Speaker: Sam Woolf, Product Marketing Manager, SEDNA Systems
What made you decide to become a PMA member?
Sam Woolf: So why did I become a PMA Product marketing alliance member? Well I was working with a company as a general marketer and there was a big gap we needed to fill in the product marketing side of the business. And when we weren't having any success in finding an outside option for hiring a product marketer, I would put forward my name too, start filling that role until we could find somebody to fill it full time. And it was at the recommendation of a colleague that I joined PMA Because they worked at other organizations where all the product marketers they had worked with swore by it as a resource for not only learning the tools of product marketing to begin with, but also for staying sharp and connected to other product marketers.
How does being a PMA member help you in your role?
Sam Woolf: Being a PMA member helps me with my role because as somebody who has only been a product marketer for a little over a year now, it's the resource I turn to whenever I'm trying to take on new projects that involve concepts that I have some understanding of through my resource use of other PMA Training tools but need a little extra help in terms of getting started, which is why things like the frameworks and templates offered by PMA are incredibly helpful for knowing what kind of a framework to be using when starting a new project, even if it's your first time doing it.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to future PMMs?
Sam Woolf: My advice to future PMM is get comfortable with asking questions that you think might sound silly to other people, but that oftentimes are the question that nobody else is brave enough to ask and that a lot of people, whether it's within your team or within your whole business, which they could be asking but are afraid that because they don't occupy space as interdepartmental as PMM, their question wouldn't be relevant where we sit because we have such insight into all the different aspects of a business. It's kind of expected that we're the ones who are going to be the first to ask the important, clarifying questions, even if they might sometimes sound very simple. Our job is partly not just to educate ourselves on everything that's going on in the business, but also educate the business broadly about what everybody's up to and what we're all trying to achieve and how we can stay aligned.
