And I think even if you scroll down, it's like saves teams over 15 million hours every single year.
Fly through your email twice as fast as before. So like the one thing I would
probably think about, but, but I agree where it's, you know, is it the most, do I have to say it's the most, do I believe that as a prospect? I [00:31:00] think maybe a little bit of messaging around. Why it saves like, what is that?
other piece could be interesting there, right? We're a little loose with most productive. We're a little loose with collaborate faster, get more done. It's like what is the thing that makes you be able to do that? That would be one thing I would try to
probably massage out in
that
H
[00:31:19] Elle: Sure. Yeah. I'm kind of surprised that the first thing they put on there is that it's built for Gmail or Outlook. That must be for their customers, something like a top priority, not differentiator necessarily, but capability that they would need to highlight. I'm surprised that the AI powered inbox assistant isn't higher, but I'm not their target customer, so.
I wouldn't necessarily know, but I do love the stats that they throw out here.
[00:31:42] Chris: I love
the stats and I actually love that email is the biggest problem hiding in plain sight, which is further down the page. I'm wondering if they ever explored pulling that up 'cause it's such a yes. I. Problem statement and like this is like their messaging doc on a page, which is cool. Like we spend hours on [00:32:00] email, we often reply late.
That's, yep. I feel that. don't even reply. Yep. I feel that we lose deals. It's
like, well what does that lead
to? Makes sense? Like you and you start saying, we lose deals. Okay. This is for salespeople. Block our teams. Oh, it's for more than salespeople, miss our goals. We all feel that not anybody's fault.
Like this is actually like such a great messaging statement. I'm like, Ooh, do we consider pulling this up? AB tested a little bit. Try to get problem statement up a bit. so, so they have some like really good stuff
littered in throughout.
[00:32:30] Elle: They do a really good job with empathy in articulating that through their copy.
[00:32:36] Chris: Yes. And that is the thing. We all get overwhelmed with email and they're like, it's not your fault. It's like, but we all, we all do. so it is interesting when you talked about like most productive, it, it, you scroll down, they obviously do superhuman AI that they probably had to introduce as their first scroll, but when they get into their value props like respond faster to what matters most.
It's like, that's another one I would actually probably think about pulling up [00:33:00] higher because that feels tangible to me. So they have like a lot
of. Great messaging and it's very, what I love is I scroll is like follow up on time every time. Share and comment with you. It's, it is very clean, succinct.
I see it right as I say it and it keeps hooking me to
go deeper and
deeper, which
[00:33:16] Elle: it does. It does. Great job. Superhuman pmms. We love it. 10 outta 10.
[00:33:22] Chris: Love it. Huge fan. So it is good. And like you said, it's, it's clean, it's creative centric on the start too, which is nice. I
like to see that.
[00:33:29] Elle: Yeah. Yeah. So when we were chatting ahead of this conversation, you mentioned maybe another company you were looking at. Do you still have them on your mind?
[00:33:37] Chris: I do, I do. So the other one, which I use a lot and I'm sure people have heard is Airtable.
so again. Of course. as part of this fun exercise, like you start looking at all of the, the companies and, you know, pick ones. And I, I, I love Airtable. I think it's amazing. There's a, an individual who, used to be at, at Frame io.
She was an absolute power user [00:34:00] of Airtable to show like all of the things that you could do with it. It's an
amazing, amazing,
[00:34:03] Elle: Yeah, I've used it at like almost every company I've ever looked at for as long as I can remember. Yeah,
[00:34:09] Chris: and it really is great. It has this like simplicity yet, you know, there's a lot of power behind it, but it's an interesting space right now, right? Because a lot of these, what I would call as a novice, like project management tools are like a better version of a spreadsheet. 'cause we all end up falling back to spreadsheets like they are. Becoming a lot more. And it's interesting to see like what space they're going after. So we go into this one and we see digital operations for the AI era. You mentioned this on superhuman. I'm not the persona, probably
buyer persona
for
Airtable. I don't
think I don't know what digital operations is.
I mean, I get it as I say it, but I'm like, is that a category they're going after? Maybe it's a Forest or Gartner kind of thing. AI era. you know, I think it's like. Okay. And then when I see create modern business apps to manage and automate critical [00:35:00] processes, I, my thing is, is like, are they an AI app builder or are they trying
to do that?
That was the piece that I was like, huh, what is
[00:35:08] Elle: Yeah, right. Would this be like for the COO business unit org? Like who is this for? Is it for PMs, is it for, yeah, it's really hard to decipher.
[00:35:20] Chris: it's a little, you know, ambiguous. And it might be because it's new category creation and ai and frankly, like I do know this, like Airtable. Can be so much, but that can also be overwhelming as a prospect or a user or someone looking at it. And so I really empathize with the product marketers for Airtable because it's like, how do you, not over promise, but you still paint the like picture of where, where it's going and where they need to go.
But when I see modern business apps, I'm not really sure
that can mean so
much different thing, especially with like AI coders and things like that coming out
in the world.
[00:35:58] Elle: So when I scroll down, I [00:36:00] see agility at scale for every function and immediately I think So you're everything to everyone,
[00:36:06] Chris: Yes,
[00:36:07] Elle: which is what all the, all the strategy gurus out there say not to do. so, but I'm curious, you know, what, what advice do you have for the pmms over at Airtable? What do you think they need to do with first, first order of business?
[00:36:23] Chris: So this is where I go back to ICP and my exercise. Like I know that they want to evolve and push the envelope and go, but I think we all, like, I would also encourage to look at where can you win and is it within like the core competency? 'cause it's, they're pushing a lot of explore app building, and like that modern business app and those pieces.
And I totally get that, but I'd be like, how do I get someone to get the aha moment without scrolling and above? The, the fold. I think that is the, the big piece. And, and to be honest, like my advice would be can we simplify? [00:37:00] that's what I would be looking at because as someone who uses Airtable, I don't use it in any of the way that I see on this homepage.
And
so I think it's
what
they
want businesses.
that's
[00:37:12] Elle: so interesting.
[00:37:13] Chris: Yeah.
[00:37:14] Elle: Wow. That's very,
very surprising.
[00:37:17] Chris: And so it's like how do we make sure we make it obvious and make it very simple and then earn the right to expand the opportunities from there? So go back to ICP and core
use cases.
[00:37:30] Elle: Right, right. Or perhaps they're trying to do a pivot, and the use case that you are most familiar with is no longer like a strategic focus for the company, but even in that case. Still focusing on ICP for this new use case would be helpful to tell, to get their, their story to be a little punchier, a little clearer.
[00:37:56] Chris: Yeah. I mean, and it, it is a great point. Like as they push into these [00:38:00] areas, it's like maybe they already have a lot of traction in, in other areas. I just always question 'em. Like there's a lot of people do, a lot of, most people use it the way, you know, I and our teams use it, and then I.
You know, they're, they're pushing someone else, but how do you get, how do you get both?
And then like, I'm kind of interested in like, how do I get there? Right now it feels a bit overwhelming. It's like, what would I want to do within like marketing that they have on this page of like automate campaign creation, execution, drive sales, and improve. that's not the way I ever saw it.
And
so,
It's interesting.
It's really
interesting.
[00:38:29] Elle: It's interesting. I am very curious though, about what the imagery that they have that show kind of some of the vision or capabilities. it, it gets me intrigued.
I'll
[00:38:38] Chris: So I love that you call this out, and I actually think this is a really important one. I'd, I'd love your take on this is I love product imagery
on
website,
[00:38:47] Elle: yes.
I'm, I'm for it. Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. I don't like illustrations
No, gimme the screenshot. I wanna see what it does.
[00:38:55] Chris: Yes, I, I completely agree. And so like, again, frame IO [00:39:00] beauty of it is our product designers are best in class as well. So like I love our ui, which is good 'cause I am in product marketing there, so I want it all over the place, everywhere. I'm glad you feel the same because I just want someone to be able to like read and then
quickly get the
visuals
so they
[00:39:15] Elle: Yeah. The thing is when you don't use real product imagery and you just have some maybe attractive, but it's just an illustration to me that as a customer that tells me that something's not real. You don't have something that's actually real. So it, it diminishes my faith or, or it, um, kind of puts some, uh.
I guess question into mind into how much of what you're showing me is actually a capability versus just marketing fluff.
[00:39:43] Chris: Which I think is so important in this AI era. Let's go
back to their, their
call
because but I think a lot of executives and customers are challenged with. Is this real or is this just part of the pitch? And so to your point, I think as we start to like push the envelope of [00:40:00] what's real versus what's not, the ability to show it and bring it to life is, is absolutely critical.
And honestly, I think it could be a differentiator when being compared against other companies.
[00:40:10] Elle: I totally agree with you. Very helpful. Alright, Airtable. We love your product. We're very intrigued. We wanna hear, more. Okay. So Chris, before we go, I wanna have a gratitude moment and say thank you so much for your willingness to come on and share your expertise with me and the PM community.
Thank you so much. I know I personally get so inspired by conversations like this and truthfully makes me wonder how my guests get to be so amazing. So, I know for me the way that I've grown as a PMM is I've been shaped and my skills have been honed in by the pmms that surrounded me in my career.
So I wanna ask you, who are one or two pmms who have really impacted you in your career?
[00:40:56] Chris: You of course for bringing me on the this show. I really do
[00:41:00] appreciate it
and it's awesome to be working
with a great PMM and, and think through these different things. 'cause that's how we learn too. But I, you know, throughout my career I've been really lucky. I had Scott Fallon, Collin Zaleski, who got me into product marketing, uh, originally.
Uh, at a startup I was at, they are absolutely amazing at Twilio. Was lucky to work for Vanessa Thompson and then
Dave Berg, and then work with Taylor Del, and, and all actually like very different types of pmms, which is an absolutely amazing thing. And then, you know, like I said, frame io I, we are a product for creatives and my, manager is, his name is.
Amazing PMM crafts, like unreal narratives. He also like used to shoot commercials, so comes from like an ultra creative background. he's unbelievable. And so, um, you know, I've never been like, challenged to push myself more than, than I have with him. And so I just keep getting luckier and luckier honestly, as I, I have all my career.
So I am very humble and very grateful and have a lot of hard work to do to, to consider myself a
good [00:42:00] PMM.
[00:42:00] Elle: Oh, that's awesome. I'm sure they're so, flattered to hear that. Amazing. Okay, my last question for you, Chris. Where else can we access your expertise? Is it just best to find you on LinkedIn?
[00:42:12] Chris: Yes.
as a, uh, LinkedIn fan person, and that's where I started
my career. That
is the
place
to go, uh, for all, all networking. But yes, please find me on LinkedIn. Please reach out and connect. Um, We, Happy to talk to, to product
marketers.
[00:42:29] Elle: we can always also Google search Chris Polinsky plus Chipotle.
[00:42:34] Chris: Yes, you will see all of the news articles and some of the mean comments from folks who, uh, weren't as big a fans of some, some guy proposing to his, uh,
fiance at Aw. You know what? It's a special place. I love it. Okay.
[00:42:48] Elle: Again, thank you so much Chris, and thank you PMM listeners for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take, uh, [00:43:00] with you in the next steps in your own journey.
