Enable salespeolpe with AI like an Optiversal PMM
Sales enablement only looks like a messaging problem when you’re standing too far away. Up close, it’s usually something else. A missing strategy. No feedback loop. Training that happens once, then disappears into the void. Reps doing their best with whatever they can remember, while the business wonders why deals keep stalling in the same places.
I recently sat down with Michele Nieberding, a product marketing leader who’s been in the trenches of enablement transformation. She shared what it looked like at Treasure Data when enablement wasn’t driving outcomes, and how she rebuilt it into something that actually changed sales behaviour and improved results.
Step 1: Spot the Signals
Most teams wait for revenue to slip before they admit something’s off. Michele’s point was that the earlier signals are usually already there. The pipeline starts looking uneven. Certain stages become a graveyard. Losses cluster around the same objections. Deals drag longer than they should.
The first move isn’t “rewrite the deck.” It’s diagnosis. Where exactly are deals going cold, and what’s consistently happening right before they do?
Step 2: Talk, Listen, and Build a Hypothesis
Michele stressed that you can’t fix enablement from a spreadsheet alone. You’ve got to talk to reps and actually listen, not in a performative “what do you need?” way, but with questions that get to the real friction. What are they hearing in calls? Where do they feel shaky? What do they avoid because it’s too hard to explain?
From there, you build hypotheses. Not “messaging is bad,” but “we’re losing deals at this stage because reps don’t have a confident way to handle this objection,” or “we’re not creating urgency because the value story isn’t landing in the first two minutes.”
That’s the difference between enablement that feels busy and enablement that changes outcomes.
Step 3: Experiment With Purpose
Michele’s transformation wasn’t one big launch. It was a series of experiments designed to reinforce learning and make it stick. She tested different formats, including internal podcasts, AI-supported tools, and role-play approaches that helped reps practise in a low-stakes environment.
The throughline was simple. One-off trainings don’t work. Repetition does. Reinforcement does. And feedback loops that show reps what “good” sounds like, and why it works, are what actually change behaviour.
Step 4: Measure, Celebrate, Repeat
Enablement only earns trust when it’s measurable. Michele focused on tracking impact and evolving the program based on what the data and the field were saying. Even small improvements in cycle time or stage conversion mattered because they proved the system was working.
The goal isn’t a perfect enablement program. It’s a living one. Something that keeps getting sharper as the product, market, and sales motion evolve.
Messaging Critique: ClickUp
To close out our conversation, we shifted into the messaging critique and looked at ClickUp. Their positioning is bold, with “Every app, every team, unlimited AI Agents” but the trade-off is clarity. When you try to be everything to everyone, it can get harder for a specific buyer to quickly understand why you are the best choice for them.
The reminder here is simple. Big positioning still needs sharp edges. The broader your promise, the more important it is that your messaging quickly anchors on a clear use case, a clear outcome, and a clear reason to believe.
Michele’s conversation is a good reminder that great enablement is not about producing more content. It’s about changing what reps do in real conversations, and building a system that keeps improving over time.
LINKS:
Messaging Critique: ClickUp
Connect with Michelle
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-nieberding/
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:38] Elle: If you're a millennial like me, you probably grew up watching Scooby-Doo on Saturday mornings. Every episode followed the exact same formula. There was always a terrifying monster, a ghost, a swamp creature, a skeleton, right, chasing the gang, quote unquote, around some haunted mansion.
[00:00:54] Doors are slamming, hallways are spinning. Everyone's running around in different directions. It's total chaos. But at the end [00:01:00] of every single episode, they'd pull the mask off and it was never a ghost. It was the janitor or the shop owner, right? It was, you know, some guy trying to cover up something much more boring and much more, human.
[00:01:12] I think that that is what sales enablement looks like. When revenue starts slipping, the quarter gets shaky, deal starts stalling, forecast gets really tense, and suddenly the monsters appear, right? We need more sales enablement, we need more messaging.
[00:01:28] You get the idea. enablement becomes the thing, chasing everyone down the hallways. But before we sprint into panic and spin out new messaging or crank out another battle card, maybe we should pause and ask, is this actually the monster? that's what we're talking about today, how to fix sales enablement when it's not working, and make it truly impactful, and I'm so excited to welcome someone who has lived this transformation.
[00:01:52] With that, it is my pleasure to have Michelle neighboring on the show. Michelle is one of the most thoughtful and execution driven [00:02:00] pmms in the business. Let me tell you why. She's currently the senior director of product marketing at Optiversal,
[00:02:05] before that, she led product marketing and sales enablement efforts at Treasure Data Building, go-to-market strategy, messaging, and positioning for the new AI products and suites.
[00:02:15] Michelle has also driven product marketing initiatives at Meta Router, Iterable and Qualtrics, giving her a broad and battle tested perspective across tech stacks and sales motions. But here's what really sets Michelle apart. She's one of the top product marketing voices on LinkedIn with thousands of followers who look to her for sharp, practical thinking on AI messaging enablement and real business impact.
[00:02:40] She's known for relentlessly asking, is this actually working? And for using customer insight and experimentation to build enablement that actually drives revenue, not just decks and trainings.
[00:03:00] Michelle, welcome to the show.
[00:03:02] Michelle: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
[00:03:05] Elle: I know you're currently at Optiv Universal, but the case study that we're referring back to today is really about your time at Treasure Data. So we will come back to Optiv Universal and talk about,
[00:03:16] you know, how you're applying some of the same lessons, some of those lessons now in your current role, but just to prepare us and get us set up well for the case study, tell us a little bit about like what is treasure data? For those of you or those of the listeners out there who may not know
[00:03:31] Michelle: so Treasure Data is a customer data platform. So when you think about anything you do online or things you do in a store, all the shopping that you might be doing, one of the things that treasure data does really well, stitches all that together and says, Hey, Elle, that this is you doing all these cool activities so that, it makes how they market to you better, hopefully more relevant, and more interesting.
[00:03:50] And so we do a lot of unification, but now we're layering on AI to. You know, act out all the things that you hopefully wanna do. 'cause you can't use AI if you don't [00:04:00] know who you're using AI for. And that's where treasure data really comes in. So I'm a, a MarTech queen through and through. I've been in that industry, in that space and customer data, maybe more specifically for a very long time.
[00:04:10] Uh, and super interesting to kind of see how, how that's evolving.
[00:04:13] Elle: Awesome. Okay. So that's gonna be super helpful as we think about the context for the case study today. so with that, let's dive into the case study se segment of the show. So this is where you'll walk through the case study example of your work, and then together, we'll, we'll talk about what a playbook looks like.
[00:04:29] So, the topic specifically for today is around sales enablement. Maybe a little bit of voice of customer sprinkled in there. So take us back to treasure data. What was happening when you realized something needed to change?
[00:04:41] Michelle: I guess good news is there was a regular cadence for sales enablement. And when I say sales enablement, I mean a every single week, one hour dedicated to sales enablement. So it was blocked on everyone's calendar, like that time was set.
[00:04:53] we come up with topics, the deck, kind of your standard, you know, enablement things, and host that every single week for an [00:05:00] hour. But, with that, sometimes we got the topics lost and then we're like throwing decks together. So like we weren't always fully prepared or sales didn't know what was coming.
[00:05:08] They started maybe not showing up 'cause they're like, we can just listen to the recording, or it's not relevant, or they weren't, you know, prepared to attend that specifically. And then, I don't know, it made it even more interesting, I guess is the following day. There was also an hour for product office hour, so a little more technical, a little in the product, but same thing, one hour, a weekly cadence, you.
[00:05:27] You're kind of, I don't wanna say random sales enablement. There was a regular cadence, which was good, but then you had office hours, and it was just kinda like we were, you know, on that Han Wheel sales enablement. It wasn't like, why are we doing this? It's like, we're gonna do this every week and we're gonna put the deck together and do it and send out the recording and check, check the box.
[00:05:44] I guess what we'll get into today was like, was it really that effective?
[00:05:48] Elle: It seems like it's well intended, right? it's good to have a regular check-in with sales. but I could see how that very easily starts to turn into something that doesn't exactly align well with [00:06:00] the end goal. So I guess like, take us back to what was the goal in, you know, meeting with every week and talk about how like, you know, maybe you were really busy but not necessarily effective.
[00:06:12] Michelle: I think that's the biggest thing, right? Like, again, it's one thing to say you've done sales enablement and, and the company was moving fast. I, I think so many are right now in the world of AI where you can build things more quickly or you're trying to catch up to the competition because you, you can, 'cause you can build more quickly, right?
[00:06:28] There's or, or pivots in messaging or, I, I've seen a lot of companies go through what I call an identity crisis. Like There's a lot of reasons to do enablement, especially when you're moving that quickly. But like, to your point, what is the effectiveness of it? So we weren't really having good feedback loops.
[00:06:44] Like we weren't hearing back from sales what was working, what wasn't working. We weren't really getting to the root cause of like why the sales enablement was needed. It was kinda like, here's a, a topic that's hot, you know, everyone's talking about like, let's enable on it. But we weren't really, even like putting a number to that.
[00:06:59] Like what, [00:07:00] what are we trying to influence? What are we trying to impact? Is it revenue? Is it sales cycle, whatever? Like we weren't really. Tracking anything like that. And I think, so we don't know the effectiveness, we don't know the impact. It's kinda like, okay, we did it cool, but sales we don't know what you think.
[00:07:13] And we don't know how it was impacting them. And And what we found is, even though we're putting all this time into it, like we still weren't hitting revenue goals. And you know, people that know me know if we're not hitting revenue, like I think product marketing needs to do something about, obviously, like this is
[00:07:27] Elle: Yeah.
[00:07:28] Michelle: one of the many things we do.
[00:07:29] so what's wrong? We're doing this but it's not clearly not working 'cause we're, you know, well below revenue goals. So we knew something had to change.
[00:07:36] Elle: yeah. So you mentioned a ton of different signals where, you know, that like sales maybe isn't working as well as different tactics. Right. when you realized that okay, revenue is kind of the shared metric for the whole company and it makes perfect sense that that would be, and I agree, product marketers should absolutely be tracking that as, um, you know, one of the metrics [00:08:00] and when you realize like, okay, this isn't working.
[00:08:04] We all agree, stakeholders that we're not satisfied with. Where we want to be. Where did you do from there? You know, I guess like what was your, what was your task at hand?
[00:08:16] Michelle: Yeah. So again, I think it's like take a step back and go back to basics. I think it's so. Maybe common and easy, almost like PTSD about why this happens in the first place. Like, I don't know, A-C-R-O-A-C-O-O is like, obviously this is a messaging problem, right? And that's kind of what sparks maybe this like hamster wheel of enablement.
[00:08:34] Like throw spaghetti at a wall, see what sticks kind of situation. Like you start it, oh, of course it's messaging and positioning. And that's how product
[00:08:41] markets fall into that trap. So to your point, like, okay, so then what do you do? back to kind of any problem you wanna solve, right?
[00:08:48] You really need to dig into like, what is the root cause of this not working? We're okay, we know we're not hitting revenue goals, but we're doing this every single week. So like, what is, what is that gap? And so for me, step one and maybe seems [00:09:00] obvious is like, go, go talk to the reps. Like actually have conversations with them.
[00:09:04] How are they feeling? What are they getting? What are they not getting? Um, yeah, you can go through customer calls, you can go through gong recordings, whatever. Nothing beats actually talking to the reps and like getting a real. Feel for like, what are they struggling with? what assets are they using, what feedback are they getting from customers?
[00:09:20] Like the very human to human back to basics is having that conversation with, I think we talked about this before, like your best reps and maybe you're not so great reps, right? Like, what are the best ones doing really, really well? I mean, replicate. And then why are the ones that are struggling, why are they struggling?
[00:09:35] And how do you, again, bridge that gap is, is a really interesting concept. But back to basics, talk to your rep.
[00:09:41] Elle: Okay, so you realize like, okay, we're not hitting revenue targets. You had different ideas around why that wasn't happening, but before you immediately just kind of like. follow instruction on like, oh, go redo the messaging. You're like, hold on here, we're gonna investigate a little further.
[00:09:56] You talked to some reps, I guess like what [00:10:00] happened next? as you talk, you're talking to reps, did you discover anything interesting? Was there any other data that you looked at?
[00:10:07] Michelle: and this is kind of where you said like voice of customer kind of sprinkled in, and maybe two nuances that I think are important to call out here. One is like the questions that you're asking the reps, I think that's really important. Not just like, what do you like, what don't you like?
[00:10:18] It's like, why are you not hitting goals like that? You don't, you don't wanna put your reps on the defense, right? You don't wanna say something is wrong necessarily that, you know, start off the conversation. So like. I guess maybe one step back is what the questions that you ask our reps are super important here.
[00:10:33] Not just to like build rapport and trust, which is obviously so important for our role, but like to actually get to that root cause. 'cause you can say broad stroke, like what's working, what's not working, but that doesn't get down to what you actually need to do. Good enablement. so things like, you know, I love the P ts D element 'cause we all have it, but like, what deals have you lost that you like, keep up at night?
[00:10:52] What we talked like what, you know, the bad ex-boyfriend you're still thinking about years later. Like, there's always something that [00:11:00] sticks in your mind that like, you know, I, like, I didn't, you know, know my competitors or we think we lost on price, but I don't really know. And like my gut tells me that it's not priced, even though the CRM says you lost on price.
[00:11:10] Right. My opinion, it's never price, but you know, back to like, how are the reps feeling? So that's, you know, something to think about. and then step two is. how do they wanna learn? everyone does this differently, right? So it's, it's kind of getting through the root cause of how they're feeling, but then how do they want to learn?
[00:11:27] Now what's tricky about that is, you know, again, we all learn differently. So is it, something written? Is it audio? Is it, role playing, like speaking back and forth? There's all these different ways that you can do sales enablement. So when you know why you're doing it and how to do it better, it's like, okay, now what do we do?
[00:11:44] there's so many different tools and ways to do this, but it's kind of like you have to go through this experimentation process to, one, see what your reps respond to. Well, um, two, what,they enjoy, what they're actually using. Of course you can get stats on that. And then three, like what is coming off as actually effective?
[00:11:59] Like, how are they [00:12:00] remembering things we call this, like recall or retell ability? What can they really grasp onto that when they finally have those conversations, whether it's a new product, new messaging, whatever, that they can actually like, retell. that story or that, you know, that thing that they need to do in that moment, how to overcome that objection, whatever it is that they have that recall to be able to do that quickly.
[00:12:20] And so you have to experiment with a lot of different like tools and ways of doing it for us. You know, the weekly call, sales enablement meeting just wasn't, wasn't doing it. And I'm not saying don't do that. It could be than that and something else. Right. But there's like so many other ways to engage the reps that you have to like reinforce what they're learning.
[00:12:38] Elle: I could see definitely having office hours. I think we have multiple places I've worked, we've had office hours for sales, of course. But it's one thing when you're like, as you pointed out, like just checking a box or just making a stakeholder happy versus actually putting very logical thought into what your enablement goals [00:13:00] are and how you're going to achieve those goals.
[00:13:03] okay, so what happened at the end of the day, right? Like you ran some experiments,
[00:13:07] Michelle: so treasure data, was really an enterprise, solution. Which of course I know we all know, means long sales cycles, like tons of conversations, lots of shareholders, stakeholders, all the people are involved. and one of the trends that we were seeing if we're really looking at like deal analysis was kind of like two things.
[00:13:25] One, we had, a new pipeline problems, so we weren't getting as many prospects in the door as we wanted. So like the hook was wrong or the initial outreach wasn't right. So that was like the very, very start of the funnel. And then at the end of the funnel, we were like kind of losing in the last mile to like one of our biggest competitors.
[00:13:43] So there were like, I don't know, gaps in, in the funnel. And we'll talk about the more in depth of like, here's clear areas that we're, we're struggling within the sales cycle. What do we need to do to make sure our reps can like, start off well and end really well, right? Can actually close the deal. so when we kind of.
[00:13:59] [00:14:00] Re I don't know, rejuvenated, whatever fixed our enablement in terms of how we did it and what we were doing. we were seeing some really, really fast sales cycles happening, so we were getting better prospects in the door. Like, you know, really, really great enterprise bands, brands in the door more quickly.
[00:14:16] But we were getting from like initial conversation to POC within like a month, and that was unheard of. So the, the speed at which not only were we getting more people in the door, like qualified enterprise deals that everyone's fighting for, but to get from that to like true POC in a month was just like unheard of.
[00:14:32] And we were seeing that more and more, which was really.
[00:14:35] Elle: Yeah. That's awesome. Okay, so you actually fee fixed the, like, leaky bucket. But the leaky bucket was enablement, not like, you know, messaging or, you know, some kind of tool that you needed and didn't have. okay, so in this story, what we heard was that you, had the hamster wheel effect of sales enablement that was well intended, but [00:15:00] started to feel like a checkbox rather than, you know, being goal oriented.
[00:15:04] Once you realized your signal of revenue started to drop, stakeholders got around and you took the initiative to do some digging. You looked at win-loss data, you talked to salespeople, and then you ran a bunch of experiments to fix what you felt like was the enablement problem. and it turned out that you are right and you were able to get and kind of close some of the gaps that you saw in, the sales process.
[00:15:32] so what I wanna do now is to take your story and to turn it into a playbook. So, and you kind of mentioned us a few steps already, which is great, which kind of gets us an early start in what this playbook could look like. But, imagine if, you know, you're coaching me, I'm a pm m and I am trying to do the same thing.
[00:15:51] I have the same signals, right? Like I'm working on sales enablement and we're not hitting our revenue goals. And, you know, we've identified, or [00:16:00] I have a, I have a suspicion that sales enablement is the thing, the reason for that. So coach me and tell me what to do. Like what is the step one that I need to take in order to try, try to achieve the same success that you saw?
[00:16:13] Michelle: Yeah. so I, I think kind of one, like you mentioned, like what is that signal? Like when should you even evaluate? So for us it was revenue, right? So that's, that is, you know, obviously a broad stroke thing, right? Just because we're not hitting goals doesn't mean like that sales enablement is the reason.
[00:16:28] In our case it was one of the big ones. but that is just one like kind of macro thing to look at. I think, other things to consider, like, and this goes back, you know, we, we love a good PMM math problem, right? It's like, are you getting PMM math? but are you getting enough people in the door, right?
[00:16:44] Is there enough pipeline that hit goals anyway? It's one thing to like, you know, have a certain pipeline and certain close rate and like, you know, you do all the backwards math to say you need this in the amount in the pipeline, but especially again for us. We are pivoting from like the CDP ca, CDP category into this [00:17:00] more like AI focused AI forward AI suites like this AI world, which in the market can be a little confusing of the story that we're telling.
[00:17:07] So there's like, what is the pipeline being generated as well? Like just the market understand who we are, what we're doing, and what we're trying to solve in that market, in that category. So that, that identity crisis too. So it could be like it's pipeline plateauing. It's, you know, that's beyond just revenue goals.
[00:17:22] 'cause that can include like retention and, and upsell, things like that. for us again, like where, where are you losing stages? I worked for a company where, I mean, 90% of our deals were lost at the very end when it was
[00:17:33] us
[00:17:33] and one other person. You know, that was something to consider as well. Um, and again, like how many, how can you get all the reps to be doing?
[00:17:41] Like are there 10 good reps? Are there two good reps? Is there one good rep, like a veteran that's been there forever and everyone else is failing? Like, how is that gap? So there's all these things or signals to consider when you're evaluating like, Hey, do I need to take a look at sales name?
[00:17:55] Elle: there could be any number of signals that tells you that you need to look at sales enablement. [00:18:00] And one of those could be revenue, but it could, it could, there could also be a number of different things that are happening in the actual, well, I guess ultimately it wouldn't be revenue, but, or maybe like the initial signal, but you dig deeper and then to know, okay, well is it sales enablement or is it messaging?
[00:18:14] And for you, you dug really deep into like the sales cycle and you know, where deals were starting to fall off. And are you the PMM math that you mentioned, like, are you getting enough people through the door to begin with? and I'm so glad that you looked at that, just like standing up for the pmms out there, right.
[00:18:30] Rather than like your CRO, no offense to him, but like, or her, rather than like jumping into like, oh, I gotta redo our messaging. Then you're like, hang on. Is that really the monster here? Like,
[00:18:42] Michelle: so if I'm trying to mimic your playbook here, I'm digging deeper, I'm looking at the sales cycle. It's a lot of data analysis, right? or not even this analysis, just like gathering your information and, you know, looking at, at all of the, the signals right in front of you that tell you that it could be, that it could be a sales employment problem.
[00:18:59] Elle: Okay. [00:19:00] So number one, I guess, like diagnose that like, you know, the revenue pipeline signals as you said. Then what's step two?
[00:19:06] Michelle: Yeah. Di diagnose I would say build your hypothesis, right? Like,
[00:19:09] what, what do I need to do?this is my favorite part, is like the experimentation, right? Like, so you kind of know how reps are feeling and like what the gaps are. It's like, now what do you like, what's gonna work?
[00:19:18] Like, what's gonna be good? so for this, yeah, we tried a lot of things. some good, some bad, some like. In between. So one of the things we did, was an internal podcast. So I would go interview, you know, CS reps or the technical team, account management, you know, everyone in between the product team.
[00:19:36] I would do like one-on-one interviews about a topic. And, you know, we would build a similar to this right podcast style interview, we would put into a whole, you know, library that reps could listen on their way to
[00:19:47] Elle: Yeah, I love a good podcast.
[00:19:51] Michelle: And it like, and from a like effectiveness standpoint, reps really listened to it and they would be 30 to 60 minutes.
[00:19:57] Elle: But, you know, for a small product [00:20:00] marketing team, about five of us, maybe three of us could like consistently doing these interviews and then also doing those weekly enablement sessions.
[00:20:06] Michelle: It took a ton of time. It was like really, really hard to scale. So yes, it was available, valuable, but we tried to spin it out every week along with our weekly enablement, and it was just very, very hard to scale. so to supplement that, we tried the notebook, lm, like Google's notebook, LM podcast style interviews.
[00:20:22] So the AI generated, you know, podcast style question and answer type of thing. so you could put in like a messaging doc or a recording where, I don't know, your product team was talking about a new product or, customer calls that are talking about new product, whatever it is. And the notebook LM can turn that into that back podcast style audio.
[00:20:40] so we would then pepper that in to our, our library of podcasts, which was obviously easier to scale. But you do miss that like human
[00:20:50] Elle: Human connection. Yeah.
[00:20:53] Michelle: or like the, I don't know, the war stories, right? You have a CS person who's, who has a really good story to tell, maybe a customer like absolutely [00:21:00] loves the new product or, you know, has certain pain points and they're excited for the, like that kind of realness.
[00:21:06] That can come through in like a podcast like this, was just kind of lost. So we were like, okay, it scales, but maybe the effectiveness or the, the value that our internal stakeholders were getting out of it wasn't quite as strong. so we tried that. I think one of the most, impactful things that we did was like AI role playing.
[00:21:25] So at A QBR, we were, playing around with targeting a new persona, like someone is, in this case it was paid media. So someone our sales reps had never really spoken to, never really targeted, didn't know a lot about. And so at A QBR, we did like an AI role playing session where there would be a question, Hey, I'm a paid media manager, and like, here's my problem.
[00:21:44] how would your solution solve my problem? And the reps actually recorded their own audio responding to these questions. And of course, as sales reps love in real time, you see a leaderboard with a score. So how did. You know, Bob Rank and then
[00:21:57] Kelly did better and then, oh, I just, and it's [00:22:00] like as a product marketer, fun to see right, in real time.
[00:22:02] Like who's doing well, what their
[00:22:04] Elle: The engagement rate. Yeah.
[00:22:06] Michelle: And then of course you could see the best performing scores, like what did they say? How did they say it? You know, it made me same with the lowest performing. And then you could go back to those reps and do like one-on-one coaching, or you also could see like what a rep's struggling with for this persona that I would need to cover in an enablement session.
[00:22:22] Then you can go into that enablement session and say, Hey, I have data to say that this is what we need to talk about. And that practice, I mean, nothing beat saying it out loud pitches and, you know, responses. Like nothing beats that kind of practice, of verbally communicating it. So that was really effective, not only for engagement to actually get the reps to do it, but the best performing reps did win money.
[00:22:42] So if you can tie
[00:22:43] Elle: Yeah.
[00:22:44] Michelle: what they care about right to, to that, it only makes it better. And then that can again tee up like future. Enablement sessions. 'cause you have data to say this is what is working, not working. we also tried one of my favorite new AI tools, it's called Eddie,
[00:22:59] Elle: it'll [00:23:00] take, you know, your internal, again, messaging doc, FAQ doc, if you have a product requirement doc, whatever, like maybe the, the team needs to know about, again, a product launch, a messaging change, whatever. you throw it into Eddie, it builds out milestone, like learning points.
[00:23:16] Michelle: it'll build out a survey, like questionnaire. So sales actually has to answer the questions and, you know, it's like a survey that you don't have to create and it'll serve all that straight into Slack. So like where, you know, your sales reps are spending all their time anyway, or CS teams or whatever.
[00:23:29] and you can change the questions based on team if it is it, you know, pre-sales versus post-sales, or the technical account team, whatever. and then similar to like the role playing, you can see. Are there questions that all the reps are getting right or wrong? Is there something you double down on?
[00:23:42] If there's again, a certain rep that's struggling to do one-on-one coaching, like the data that can, you can get from that, but also serving any, I'm a sucker for a Slack integration. So like anything that can come straight into Slack, like automated,
[00:23:54] Elle: Heck yeah.
[00:23:56] Michelle: It's that reinforcement learning that you could take that enablement session, the hour [00:24:00] long recording transcript, whatever, put it into Eddie, have the automatic follow up, and then see if how reps are remembering the information or telling that story again. and then one of the last things we tried that I think was maybe by far one of the most successful was having a customer join the enablement calls.
[00:24:16] So we would tell reps ahead of time, so and so customer is joining to talk about their experience in the beta program for this new product launch. And so you kind of, it's the best, right? You let them do the talking and they can say, here's what we loved about it, here's what we're excited for, and then.
[00:24:30] It makes it so easy for sales to retell it
[00:24:32] Elle: Totally. So much more
[00:24:34] Michelle: best. Oh,
[00:24:34] and again, if it's not coming from you, it's one less slide, one
[00:24:38] Elle: less, yeah. Less content you have to
[00:24:40] worry about.
[00:24:41] Michelle: yes. The more you can have other people talk for you, like the better in this situation. But again, you know, if we asked reps how they liked the enablement, 10 out of 10 every time, and like they could just so easily quote that story, like you said, just made it more memorable so that, not ai, but
[00:24:58] worked really, really well.
[00:24:59] Elle: [00:25:00] I love this. So just backing up for a minute, so part of your step one. Um, or was, or maybe, or maybe it was step two, I think it was step two, part of your step two was to, build your hypothesis. Right. And then based on your step one, which I think was to gather, or, or I think I understand your signals, right?
[00:25:20] And part of your step two was to look at all the data and talk to sales and to build your hypothesis. And then step three was like to run your experiments. Right? So, how did you know that looking at all the data in front of you, you realized that the, like, I guess like how did you build your hypothesis and then.
[00:25:40] I don't know if you have an example of what your hypothesis look would look like, but how did you build your hypothesis and then how did you come up with some of those experiments? Was it just a brainstorm? Was it like asking salespeople? 'cause I'm seeing a trend between all of the things that were really successful for you all had just like high [00:26:00] human to human engagement, so I just wanted to call that out and then see if that was like part by design.
[00:26:05] Is that something that you found when you were doing some analysis, I guess like talk through any of that.
[00:26:10] Michelle: in terms of building a hypothesis, when you talk to the reps, you can kind of start like getting that. So for us, I would say our hypothesis, one of them was that they're getting, it's like they're drinking from the fire hose. We're getting so much information, and then there's like no, like real follow up, right?
[00:26:27] There's no reinforcing of what we just talked about. Oftentimes, like next week was a totally different topic, or it was like a part two and reps like wanted to talk about. Part one to their prospects and customers now. So I think that like my hypothesis was maybe the reinforcement part or maybe like the feedback loop wasn't really there was kind of how I started to see that.
[00:26:46] 'cause I think the general feedback we got when having those conversations is like, generally we like the enablement part, but then we don't know the what is next. Like was something that kept coming up as like this so what do we do with this information? 'cause again, the [00:27:00] pivot from week to week could be extreme.
[00:27:02] and wasn't always like clearly the day, oh, it wasn't like this month we're gonna talk about these four things, right? Because we were moving so quickly. and so I think one of the clear hypothesis was like, we're not properly reinforcing the message enough for
[00:27:13] sales to get it and, and articulate it. so it was funny. I, I would say so having that in mind we have this like, great thing, we're building awesome decks. We're having a really good hour in conversation. How do we repurpose that? I know we see that in content too. You might have like the best. I don't know, customer story.
[00:27:29] You know, you've done a testimonial, a video testimonial. How do you repurpose that into 20 different things, right? It's like similar in that way from a product marketing perspective. And so, from what to experiment with, it was kinda like a team brainstorm, like the internal podcast. I don't know if I know a lot of other product marketers that have even tried that.
[00:27:46] because we were like, how, like someone, we've talked to someone who has really cool information, how do we like get that out more broadly across the organization? And so it was kind of like just a brainstorm of what the heck can we try AI or not, right? There's so many tools. and we've done this before, which is [00:28:00] actually a really cool learning, is like take a use case internally as a product marketing team and have like a day where you all try different tools and different methods to, to try to solve that problem.
[00:28:09] So if you have a, a, you know, a hackathon type day where it's gonna be sales enablement and all, different people on the team, try different tools, try different things,
[00:28:17] come back and explain.
[00:28:18] Elle: shout out to the, to a good leader who, who bakes that into the team, you know, routine.
[00:28:24] Michelle: it's just so helpful and you don't feel, guilty, taking the time to do it, which is just so important.
[00:28:28] Then you scale what you're learning, like things, I never would've thought of. and vice versa, just to spark these experiments, right? Like, I had never tried a tool for persona, role playing that was like audio, like auditory, like speaking I never would've thought of that. I would've been like, okay, you can type it, but like to have a conversation with AI was like a different level to that.
[00:28:48] So, yeah, to your point about like how we kind of came up with these ideas, it was truly like a brainstorm. Let's everything. 'cause we ha like we have to hit our, you know, part of our bonus relies on [00:29:00] company,
[00:29:00] Elle: right. The company results. Yes,
[00:29:03] Michelle: So we're like, we gotta get it right. all this AI hype, like yes.
[00:29:07] Are there tools that there could help? Sure. To your point. Nothing beats like human to human conversations and stories. But again, how do you scale that? So even in the enablement sessions, the live enablement sessions where customers would come on and talk about it, like you still had to take that and repurpose it.
[00:29:23] So, you know, you can't count on reps that they couldn't attend to listen to the recording, all the things. It's like, here's what this customer said at this, you know, exact moment in enablement, or here's the transcripts or here's, you know, how you can turn that into an anonymous, you know, case study or social post or whatever.
[00:29:39] Something that a rep can literally copy and paste and use or, you know, a slide or whatever it is. so yeah, I mean it was kind of like reassuring as a product marketer that a lot of this was a human to human, um, success.
[00:29:51] Elle:
[00:29:51] but you still used ai, but it wasn't like completely automating, you know, sales enablement. So it's also, [00:30:00] it's also proof AI's not totally coming for our jobs. Guys like, come on.
[00:30:04] Michelle: we're safe. It's fine. It's.
[00:30:05] Elle: okay. We're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine. Um, okay. So I wanna try to recap what I've heard.
[00:30:10] 'cause again, like pretending that you're coaching me and I'm gonna try to mimic your playbook in my, in my career. So, I take a look at the signals, right? Whether it's, you know, revenue or pipeline or whatever it may be. a step one. And then step two is I talk to sales and just, and analyze all of the data, and build my hypothesis.
[00:30:31] And then my step three is try, try to run some, experiments to see what's working and what's not. and again, like for you it was, it was very specific to like, retention, around the messaging in the story and then you find what works, and I guess you just bake it into some kind of like, routine for your sales enablement and your sales enablement program. is there a step four
[00:30:53] Michelle: I guess for me there's like, like the what's next? And there is more, not that we had tried treasure data, but there [00:31:00] are always ways to like, I don't know, level up. so one of the things that we hear a lot, but this, you know, starts getting murky in terms of like sales enablement and like true go to market.
[00:31:10] but things like, follow up, right? So sales has like told a really cool story, like Jets, the messaging has the conversations like, then what, like what assets do they send as
[00:31:19] follow up or what kind of emails do they send? I think the number one, um, custom GPTR salespeople used was like an email generator, right?
[00:31:28] Like based on, the, what was it, pain points, competitors mentioned industry title. All these things. Sales could put into a, an agent or a custom GPT and it would spit out like a follow up email, right? So there's like ways that AI can help you scale beyond that conversation, which is kind of, I don't know, maybe a step four is like, you know, don't, like, yeah, continue to
[00:31:49] track what's working, but don't stop.
[00:31:50] Like there's cool things to keep trying. though, I guess I would say if that's like four and a half, step five would be like, like track it, like did it work
[00:31:58] with data? [00:32:00] Um, of
[00:32:00] Elle: Yes. Yeah. And then take it back to your CRO and say, C, not messaging.
[00:32:08] Michelle: Or sales is kinda like, again, you know, one of the biggest wins that we could say and talk about as storytellers, like here's, you know, enterprise prospects that we're getting in the pipeline that we're going to POC in less than a month, again, unheard of. Like,
[00:32:21] here's why this is happening, how do we repeat it?
[00:32:24] And of course, the serials
[00:32:25] are cause that, you know. Takes six plus months and you've, you're condensing it into one month and you have the data for that, so you know, something's working.
[00:32:34] Elle: I have a couple questions for you before we wrap up this, this segment. So one is, how are you taking some of this playbook or maybe the entire playbook and applying it to your new role at Optiv Universal?
[00:32:47] Michelle: So what's really exciting about opters is, is it is a startup and it is ai. So they're very AI friendly. also great for me is the sales and CS team is a little bit smaller.
[00:32:56] So when you talk about like going to the reps and talking one-on-one, like. [00:33:00] I have a very good, condensed group to talk to, which just makes it easier for onboarding. So everything we talked about, talking to the reps, going through the gong calls, sitting on every customer call, I can like a very easy, clear step one.
[00:33:14] step two is gonna be, again, what's working, not working. It's kind of interesting in this case because my hypothesis is gonna be a little bit different, which is more, my hypothesis is more around, the product roadmap moving too fast for like CS and
[00:33:27] sales to know about. So it'd be like, Hey, we just launched this.
[00:33:29] But CS is like, well, I don't know how to like, set this up for the customer. Or sales is like, I'm not sure why this matters. So I think my hypothesis is a little different, which will
[00:33:38] Elle: It's,
[00:33:39] yeah, so maybe like internal alignment and processes rather than like leaderboards and, you know, role playing.
[00:33:48] Michelle: Yeah, yeah. A little more intimate around like, you know, if you have the, opportunity to really do like one-on-one with people because you know, you know clearly like what's going on. that's huge. So [00:34:00] like there's, you know, something as clear as like product roadmap slides. If you don't have it, you always should, but like something as easy as that.
[00:34:07] I mean, that's like a quick win for me. But again, going back to experimenting, what's, you know, working for a large group may or may not work for like a smaller group. And so that's kind of like step two for me is what, knowing my hypothesis now is like, what experiments am I going to run in? Like you said, might look very different.
[00:34:22] Elle: Yeah. I think you mentioned a few already, but that, let's like recap real quick, the tools that you used for enablement
[00:34:29] Michelle: notebook, lm for the persona, like AI role playing, um, I'm sorry for the podcast style interviews, I guess you can actually use it for role playing as well. I also like, as part of this, if you have certain areas that need attention, I do or different products I do like making, projects and whatever your LLM of choice right now, minus Claude, but if you have a project for, a certain persona or a certain project that your team can like, use to ask questions is really, really helpful.
[00:34:57] which is more of like if you're, you know, on vacation on PTO and [00:35:00] your sales reps are like, I need something. They have someone to talk to.
[00:35:04] Elle: Great. Yeah, you can ask this AI agent.
[00:35:08] Michelle: so when I mentioned the email copy agent, like we built all our stuff in, in glean. Um, not every organization is maybe lucky enough to have GLE yet.
[00:35:16] Um, but that's where we were building all of, all of these kind of agents, but also pulling some of this information outside of like your gongs and your CRM and your typical like win-loss type data. so we built that, the email copy agent, we have a competitive intelligence agent and then, like a, a sales enablement one and glean.
[00:35:33] So that's kind of fun 'cause you can also see what is being used the most anyway. Eddie, as I mentioned, to take all that good information, throw it into Slack to make sure your reps know what the heck they're actually talking about.
[00:35:43] but gosh, like there's so many others for like, follow up. I'm trying paper flight.
[00:35:47] . guess my rule of thumb is use the AI in whatever tools you are lucky enough to have now.
[00:35:52] and then layer on new things, you know, as, as you see gaps.
[00:35:55] Elle: Okay, last question for you on this topic. what last piece of advice do you [00:36:00] have for someone who's rebuilding their enablement approach as a product marketer?
[00:36:07] Michelle: baby, don't throw spaghetti at a wall, it will burn you out. you know, I say that 'cause like, I think there, there is, such a need for sales enablement and people have such a desire for it. Like they wanna hear from product marketing and they
[00:36:18] want to hear these stories, so like, there's such good intentions behind it.
[00:36:22] But, you know, protect your peace, be very. Pointed about what you're doing and why, and if you can have data to back it up, like all the better. but last thing I'll say that we've chatted about many times here now is like one in doubt. Go back to people, your customers, your, your reps. Like
[00:36:38] Nothing Will, will beat that.
[00:36:40] Elle: still just really love that like engagement even with using AI was the thing that actually stuck the back and forth engagement versus having just like a one way, I guess just like, receptive type of. Situation.
[00:36:58] Michelle: I love this though. We don't do [00:37:00] enough. Really good sales enablement. So this was such a great story. Thank you so much for sharing and exposing a little bit of your playbook. I hope the PMM listeners are taking note and gonna try some experiments of their own.
[00:37:13] Elle: Okay, so now let's move to this second segment of the show.
[00:37:16] this is the messaging critique. This is where we as product marketers get to put on our expert hats and analyze real world messaging. And the fun part is, Michelle, as my guest, you get to pick the company that we look at today. Just some quick round rules, though. We try to pick companies here where either we are the target customer or we know the target customer really well.
[00:37:36] 'cause it would not be fair for me to critique messaging on a company like, I don't know, security software. Like, I don't know anything about that. So it's just not fair. and then tell me what you're loving about it. What stood out to you as really strong, something you wish the pm m would've considered differently.
[00:37:50] And then we'll iterate a little bit and give some advice out there in the world for that PMM and how they can take it to the next level.
[00:37:56] Michelle: Don't remember.
[00:37:57] Elle: ready?
[00:37:57] Michelle: Let's do it.
[00:37:59] Elle: Okay. [00:38:00] Please reveal the company that we'll be looking at today.
[00:38:02] Michelle: So we are gonna talk about Clickup.
[00:38:06] Elle: Let's do it. So for those of you who want to follow along, we are going to click up.com, just how it's spelled, C-L-I-C-K-U p.com. I'm on their website now. If you don't mind just getting everybody up to speed, like very, very quickly. Like your understanding at least, like what do they do? Like who do they typically cater to?
[00:38:26] Michelle: Yeah, so they got their start as like task manager. So like task management, project management, things like that. So that's like their core and their background. And if you're on the site, if you're kind of following along, they've since added on so many other layers.
[00:38:42] Um, their homepage now says every app, every team, unlimited AI agents. and yeah, I'm excited to dig in about, I don't know, there, I have a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings on how that evolution has, occurred.
[00:38:54] Elle: What stands out to you as working really well?
[00:38:59] Michelle: I [00:39:00] think they are being very bold, in their positioning, which I like because I think sometimes we try and play it too safe. I know I've seen a couple, like even rebrands lately, I'm like, I, you can really push the envelope on what you're saying now. they're obviously, again, like background and task management, they are productivity.
[00:39:18] And I think what I do like is this idea of like, things are in too many places, there's too many tools, everything's fragmented. I feel that all the time. Um, I definitely see that in tools that I'm using. I'm like, I wish this integrated or had this certain capability, right? Like I feel that generally.
[00:39:35] And so having, like I know that pain point and this kind of new very bold messaging of like, it does it all, it replaces all the tools, is bold and like, can be powerful if you know the background of them. But it also is like a big risk, right? I mean, if you don't know who they are, who are they
[00:39:53] Elle: are they
[00:39:53] Right, exactly. You end up, it ends up like resonating with no one.
[00:39:57] Michelle: I think that's like a trap we fall in all the [00:40:00] time, is like talking to everyone, is talking to no one.
[00:40:02] Elle: That is the first thing that stood out to me though, when I saw their top line messaging, the, like every app, every team, and I. Are you though?
[00:40:11] Michelle: Mm.
[00:40:12] Elle: if you are, then it, to me, it's, it's, it, it's putting to, I think, anyway, it's putting a lot of responsibility and work on the customer
[00:40:25] to try to like, figure out where to go, what to do.
[00:40:29] And in this world that we live in, like you just can't afford to, it's hard. It's, it's, as you said, it's a risk because then you're like, you're competing for time and attention. And if this is taking up too much of my time, then I'm not gonna look at it. Like I'm just, I'm gonna look at something else that's more spooned to me and exactly what I need, or, or apparent.
[00:40:51] Apparent to me that it's exactly what I need.
[00:40:53] Michelle: yeah. Yes. Yeah, and I think, I mean, I know we're not talking about them today, but like I only use Gong as a similar example [00:41:00] as they, they, I think there's so many cool companies that are either too hyper-focused on one, it's like the opposite problem, right?
[00:41:06] There's too focused on like revenue and sales when like. They have the best data for like customer marketing and product marketing. So they're not
[00:41:14] Elle: Yeah,
[00:41:14] Michelle: I'm like, well, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to replace, you know, my clo and my coworker and whatever with, with clickup.
[00:41:22] Like that's not what it's meant for. Could it help me build a product launch roadmap? Sure. But like I know that, 'cause I've used the product, anyone else that's looking to buy clickup, especially in the product marketing world, would have no idea that that's even a thing.
[00:41:34] Elle: I was gonna say, so like, is that the thing that I think you, wish that PMM would've considered differently? Like they're being really bold and they're, they're going for it. They're going for every app and every team. Do you wish they would've considered something else, or is there, or if you think, well, that's fine.
[00:41:52] I really wish they would've changed something else over here though.
[00:41:54] Michelle: I think the bold, approach is very interesting and I think we need to take more risks generally from [00:42:00] B2B technology. what I do wish they did differently, 'cause what's really interesting is there's no, there's not really a lot of, like navigation to click through.
[00:42:07] So there's not like, you know, a personas tab or like,
[00:42:11] Elle: Yes, I notice that. I love it when companies give a persona tag, like, or to, or a tap, sorry.
[00:42:18] Michelle: for product marketing, what would my use cases be? I would say like, lovable is a similar one. Lovable takes you straight into the UI and doesn't say, Hey, I know you're a product marketer. Here's like, what other people like you are doing. Like, show me what people like me are doing with your
[00:42:32] Elle: yeah. Okay. They do have, if you go to solutions, they do have teams.
[00:42:37] Michelle: Okay, let's see.
[00:42:38] Elle: and they have marketing. So if we go to marketing, it says the Everything app for marketing teams.
[00:42:43] Michelle: Right. Well, exactly. This is exactly my Yes. Right. I think, let's see, they have, yeah, project management, which is their core sales and CRM, which I don't know if you're in ops, is totally different. Team.
[00:42:56] Elle: now I'm really disappointed. I went to HR just to see what the [00:43:00] headline top level messaging would say. The everything app for HR teams like,
[00:43:04] Michelle: This
[00:43:06] is when you use AI to
[00:43:07] duplicate
[00:43:08] pages and you switch out personas without, because like
[00:43:11]
[00:43:11] Elle: Now you're, you're just making a landing page. Like you're just trying to, it's like you're just trying to like, show up in a search rather than like actually tell a story or resonate with your ICP.
[00:43:21] Michelle: I think they have some of the right content, but maybe needs to be repackaged.
[00:43:27] Hmm. Yes. Well, and I know like, just personally that they have some really, and their customer list is incredible. Like show me, take me through like a testimonial or a case study. Like even if you could go down to the resources, it's, let's see, resources for marketing. It's the exact same page. Oh my gosh.
[00:43:48]
[00:43:48] Elle: it's the same page. All the pages are exactly the same.
[00:43:50] Michelle: I feel like they're taking up so much real estate on the page to show things, which is like, Hey, I am not gonna create on like website [00:44:00] design and stuff because I'm not a web designer. So that's not a fair critique.
[00:44:04] Elle: But if, if this, if I were the pm m on this, I would be, I would not love how my story about my product was unfolding. you know, 'cause there's, there's a lot of like visuals here. Well, I guess there's like a little video that they can play, so like, maybe it's a little bit more interactive, but I would want more.
[00:44:25] Okay. It's a little bit more interact, open, but everything, you have to sign up. You have to sign up to see everything. Everything. You have to sign up It's kind of frustrating. That's a lot for like a homepage. You asked me to sign up, I just met you. Like, I don't know if I want a second date yet.
[00:44:38] Like, I'm still getting to know you And then if I scroll all the way to the bottom, then I see customer stories
[00:44:46] Michelle: Yep.
[00:44:47] Elle: And I love, that's such great proof. They have great, strong proof, but it's all the way at the bottom.
[00:44:54] Michelle: oh my God. Save six to seven days every week.
[00:44:59] Elle: That is so [00:45:00] much stronger. I love that way more. I love that way more. Put it
[00:45:04] Michelle: and
[00:45:04] I can actually see the product get Okay. Yeah. I mean, yeah, so they are PLG, so it is get started for free, so that's why they're forcing the signups. But like
[00:45:12] Elle: Come on some. Yeah, I will say I didn't click the videos, so maybe there's more in the videos that I would've showed me. I'll give him that. I didn't click the video, so maybe it's solved there. But, and it could also be, I know every single C-level VP level person out there, whether they have marketing experience or not, is like forcing marketers, pmms, whoever to jam AI into as much top level messaging as possible.
[00:45:40] So maybe the pmms hands were tied and like, that's why this every app, every team, unlimited AI agents is like. Up at the top, but I feel like they have so much more compelling, stronger, punchier
[00:45:54] Michelle: Yes.
[00:45:54] Elle: messaging, just like buried,
[00:45:56] Michelle: Yeah,
[00:45:57] I mean, and to your point, it's like so many, [00:46:00] it's not just tools. I think it's, I don't know, I'm, I am not a huge believer in category creation, so that's maybe a me problem, but I'm also like you, again, when you think about budgets or solutions to a problem, like I know Slack is for communication, and I know, you know, like, so what?
[00:46:15] And I think Clickup even has, actually, I do know that Clickup even has internal messaging now. So now they're going after Slack anyway,
[00:46:21] Elle: Interesting.
[00:46:24] Michelle: If you're gonna be at all, what are you replacing? Like, gimme a list on what, what can I get rid of To put budget towards you,
[00:46:31] Elle: You know what's so funny? I had another guest very early on in the podcast, his name is Chris Poky. He is a PMM leader at Adobe and he picked a couple different companies to critique and one of the companies he chose was Airtable and it was very similar. So maybe it's a category thing because Airtable iss having like a very similar challenge.
[00:46:55] Like you're like, who do you wanna be? Like who are you?
[00:46:58] Michelle: Who do I wanna
[00:46:59] Elle: They're
[00:46:59] like,
[00:46:59] [00:47:00] uh, yeah, maybe they're in like just this, that categories in this like teenage years where they're like. You know, whatever, like trying on different labels. Like, not that we should do that. I'm not encouraging that, but I,
[00:47:13] Michelle: that's giving me Zoolander. Like, who am I,
[00:47:16] Elle: who am I? I don't know.
[00:47:19] Michelle: I. Oh, I'm dating myself. It's
[00:47:23] Elle: Anyway, this was a really good critique. Okay. Any last final, just like messages or tips that you wanna give to the, like the Clickup pmms of the world?
[00:47:33] Michelle: you, you have the information. Make it clear who you are and what problems you're solving. If you're going to be the all-in-one tool, show what you're gonna replace and other customers that have done it to build that confidence of, Hey, if they've
[00:47:45] done it, I can do it too.
[00:47:46] Elle: alright. So, Michelle, the one thing that I love to make time for on this podcast is just a moment of gratitude. 'cause I know preparing for this, recording just takes so much of your time and effort and your generosity [00:48:00] in sharing your expertise. I know you do at a lot on LinkedIn and your in podcast and you do a ton of stuff with PMA and also bringing your expertise here to the show.
[00:48:09] I'm just, I'm so grateful for you. So thank you so much. This was really, really great.
[00:48:13] Michelle: Thank you for having me and for all the pmms out there, like listen to these episodes. It's so practical, it's so real. So like thank you for having me. Just, you know, a moment to kind of share things that I've been through. We all, uh, you know, I think trauma bond over some of these
[00:48:27] stories, but you
[00:48:28] know, we're, we're, it's, it's cool to have these kinds of opportunities to, to learn together.
[00:48:32] And so again, thank you for having me. 'cause I know it's, it's a lot of work on your end too, so it's been
[00:48:37] Elle: yeah. yeah. Okay. Let's quickly shout out though, who are some pmms who have helped shape you in your career. It's a great opportunity to just like shout out, say like, kudos. Thanks. I know there's so many. Just, you can just name the first, like two to three that come to your mind.
[00:48:53] Michelle: Emily pick knows this. She is like my spirit animal, like my second half when like, AI are just [00:49:00] venting. Um, I'll never forget the first time we chatted and it just like we clicked immediately. She is also similarly sharing really cool things about ai. a very real, use cases for things she's, she's going through and how, you know, she's figuring it out.
[00:49:12] and just a really cool person. So Emily pick for
[00:49:14] sure.
[00:49:15] I'm like, it's powerful Women Day. Um,
[00:49:18] Tamara Kaminsky, like the MVP, the sweetest, kindest human, just gives her time to anyone who needs it. Just always willing to chat through, I don't know, career advice, whatever. which is an easy segue to Yin, who is like the go-to girl for career advice when it comes to product marketing.
[00:49:34] But she's like, I mean, she's built something really cool. I'm a really cool consult called consultancy with Jonathan Ick, to really help pmms, like find good roles, but she's just one of, again, the sweetest, kindest, most humble, uh, product marketers who really, really knows her stuff.
[00:49:50] Elle: Yeah, I would say all those pmms you mentioned are super humble and kind and just generous. And we're so lucky. like if [00:50:00] you had any time period of the world to be a professional and to be in product marketing, like we get to live amongst people like that, like.
[00:50:08] Michelle: I know. It's true. We have like, yeah. Just really good people, so.
[00:50:11] Elle: Awesome. Thank you so much, Michelle. Appreciate it.
[00:50:14] Michelle: Thank you for having me.
[00:50:16] Elle: And hey PM listeners, if you liked this episode, please share it with the PMM Friend and I would be so grateful if you would leave us a review or hit follow or subscribe on YouTube. It helps tremendously with our reach. and thank you so much for coming on this adventure with us today.
[00:50:30] I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take in the next step of your own journey. I.
[00:50:34]
