This article is based on Sean Broderick’s talk at the Product Marketing MisUnderstood virtual event. As a PMA member, you can enjoy the complete recording here. For more exclusive content, head over to your membership dashboard.
Have you ever dreamed of sitting in the executive chair, steering the ship of a major company? If so, you’ve come to the right place.
Today, we’re going to chart the course from product marketing manager to the C-suite – a journey many dream of, but few complete.
The path to the C-suite is no walk in the park; in fact, only a small fraction of marketers ever reach those lofty heights. But fear not! I’m here to be your guide, sharing hard-won insights from my own career and from trailblazers who’ve successfully made the leap.
As part of The Product Marketing AI podcast, which I launched a couple of years ago, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with people who’ve progressed from PMM roles all the way to executive and leadership team levels. Today, I’m going to outline five of my interviewees’ career paths.
Before we dive in, a quick reminder that no two people’s journeys in product marketing are the same. You can look at as many case studies as you want, but all of those are going to be context-specific, location-specific, and even industry-specific. Still, we can all stand to learn something from each of these stories.
Let’s get into it.
PMM to EVP of Products
The first person I want to highlight today is Becky Trevino. She moved from a senior product marketing role into the position of EVP of Product, which is, from what I’ve seen, the road less traveled. Becky won the PMA Leader of the Year award in 2022, and she has some high-level experience in the product marketing world.
The quote that really stood out to me from our discussion was about understanding the problems her stakeholders in the organization were having, and then marrying that with the organizational design she was pitching to solve those problems.
That meant that as she took on new areas of responsibility, she was able to showcase the value she was driving throughout the organization.
Becky highlighted three key areas that you need to focus on to progress to a leadership team level:
- Picking a manager: This is hugely underrated from a career progression point of view. Five years ago, Becky started working for a fantastic manager at Snow Software. That manager continued to ascend the organization and brought Becky along with her. Every time the manager got a promotion, Becky followed, taking on more roles and responsibilities.
- Being board-level ready: Anyone who’s helped a marketing leader or CMO prepare a board pack knows how stressful it is. Everything has to be perfect. You have to tell the right story, bring the right numbers, and be ready for everything that execs are going to throw at you. Being able to pull all that material together and present it in a coherent and exciting way is vital.
- Solving problems: As Becky’s career grew, she was able to take on competitive intelligence and pricing and packaging. All of this helped her grow into the role of EVP of Products.
Becky’s journey is a wonderful case study of how to go from a product marketing role into a product management role at the executive level.
PMM to VP of Product Marketing
The second example I have today is Harvey Lee, Product Marketing Alliance’s former VP of Product Marketing. In the picture below, he’s promoting his book, Backstage Pass. I’m very happy to say that I have a copy of the book here with me, and I encourage everyone reading this to buy it too.
Some things Harvey said really resonated with me. He emphasized that there are no shortcuts in writing a book, and there are no shortcuts in product marketing as a whole. There are tools you can use to make your life easier and speed things up, but a lot of it is just really hard work.
Harvey highlighted three key areas for his career growth:
