Episode 3: Launch Planning

Elisa Velarde, Veracode

Episode 3: Mastering Product Launches: Insights from Elisa Velarde of Veracode

In this episode of the Launch Gravy podcast, host Larry Weber speaks with Elisa Velarde, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Veracode. Elisa shares her extensive experience in launching cybersecurity and open-source products, emphasizing the importance structured launch processes and effective collaboration between product marketing and product management. The discussion covers various essential aspects, including the roles and responsibilities involved in product marketing, the significance of having solid messaging and communication, and the use of artifacts like Lean Canvases and PRFAQs to ensure efficient and successful product launches.

Connect with Elisa Online: Elisa’s LinkedIn

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Transcript:

• Meet Elisa Velarde: Cybersecurity Maven

  Larry: Hi everybody. And welcome to the launch gravy podcast. I'm your host, Larry Weber.

  And on today's show, I'm going to be speaking with Elisa Velarde, senior product marketing manager at Veracode. Elisa is a maven at launching cybersecurity and open-source products and services. Having worked at such places as Sonatype and Fossa and now back again at Veracode.

  Today, we're going to be digging into the launch and more specifically the essential launch process. Elisa, welcome to the Launch Gravy podcast.

  Elisa: Thank you very much. I hope I live up to the reputation of “maven.” I appreciate it.

  Larry: No, no worries. All good. All good. So, hey, look, you, let's get to it. You're in product marketing at Veracode. Can you tell our audience a little bit more about your role, kind of your responsibility, and maybe a little bit of how you got into product marketing?

  Elisa: Sure. I think like a lot of product marketers, I came from product marketing kind [00:01:00] of the long way around or some untraditional route. So, I spent some time doing traditional marketing, growth marketing product management which shout out to product managers. That's a super hard job. And just the combination of all those skills, eventually I just migrated over into product marketing and I really love it.

  I really love being in product marketing. It's kind of all the things that I love to do. my role at Veracode is I'm involved with several different products. Including our most recent acquisition of Longbow. So working with those products I've worked with our dynamic analysis product in my, in the previous life.

  You say I'm coming back to Veracode. I'm a boomeranger. So yes, for sure. I worked with dynamic analysis before I've worked with SCA, our repo scanning product. I'm working with Longbow. So I cover a lot of ground at Veracode on the daily.

  Larry: Got it.

• Understanding Veracode and Its Offerings

  Larry: And tell our audience, cause not everyone's like going to be super up to speed on cyber or even Veracode. You can tell us a little bit about what Veracode does. And maybe like when you say dynamic analysis, like what is that? What is, what does that do? What is that? How whose problems that [00:02:00] solve?

  Elisa: That's a fantastic point. So Veracode is a application security testing company or application risk management company, and so what we're helping developers and security teams do is secure their code. So into insecurity from static testing that, code that developers might write through to dynamic analysis, as you referred to doing runtime testing, so as the application is, being run and, doing what it does there's testing for that as well. We also cover pen manual penetration testing and penetration testing as a service, so doing those human in the loop kind of, uh, test, security tests. And then with Longbow, we're entering into this application security posture management process. realm, which is really taking all of that information, all of those findings, and consolidating them down into a single view so that people can get an idea of, what really matters in terms of their organizational security risk

• Day-to-Day in Product Marketing at Veracode

  Larry: , like maybe for the next part, can you tell me a little bit more of your day to day and what kind of product marketing activities are you involved [00:03:00] in?

  Elisa: Sure. one of the things that you're alluding to is taking something that's fairly complex and technical and breaking it down into something that. people can see the value of, right? So there are very few, I would guess, of our customers, maybe some of our more technical users, who really care about the nuts and bolts of how the thing works. They just want to know, can I protect my code base? Can I find a vulnerability or something that's a threat, something that's, risky before someone who has nefarious plans finds it, right? Or, Before it turns up somewhere else. So think on the daily, I spend time and messaging and positioning and working on kind of some standard, product marketing things to help tell that story, help develop that narrative, both for our internal teams, because they need to be able to speak that same language talk the language of value and then for our customers as well.

  So that's, that's a good part of my work. I would say I also spend a good amount of time doing enablement for, Our internal [00:04:00] teams that could be sales enablement could be enablement of our customer success and technical folks and marketing people as well. Because, marketing team has to have, be read in on that story.

  And, we're working very tightly on campaign. So I just we make sure that they're enabled as well. And then I guess the, probably the bulk of my time is spent on launch activity, preparing for launches, preparing for releases, preparing for, whether they're a bunch of little tier three type of things, or it's a bigger tier two type of thing, or it's a tier one type of thing.

  Yes, we use tiering in Veracode. Then, I spend my time sort of planning that out and, Talking about what that would look like, the timing, and getting all the other teams involved.

  Okay.

  Larry: process and your experience with that. So real quick, though, like when you mentioned the product marketing side of it, I do believe for me, at least like product marketing is you're thinking about a hub and spoke. You're like the hub you're at the core and you have a lot of different departments, a lot of different [00:05:00] areas pulling at you and whether it be enablement and sellers and things like, Wow.

• The Launch Process Explained

  Larry: We can dig into some of that, but you're at the center of the universe when it comes to these products and specifically now let's dig into a little bit of the launch process. Now you mentioned some tiers. I'll definitely want to dig into kind of what they mean. To you, cause different folks have different views for tiers.

  I think tiering is smart and in a good way to think about launches, right? Cause not everything's created equal,

  Elisa: Sure.

  Larry: tell me about your launch process and what's your structure like, and maybe just introduce the audience here to what, what is a launch?

  Elisa: Okay, well, for us a launch is really getting a feature or product out to market, right? So that means to prospective customers and to existing customers, to prospective users and existing users. It also means educating our internal teams. So if our internal teams aren't ready and we're not all on the same page, then, you could have kind of a disaster in terms of a launch. Really, we're, launch to me is making sure that all the I's are dotted and T's are [00:06:00] crossed, and we're ready to, let the world know that we have this new feature, this new product. In terms of tiering, since you brought that up, we try to break our launches into tiers. So the tier one launches are big, big things. Could be well, uh, our new acquisition, if it's an M&A new acquisition that's a very big deal. So we want to make a big deal about that. Anything substantive to the product. I think my first time around at Veracode, we had a new API scanning capability. And so that was a fairly big deal.

  And we, elevated that to a, excuse me, tier one launch. The tier two things are more strategic, but not nearly as, PR worthy, if you will. So. In our world, that means something that's really germane to how users and customers do their work every day. Like our GitHub app is an example of that.

  Our new GitHub app that we just rolled out. So that's a, that's an example of a Tier 2. And then Tier 3 is like a smaller feature that somebody's waiting for. It might be the most boring of things to some To us [00:07:00] from a

  Larry: Hmm.

  Elisa: but for an end user, it's the best thing that ever happened to them, right?

  Like, they've been waiting for it forever. we are taking a slightly new approach to those tier 3 types of features and trying to bundle those up and tell a bigger story with what we're

  Larry: Hmm.

  Elisa: So that's a new, that's a new initiative that we have going on now. But that's our tiering and that's what launching, I guess, launching a product sort of means to me and to Veracode, that's kind of what we're doing.

  Larry: Yeah, no, it's smart. I mean, I think the tiers are definitely important because there's a different level of focus and different people you need to rope into, as you said before, with, with getting PR, right? Like, Hey, just because we have a new language capability, it might not, be the thing you want to put in front of tech crunch or whatever, but it's super important for those folks and maybe it's like a social media feed or post can get that out there or into the community feeds, right?

  So specifically within the launch process itself, can you tell us more about who, maybe your process and, who's involved and, what kind of rigor because I,

  Elisa: hours

  Larry: [00:08:00] you

  Elisa: yes I'll try to I'll try to get to the salient points and keep it brief. So for us, for me, at least, and I think I can speak for pretty much all of my PMM cohorts, what we try to do up front is understand why, right? So we, we're really, really lucky at Veracode that we have a fantastic relationship with our With product management.

  So know, the first thing I do when I'm working with a new product manager is say, Hey, listen, we are co-CEOs on this thing, this product, we own it together. I would like to be in early and often on the roadmap discussion and where you're taking things and where they're landing and why you're doing them.

  That's important for me to tell my story. So I try to get the sort of. Product North Star direction of where they're taking the product and then have that break down into their individual quarter launches features that they're rolling out. So that's the 1st thing I do and then I, as we're talking about that, I start to get a of my head of who else we need to be who else needs to be at the table.

  There's some standard people customer success [00:09:00] for sure are Sales architects, solutions architects that are always in the mix. Anybody who's in support or customer facing for sure we have representatives that we pull and we have a weekly launch call that we pull all these people together and we, talk about what's

  Larry: said on a weekly basis, you have a,

  Elisa: basis.

  Yeah.

  And, and so then I start to get a sense of kind of go to market strategy, like, how do we want to roll this out? Is it just a customers? Is it a larger audience is prospects? What are we doing? So I'm start to get an idea of that. 1 of the things that we are working on now is really, codifying that process in a more solid way. So. I, I think how we've sort of been doing it before is each PM has their own flavor of how they like to do that. And we're trying to standardize around a certain number of artifacts so that we can do the same thing every time. And every PM's doing the same thing or using the same documents and tools every time. So it's repeatable as streamlined and Every PMM knows what to expect, what they're responsible [00:10:00] for, and every PM knows what to expect and what they're responsible for. I think there was a little bit loosey goosey I do it this way, and I do it this way. And it made it a little hard because, as I indicated before, all of the PMMs on the VeriCode teams have multiple products.

  So we work with multiple PMs across the board. So we need a standardized way of saying this is how we're going to do it. And so I think we just started a reimagining of how that is and how we're, launching products and setting it up so that we're more successful for those kind of internal and external conversations.

  Larry: got it. And depending on the company, sometimes, who's managing us, who's the ringleader here, is it? Is product, you are okay. So that's it. Like I was just wanting to check because sometimes product marketing does it. Sometimes there's like a, a project manager sometimes done through in the PM organization.

  So you're saying is the product manage product marketers at Veracode are the ones that own that kind of ringleader position

  Elisa: So what I do is I have the discussion. Let's say we decide on a date. I can use GitHub as an example. I call it the work back date. So when do you expect this thing to be, ready for public [00:11:00] consumption? And then I start working back. I have a reasonable idea of how long it takes to do certain activities like. internal enablement, what, if we're working off these new artifacts, I know exactly what I need in terms of documentation. So I can work backwards and say, okay, well, then we need to start this by this date. We need to start this by this date. I create a Monday board. We use Monday here. And then I just put all those things in the Monday board and I manage it from there.

  So it's easy. It's easy enough for me to reach out to people, to create meetings, to, do whatever, our marketing organization of which I'm a part I think it was the beginning of the year. Yes. Maybe February the beginning of the year, we started using agile process for marketing. So the entire marketing team comes together to use this agile process and talk through what everybody's working on every 2 weeks.

  So we know. So we know what the overlap is. We know what the dependencies are. We can talk about campaigns. We can talk about go to market activity and it makes it super. It's just super helpful to understand what's going on. What's [00:12:00] going on across the team and where what you're trying to do fits in. So I take that information, the enablement information, sales, and then I mash all that stuff up and put it in a Monday board and then just start managing the tasks that need to be done.

  So I am project manager and product marketing manager at the same time, but

  Larry: professional cat herder is what I'm

  Elisa: It is, but we've got some some really, great cats to work with. It's one of the things I love about Veracode is that think I've reached across a boundary into another team to ask for something and been turned down so people are willing to help and they're helpful and they know what you're trying to accomplish.

  And it makes it easy to gather people together. So they know our role is to make sure everybody's hearing about the things that are rolling out, but also to make sure that our internal teams are successful. So we have a reputation for that. And that's a nice thing to have when you're trying to, gather people together.

  Larry: yeah, totally. So I do have a question. I I've been guilty of this. I've been run into it [00:13:00] where. You get launches thrown over the fence real quick in the last minute. And look it's par for the course. It's going to happen at some point, but best practice, when do you start the launch process?

  Like how far out from a product, going into market, is there a certain timeframe that you like, Hey this feels good to me and feels good to the team to kick this off.

  Elisa: Yeah, I think as soon the fiscal year planning is done and the road map is solidified, I start there. So what's coming up in the next. 60 days so that I can have a nice long runway to plan. Now to your point, does that happen, like clockwork every time? No, it does not. But I like to get in early and understand the whole roadmap, what's where, what we're planning to roll out when, if that rolls up to something like a black hat or, RSA, do we want to make an announcement around a certain thing. So I try to get the bigger picture. We've had some swap up of product managers. If that happens and somebody's behind and I don't [00:14:00] really get the full runway, then we we agree on what's absolutely necessary to get to market. And then we have to shorten the timeline and shorten the, activity. So I guess hopefully that answers your question, but As we're planning, we don't have as many as we used to throw them over the transom. Oh, we're early. Oh, we're late. Just because we were taking the time to plan up front, but when we do that, we just try to get together with the product managers and say, okay, what is the minimum viable enablement product here?

  You know, what is the minimum

  Larry: yeah,

  Elisa: market product here and then try to. as we go along, so at least have something, but then iterate on the back of that.

  Larry: yeah, no, it makes sense. And you said when you're talking MVPs, I was thinking about different different companies. I've had different situations where what really is an MVP vaporware or is this something a customer is actually using, which is the best.

  Elisa: Right.

  Larry: um, yeah, no, no, it's just

  Elisa: for us, it has to be something that's pretty well baked, right? I mean, [00:15:00] you can, you know, it's, an enterprise level software provider, so, you know, it has to It has to be usable and tested and go through the rigors of the

  Larry: Great,

  Elisa: life cycle. So, we don't end up with somebody's pet thing that they made on their laptop.

  That's I don't want to mislead anyone. That's not the case at all. But sometimes it's they may have had to pivot and they're a little late bringing it to market or maybe Again, we had a change of guard and, somebody forgot to you know, that it was coming out and or lost track or something happened in the mix and we're kind of caught on the back foot.

  But generally, that doesn't happen. Generally, we have a good idea of the road map and we can map it out and plan ahead.

  Larry: great, great.

• Building Strong Product Management Relationships

  Larry: Hey, so I want to shift a little bit here from the launch process in general to something you mentioned. All product marketers in theory should be working very closely with their product management counterparts. But you talked about having a good relationship with product management.

  And that's well, we all hope for that and we [00:16:00] want that. I've, I've, I've been in situations I'm guilty of, I've been in situations where, you know, product marketing and product management don't see eye to eye all the time. So maybe can we spend a little time and I'd love to hear from you, and your success is like, how is your relationship with, the development team, the product managers, and tell me what's working and maybe why you think why it's working.

  Elisa: So one of the. The things that I think make us close as product marketing and product management is, I think as a product marketer, you need to be curious and interested in what's going on. You need to have, a commitment sort of to that product and learning how it works and what it does and how it fits in the market and how it, stacks up to the competition and really be the co CEO.

  And I think if you

  Larry: Hmm.

  Elisa: every new relationship I've had with a new product manager and I just when I started working on SCA I had a new one. I basically say, Hey, we're co CEOs in this show me how it works. Show me what's important about it. Let's talk through if there's no messaging to start with, let's talk through it.

  So I can start developing some messaging, tell me why we've chosen the things we've chosen, [00:17:00] why we took the path we've taken. If I can make it work myself, like I downloaded the GitHub app to my personal GitHub and I, bug the product manager to help me figure out how to do it.

  I think if you're interested in your you know, you're really committed to understanding how the product works and the value of it to others. I think that really fosters a really good relationship. I think if you can, it for yourself, or at least have some familiarity with how the

  Larry: Hmm.

  Elisa: That's another, you know, good, good communication piece for you and PM. But really, I think following up being helpful to PM, showing them what you can give them in terms of, helping them spread the word, helping them organize themselves, helping them, Talk about the value of the road map, all of those things. I think they start to say, Hey, this isn't such a bad idea after all these marketing people. So I think that's a, I think that's great. Can we have a difference of opinion on the road map? Sure.

  Larry: Hmm.

  Elisa: I've had a difference of opinion of, I think this feature is more important than that feature, but somebody's waiting for it because it's [00:18:00] impacting something a larger deal or something like that.

  They have the last say, I guess, but. Generally, we don't have a lot of arguments. So yeah, I think being interested, being curious, being committed to the product, like being involved in what's happening and the, where the market's going with that product and those kinds of things goes a long way.

  And I realized not everybody gets that that opportunity. But if you have that opportunity, you should absolutely take it.

  Larry: No, no, it makes sense. And it's just real quick. I wrote out in a note because you gave me an acronym. You said SCA.

  Elisa: Oh, software composition analysis. It's our,

  Larry: Just, it's a pro it's yeah. So

  Elisa: a

  Larry: you want, you want to give a definition of it or for the audience or

  Elisa: It's our third party code scanner. So it's our, uh, I mean, that's it in a nutshell. Really. That's what it

  Larry: yeah, all good. Yeah. No worries. No worries. I just, I have to stop. Well, you have to because if you're deep in the industry you don't know what these things are sometimes, like if you're not deep in the industry, sorry, then it's, that's that challenge, [00:19:00] right? So, It's okay to ask questions. And here it's, you know, you and I talking, so

  Elisa: Yeah, no problem.

  Larry: all good, all good.

  So, so, all right. You, you talk about, and I think for any successful launch, it's, it is that relationship with product management, you guys and gals have to be in the trenches together and you bring up a great point. And that is, and this is, this kind of goes to any marketer. Get into the product.

  Why you can't be a marketer if you're not using the product, right? And I think in technology, people get away from that. I think if we're, I don't know, I think back to my days when I was, we were doing making baseball bats pre tech and it was, you had to go use the bat, you have to get the look and feel you had, like, you didn't know what it was like to use this unless you got to the plate and swung it, hit the ball.

  You're like, wow, this feels great. So many people in software today jump out there and they're like, Hey, let's go be a marketer. You're like, You got to use the stuff, right? You got to dig into the details. You have to. And I think that's an important point that some folks maybe lose sight of and maybe folks that are jumping into a product marketing [00:20:00] role make sure that you're aware of that, right?

  Open up, want to learn and roll up the sleeves and get into it. Yeah,

  Elisa: hard time writing about something I don't know anything about or that I feel like I don't have a depth of understanding of why it's valuable. Because I think like all product marketers you know, you're studying your products and you're finding the hook, right?

  What's, what's my story here? What story do I want to tell? And I can't tell a story. I don't understand how something works. I just, that's me personally. I just can't do that. I mean, I'm sure there are people who are, who can and. My hat's off to you, but I am not one of those people who can do that.

  But do, so I do try to make sure that I I don't need to dig so deeply. I don't need to see the source code, right? I don't need to see all of that. I don't need to see your, how you're laying out your what you're trying to build. But I do need to understand how it works and I do need to understand how it functions and how it, the value it brings to somebody who's trying to use it. So I totally agree with that. I think, you can, I can hit up [00:21:00] probably anyone in product management or engineering, like very early days of Veracode when I was working on the API the new API scanner. I bugged the engineering person who was actually building the thing like a bunch. And I was like, I'm sorry, I'm asking you all these questions.

  He's no, nobody's asked me these questions. I'm like, okay. Wow. I, you know, he was happy to have the conversation with me, and I was happy that he was willing. So I thought that was like a super great exchange. And we ended up having a really good relationship. I have kind of open access to any of the engineering team, any PMs, anyone.

  And so if I have questions, I, I take it to them and I'm like, help me through help me understand. So. If you have that access and you, even if you don't, you can build that bridge. You can reach out to someone and say, Hey, listen, I am really interested in digging deeper and learning more about this because I want to tell a better story.

  Can you help me do that? And I don't think anyone would turn you away for that. For sure.

  Larry: no. And, and I think one of the things you're getting at is this relationship with product management and [00:22:00] also. The responsibility of product marketing to make it, to, to digest this, like what's the benefit to the customer? Why did they, you should have already done this, I guess, in the beginning, but as you message features and components and things that are coming out, making sure that the mass market or at least your market understands the benefits it's going to bring or the problems it's going to solve.

  And then but that's a piece of it going to market. How about on the enablement front? Like you have sales teams now, it seems that, part of the job that isn't just a work of product managers to like, Hey, let's, let's make sure that this is digestible. Also, let's make sure the sales team digests it.

• Effective Sales Enablement Strategies

  Larry: And that they're empowered, they're enabled and they're able to take it further specifically into the customers, like how has your experience been with that specifically around enablement and enabling the sales team?

  Elisa: So we have an enablement team that helps us create learning materials and training materials for sale. So we're really super lucky and this, the, our enablement person has a very broad, deep learning management background. So we're lucky in [00:23:00] that regard. I don't think most people get that, we create the standard things you might think in terms of assets.

  So pitch decks and, sheets and those kinds of things. But what we do is we take the information from those, just the general messaging, the information that goes into some of those assets, and we use that to create an internal training. We have several different venues where we do that. It can be ad hoc one off when you have time eating a sandwich at your desk. There's also a larger go to market kind of training that we do. For sales and we have these sort of rolling standup meetings with our BDRs where we're talking about new things that are coming out and really quick. Why is it valuable? What is it? Why is it valuable? Why does it matter? Who's going to buy it? Like super, crisp and chopped down. And, these are people who are on the phone and they have 15 minutes. They don't have time to read a massive document. So we're creating something that they can use on the fly. We put these things together. We change them up sometimes over time, but really, I don't know, probably every [00:24:00] quarter we go back and say, is it working? Is this working for you? Do you need something else? Do we need to reformulate this, reshape it, put it in a different, I don't know, not PowerPoint, but something else.

  Taking care to be agile on that, but making sure they have the basic things that they'd need to send to someone at whatever part of the journey they're in. So that could be a pitch deck. It could be a 1 page, fact sheet. It could be a solution brief. It could be a white paper.

• Team Collaboration and Training

  Elisa: It depends on where they are. But yeah, we try to the standard stuff and then work with the enablement team to pull to pull the training together.

  Larry: Great, no, no, that's, that's great. And having a dedicated team is always a nice luxury,

  Elisa: I mean, I know it's such a

  Larry: especially when they know what they're doing.

  Elisa: I know it's such a luxury and I feel like super lucky because the training modules that we get out of that team are just stellar. So it's really, it's super helpful.

  Larry: Yeah, no, no, no. All good.

• Handling Timeline Slips

  Larry: I, I wanted to shift a little bit here, like on, okay, this is all wonderful. Everyone's Kumbaya arms and, everything's happened. Like, just [00:25:00] great. Okay, let's, let's call it out. Timelines. Ah, something. Timeline slips, or products not coming to market, or, uh oh, and, and you think about this, right?

  And I give a context, if you think about the product launch, you're out maybe two months ahead of time, right? Aligning all these cats, and it's not just the development team and sales, which are super important, but also analyst relations, could be PR, could be the CEO, others, right? And then partners customers, if they're waiting for something.

  Something happens now. So you have this orchestrated maneuver and what it's not coming for what, how long, you don't know why it's a bug. How do you, how do you handle that? And I think I would be interested in hearing it as well as audience and wow, when all hell breaks loose, what do you do?

  Elisa: That's tough. That happens, and it has, let's be real. If you're working on solving hard problems, you're going to hit some hard problems yourself. That's how it goes.

  I remember a specific feature for dynamic analysis that took a long time to come out [00:26:00] there were some complications in how the whole thing worked and they actually had to rethink it a little bit. And that's fine. I get that. If we're talking about a complete rethink, that's another path, but let's just say it's slipping because there's a little bit more work that needs to go. into it, or, they want to revisit a feature that's not working the way they wanted it to work as they are testing it. Then immediately I just need to take a look at what do we have planned? What are our go to market plans? What are our enablement plans? What are the plans? What are the dates? And what needs to shift around? On occasion, we can substitute something for something else. We definitely Have a conversation with the customer support folks and say, Hey, listen, if the customers that were waiting for this, here's what's happening. Here's the delay. Here's the time. The new anticipated timeline. Here's why it's delayed. Here's what we're basically, here's what we're trying to do to mitigate this problem, in the best way that we can. Can we make hard promises about when the next date's going to be? Probably not.

• Effective Communication Strategies

  Elisa: If it's a really, if it's a [00:27:00] really sticky situation, But just make sure that we're over communicating about what's happened, why it happened, what we're doing about it, and then keeping people posted. So just making sure that every couple of weeks, if we're on the two week sprint, here, every couple of weeks, we're saying, here's the progress we've made. Here's where we are. Is everybody happy? No. I'm especially not happy because I probably had plans for that and now I have to change my plans all around.

  And that's really painful, but at least I can warn people and I can negotiate with other teams and say, well, you had something that was behind this in terms of a release. Can you move it up? Or can we substitute this thing that we were going to showcase? And one of our showcases was something else for now.

  And then we'll pick this back up later. So if. Just negotiating with people and trying to figure out, like, how can we give the engineering team some space do a good job if they

  Larry: Hmm

  Elisa: delay for whatever reason? And trust me, unless they need to delay for a reason, they don't delay. Everybody wants to [00:28:00] get the feature out because they know people want it. So if there's some hang up or some reason why something's not happening. Then for sure, there's a good reason. So we're trying to communicate that. But, yeah, it's painful. There's no doubt about it.

  Like, you

  Larry: Mm hmm.

  Elisa: There's a lot of getting everybody together and saying, okay, now what? It's basically you start from scratch, but now you're in repair mode versus, plan mode. So it's a different, it's a different feeling, but it's, it is what it is.

  You just have to dig in there and do it.

  Larry: Over communication is key, right? And making and timely communication, right? To make sure that all those parties are, are

  Elisa: Yeah, as soon as you

  Larry: And

  Elisa: like, okay, let me, okay, let's make sure who, who do we need to talk to and who do we need to communicate with immediately? Who do I need to pull together in a big meeting and talk this through? So yeah, for sure. You don't want to let it lag. That's a really super bad idea.

• Common Pitfalls in Product Launches

  Larry: yeah, so it leads me into just an opinion question for you and from your experience. With regards to product launches and [00:29:00] releasing products, like what do you, what do you think the biggest pitfall? You've seen companies or, whether it be you've worked out emerge, you've seen around you adjacently.

  What have you seen the biggest pitfall of companies fall into?

  Elisa: Probably just not communicating properly and not having a process. So if you don't have a launch process, And that launch process needs to begin with the PMM and the PM sitting down and talking about the roadmap, getting the North star set up, if you know what your, source code manager are supposed to do, that's an overarching here's why we're doing these things. is going to be similar for each of those things because they're, it's get hub and it's Azure, right? They're kind of sitting there not, but they are like, they, they serve a purpose. But. If you're not starting there and communicating the value of that, then you're going to be lost.

  If you don't have your core messaging down where you know what your story is and why it's

  Larry: Bingo.

  Elisa: what the

  Larry: Yeah.

  Elisa: you're done. You're going to run around creating [00:30:00] all this stuff and not really know the story you're telling.

  And people are going to fill in the gaps with the story they want to tell and it's just going to be madness. So you really just have to, you have to nail that down. And then communicate that out. And everybody needs to be singing from the same hymn sheet, saying the same stuff. You have to control the message because otherwise it just goes haywire. I think the other thing is when things change or shift, making sure that you're read in.

  So I have a weekly or biweekly meeting with every product manager I work with, and we talk through What's, what's happening? What's the status of everything? I keep track of it all on Monday. So I know where we, I know what I'm looking for, right? Where are we with this? Where are we with that? Just so that I know if something is shifting or somebody says to me, uh, this is not looking good. What does not looking good mean? Does that mean you're going to miss your deadline? Because if you're going to miss your deadline, I need to know now. So we can at least negotiate that. So I, all of that, the heart of all of that really is besides the messaging is just communication. [00:31:00] It comes down to having that frequent communication, those touch points, because, we have a weekly marketing call as well. You want, you're, you're sharing the information you get over here and saying, Hey, early, early flag on the play here. We might have some problems. I just want to let you guys know, we, we may want to consider a different path, or we may want to consider an alternative just so that you're getting ahead of it.

• Importance of Structured Processes

  Elisa: really, it comes down to communication and really nailing down your Kind of North Star and core messaging for the products that you're working on.

  Larry: Yeah it's, you hit it right in the head and it's a lot of it's that structure, that mechanism, as well as that, if you don't have your messaging put together, you don't have You're going to be chasing, rando things. I think then you're going to have people that are going to go randomly make things up where they don't exist.

  And I think that is where I've seen a lot of issues with product management, marketing in, in general companies is when you don't have that structure, you have not built that launch plan into place. You've not built that product marketing discipline to actually have narratives written [00:32:00] down and not just, I don't, I've seen it like where documentation is the only thing that exists and people are running around with that and they're making up their own minds based on what they read and trying to make up, oh, what are the customer value points?

  What are it? You need to architect, you need to,

  Elisa: Yeah.

  Larry: yeah,

  Elisa: bringing up a really good point. So one of the artifacts that we've codified into our, process is the lean canvas and the PRFAQ. I must have those, right? Because that tells me which North Star is, and it tells me. why the thing exists, what's important about it, what the

   whatever this is. And it gives me a set of frequently asked questions internally and externally that I can start to build my messaging house around, right? So if I have those core things, I know that I can start to build the messaging. And once I build the messaging, then it's a matter of vetting it with the different, stakeholders that you need to bet it with, but that's where you're starting then at the very rock bottom of the thing and saying, okay, this is this [00:33:00] is the North Star.

  This is what we believe to be true. Here's, our competitive differentiators. Here's what we here's how we believe that plays out. So. If you don't nail those two things down and those are not part of your process, you're going to suffer every single time you're going to suffer and you're right.

  People are going to make up their own things. I am not going to go into your Jera board and dig around and see if I can figure out what you're doing. No, that's hard, right? Like I can't do

  Larry: yeah,

  Elisa: enough time for that. And plus I might misinterpret it. It's a conversation. Again, it's communication.

  It's a conversation between two co owners of a product that say, Here's what we're agreeing is true about this. And this is why we're bringing it to market. And this is the value it has. And that's the beginning. Otherwise, you're right. You're just chasing random things that people feel like they need.

  And that's a really tough. That's a tough place to be.

• Lean Canvas and PRFAQ Explained

  Larry: yeah and, you see, you're kicking this off again on my head, uh, so, PRFAQ just for folks that aren't aware it's like your press release FAQ, if you're launching a product early and new this is ahead of time,

  Elisa: right?

  Larry: yeah, oh yeah, [00:34:00] but for those that haven't have been through the ringer on some of these,

  Elisa: this is a good this is perfect because I actually at RSA, I ran into the person who kind of oversees this department of P-R-F-A-Q writing people, and he was an amazing human, and I loved chatting with him about this. I didn't have nearly enough time, so I, I haven't, I haven't touched base with him yet, but he offered up a conversation about later down the road about this.

  But I think it's would be great if you talked a little bit about. Those two artifacts and, I sort of came by them third party as a best practice, but you live them firsthand. So do you, I think that would be great to talk about in terms of like, how they, they help sort of structure everything, not just launch planning

  Larry: Yeah so the peer FAQ is the press release FAQ or and before products. I'll just try to do it simplified. I'll try to maybe I'll put a link in the notes somewhere about this, but it's more or less the press release that's written before the product exists. What before you even start building a product, what customer problems or [00:35:00] issues do you want to solve with this and write it in a way that anyone in the organization or even outside of the organization can understand.

  Thank you. And it takes time and discipline to do that. It's not you just wake up and do that overnight. It takes hours and hours of iteration

  Elisa: and

  Larry: and

  Elisa: other people for

  Larry: right. And it's not just product marketing doesn't do it and product management. It's everyone. And and usually those are leveraged when I've seen them done successfully.

  It's when you have executive approvals. So it's not just you and product management Hey, let's, let's write up a PR FAQ. It's more you, you need to pass a gate of an executive approval gate before you even start building this thing. And, and so the peer FAQ is going to tell you that and then there's internal external peer FAQ, it's more or less what is this for real?

  Like if you're coming out with a new product and yeah, it's not going to address this market. Or it'll address this. Those kind of things will be put in the FAQ piece of it or, we're gonna give it away for free. Little nuances that can be internal or external. That's great, but a lot of companies are like, man, that's too much.

  I [00:36:00] can't do that. We've got to move quickly. I don't know how to get started. And then you've got the Lean Canvas. And the Lean Canvas, think about like agile computing and processing and agile launches and all that kind of stuff. But the Lean Canvas is really for those folks that need to move quickly.

  Is this feature or this product gonna move in the market? Is it gonna be profitable? And it's a way to think. And I'm not an expert in this, but it, it's a way to, think through how to go to market and what should we even launch this product ahead of time. And so I've always found the Lean Canvas the way I've used it in organizations from a marketing angle is really a way that you can talk to the rest of the company to determine, do we want to enter this market?

  Do we want to build this product? Do we want to get to the point of writing a PRFAQ? The PRFAQ is really the Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

  Elisa: why, right? Like, do we even do this? Is it even worth it? Here, [00:37:00] here's the problem we're trying to solve. Is it worth investing engineering dollars to even do this? If you pass that hurdle and you say yes and then we get down to the, what you're saying, the PR FAQ.

  So for me It's led by PM and PMM, but it's really a larger conversation. We do have a larger conversation about it. I mean, sometimes we have a very spirited conversations about it, but yeah, so I, but to kind of your point, it's like have to have the discipline to sit down and do that and not be, have a knee jerk reaction if we're just going to do this or we're just going to do that or, whatever. You know, whatever people want to work on, but it does take some discipline to do that. And it does take some rigor and it takes people getting used to participating in that conversation. There are people who are impatient with that. I think, it's been fairly well received here. I don't think, you know that there's been a ton of pushback. I mean, nobody on the PM and on the PM team wants more paperwork, so to speak,

  Larry: Right.

  Elisa: nobody really wants that. So it's, [00:38:00] I created kind of a template and, a set of templates for people to use to do these kinds of things. I put them into kind of a centralized folder of these like general assets, and they just pull them out and then start using them and, using them. To kind of get started, and then we start the conversation there, but just having that sort of core set of things that people can just sort of pull from and know, okay, when I go to work with the Lisa on this brand new product that I'm trying to launch here, the thing she's going to need. These are the questions she's going to ask me.

  This is what I need to be able to answer. So we can start off on the right foot. And she's probably going to ask me more questions, but at least these, I'll have these questions answered. So, so yeah, so that's, I guess I'm totally off, I got, went totally around your question, but I, I think that's kind of germane and central to good communication and having a solid launch.

  Larry: Yeah, no. And just to reiterate too, is the Purific Q is a beast. But if leveraged, if [00:39:00] used, it pays dividends. It's fantastic, but it, it does take time and effort. The Lean Canvas is so quick and easy. I would say is if you have a, I don't know if you can do this when you're working for a company, but if, if someone says we're not gonna do it, you should start running for the hills.

  Because it's just,

  Elisa: had

  Larry: it,

  Elisa: say to me, somebody say to me, that's a lot. For the lean canvas, and I just sort of laughed, but yeah, I've, it's a, it's not a good sign, but yeah, I have definitely had somebody say to me, that's a lot. So. Yeah, it's I don't feel like that is a lot. I feel like that's the bare minimum that you should be doing.

  For me, I would hope to see, more competitive analysis, more market analysis. If you're really going to put something on the road map where you're taking engineering time, it's an opportunity cost. You're trading it off for something else. What are you trading it off for? So, Yeah.

  Yeah. Yeah. That's just me, but I'm happy to start with a Lean Canvas. I'm happy to have that I'm not going to [00:40:00] complain, but yeah. I think it seems like it's fairly straightforward gives everybody kind of the bird's eye view of what you're looking at.

  Larry: Yeah, it's, it's funny. It's I start talking about the launch process. It's orchestration. It's this big thing and getting out in front of it. Now the conversation's gone to the very, even before we get to the launch, should we launch? How do we like, what is this thing? And it's like doing your homework ahead of time.

  And I think what's bubbling up out of this conversation even is. Sure, this structure is important, the collaboration is wicked important, awesome, we need to do that. But, before you even get there, is the idea good? Is,

  Elisa: for

  Larry: is there messaging there? Is, like, just that core thing of that, that's, again, we get back to is, what are we doing?

  We want to solve customers problems. Are we hitting the nail on the head? Is it enough there to be profitable for our company to exist? Because if it's one customer, and it's a tiny customer, and it solved the problem, that's fine. But We need to pay, you know, salaries.

  Elisa: use engineering time to make that happen. [00:41:00] I'm sure there's a use case for that, one off things that you need to do. There's a certain percentage of that, engineering bank of time that people use for those kinds of things. We do it too, but. Yeah, I think it's, what tradeoff are you making?

  And I've, I actually, it's funny that you mentioned that because I was working with another PM on a product idea that was being floated around. And once they did the Lean Canvas exercise, and then, sort of, bounced the, we kind of, Did a little straw man messaging, but once we bounce that around, people are like, it's not worth spending the time on. It's not that exciting. People are not going to pay for it. They're not that interested in it.

  Larry: Mm hmm.

  Elisa: they're actually more interested in this. And I think we should put our time into that. So you're right. We, we could have gone all the way down the road and built a thing only to realize nobody wants it.

  So it's again, it's just a good exercise to reinforce that. But yeah, so yes, have structure for sure. If I did not have Monday, Boards, I would probably lose my mind. I definitely need those. And then just driving that repeated kind of [00:42:00] process is important. Don't, you can't just do it sometimes because people get confused.

  So it's like just repeatedly doing that process and making sure people know what to expect in that launch planning process and the launch execution process is really important.

  Larry: Yeah, you got me. Now I'm like, I'm thinking I should do an episode just on walking through a lean canvas or, or at least getting the content there.

  Elisa: I think you really should. I think that would be really valuable to people because I think that especially people who are new to it's overwhelming. I'm pretty sure you can think back to those days where you're like, holy moly, I'm trying to learn all the things and do all the things and fix all the things.

  And, you want to, I think innately, Product marketers are helpful, right? They just want it. They're like, Oh, let me help you. And let me help you. And hold the phone, right? Like before I can help you, I need to understand what's going on and what we're looking at here. And I think, if you're new to this or, your early early days of PMM, this is something that would really help ground them in what they probably need to [00:43:00] do the rest of the helping that they want to do for

  Larry: Yeah. So right now I'm looking at the time and again, we're going long on this stuff, but I do want to, what?

  Elisa: crazy.

  Larry: what, one last thing for you.

• Resources for Product Marketers

  Larry: Hey, it's always good the depth and the grit very of our conversation what, if there's anyone knocking on the door, maybe new to PMM or even a product manager who's like listening into this, like any resources outside of what we've talked about here that you recommend for other product marketers or product managers that, are just coming into this,

  Elisa: Um, I would say there are a good set of tools on the Product Marketing Alliance. So if you belong to that or I think you can I think there's a free membership, but there's, there are a couple different levels of membership. They have some really interesting tools. There's also a Slack group that they have that's super helpful.

  It's all PMMs helping each other out and they have

  Larry: cool.

  Elisa: for launching and go to market and all kinds of other things. So that's one. I'm a follower of April Dunford's blog and [00:44:00] newsletter. She's fantastic. The preeminent product marketer of all time. So she always has really great things to say. Her newsletter is free. I think her first book was Obviously awesome. So she's a, a fantastic product marketer. But yeah, I would say find a good set of tools and use those. make sure that you're collaborating with the PMs on that, but find a good set of tools. Find, if you don't have a Monday or JIRA or someplace to track, have a really, really good spreadsheet and just track all your things. But definitely, things. I try to put things by category or a line, functional line. So what, what would I need from customer success or what would I need from, the sales team? What do I need for enablement and just break it up so that I can keep track of it logically like that.

  But find yourself some good tools and use those.

  Larry: No, that's, that's, that's great. Great info. And no, thanks for those tips and the links there. I I'll put that stuff in the show notes as well. Once we get everything wrapped up.

  Look, [00:45:00] Hey, Elisa, it has been awesome having you here on the show. Thank you for coming in and share your knowledge with us here.

  We'll have to, we'll have to do this again. Um,

  Elisa: love

  Larry: any. If anyone wants to reach out to you, how is the best way to get in touch with you? Like via LinkedIn or

  Elisa: Yep. LinkedIn just hit me up on LinkedIn. Think I'm the only Elisa Velarde on there, but if I'm not just look for my face. I have a photo on my profile. And if I can help with anything, I'm certainly willing to do that for sure.

  Larry: awesome. Well, thank you again for coming and sharing your wealth of knowledge with us, and we'll talk to you soon.

  Elisa: Thanks so much. Take care. See ya.

  Larry: Bye.