Publications
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By John Mansour on August 2, 2023
10 Things That Would Happen if All Customer-Facing Disciplines Were Aligned to a Common View of the Customer
Here are 10 things that would happen if product management, product marketing, sales and customer success all had a common view of your target customers. Is there more to it than this? Sure, broader market research, competitive landscape, emerging technologies, etc., but this how you build your organization’s core strength for the long haul. Do […]
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By John Mansour on July 31, 2023
5 Great Career Paths for Sales Engineers & Solution Consultants
The career paths for sales engineers (SEs) and solution consultants (SCs) are wide open due to the blend of business and technical skills, sales skills and positioning expertise required to succeed in this role. If you think about it, those skills, to a greater or lesser degree, are required in just about any market or […]
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By John Mansour on July 19, 2023
Should Product Positioning and Sales Narratives be Different?
Does your product positioning need to be different than your sales narratives? The short and simple answer is no, but it’s highly dependent on how your product positioning is constructed. As a former product marketing manager, I know this all too well and was guilty in the first degree! We tend to overthink our messaging, […]
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By John Mansour on July 17, 2023
Rearchitecting Your Platform? Don’t Stress Over Feature Parity!
Rearchitecting your platform is a necessary evil but every software company has to suck it up at least once. If you’re fortunate enough to have success over the long haul, you’ll do it a few times. It’s total stress though, especially for product management and product development teams because of the tremendous pressure to deliver […]
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By John Mansour on June 21, 2023
Develop a Content Strategy for Product Marketing in 5 Steps
Developing a content strategy for product marketing requires an approach similar to product positioning. It’s about meeting your target customers in their comfort zone with insightful content that strikes an emotional chord. The end game is to open more doors for sales at the decision-maker/influencer level and give them higher quality leads that are warmer […]
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By John Mansour on June 8, 2023
Customer Success, Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) and Quantifying Customer Value
Quantifying customer value can turn the “what have you done for me lately” question into a productive conversation that results in higher renewal rates and higher sales of add-on products/services. If you’re a customer success manager, it’s a familiar scenario. The time for renewal is fast approaching on one or more accounts. That dreaded question is […]
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By John Mansour on June 5, 2023
How to Create a Product Vision That Energizes Stakeholders
Most product managers know how to create a product vision, but that’s not the hard part. The more difficult part is getting stakeholders energized and on board the proverbial train. Here’s the thing. The extent to which stakeholders get behind your product vision has everything to do with how the product vision is articulated. What […]
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By John Mansour on May 24, 2023
Qualifying Your Account Executives Before a Demo
If you’re a solution consultant (SC), sales engineer (SE), or any other role that does sales demos, there’s nothing more uncomfortable than going into a demo and not knowing what you’re aiming for. Qualifying your account executives prior to the demo is a practice that’s beneficial to everyone, including the buyer. The cold hard reality is […]
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By John Mansour on May 11, 2023
Free eBook: Top-Down Customer Discovery – Uncovering THE BIG WHY
I published this eBook to highlight the number one goal of customer discovery! It’s to make sure the products and services you’re building, marketing, selling and delivering are consistently tied to something that has measurable strategic value to your customers. That’s why the top-down aspect of customer discovery is so critical to success and why […]
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By John Mansour on April 25, 2023
Creating a Value Based Resume – Stop TELLING and Start SELLING
Creating a value based resume means it’s time to treat yourself as a product that has strategic (employer) value. The hard part is avoiding the trap of TELLING employers what the product (you) does versus SELLING its value. Here we are in the early part of 2023 and so many of my talented friends, former […]