Product Chats Podcast

Todd Middlebrook drops by and shares with co-hosts Rebecca Kalogeris and Mark Stiving stories learned from his years of leading win/loss efforts for Microsoft.

In today’s agile and SaaS environments companies can release code on a near constant basis. But what does that mean for the launch team? Do they create a launch plan and project for every code release? How do they keep customers, and salespeople, informed about all the important changes without overwhelming them with noise? Rebecca Kalogeris teams up with two Pragmatic Marketing instructors—Mark Stiving and Dave Daniels—to tackle just these issues in this week’s podcast. Listen now!

Check out Mark's blog at http://pragmaticpricing.com and Dave's blog at http://launchclinic.com.

If you want to improve your website content, Paul Kortman, owner of Connex Social Digital Marketing, can help. Paul also discusses how to improve your SEO and gain quality traffic to your site.

To learn more about increasing your website traffic, download the eBook at https://connexdigitalmarketing.com/.

The coach is in and in this episode he’s working with Wilson Haddow from Juniper. Wilson asks Mark about pricing for professional services and the move from cost-based pricing (hourly) to outcome-based pricing (the value the customer is getting), and how today’s professional services providers can leverage this approach effectively.

Got a pricing issue you could use Mark’s help with? Reach out to us at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com and you could be featured on an upcoming issue of Pragmatic Live.

What do you need to consider to create a great customer experience? Terri O’Shaughnessy, director of client success at Tallwave, discusses how Tallwave helps clients identify their place in the market and home in on their target audience. She also explains the processes Tallwave uses to educate clients on how to create a great customer experience for themselves and their customers.

You can contact Terri at terri.oshaughnessy@tallwave.com or check out Tallwave at tallwave.com.

The coach is in and in this episode he’s working with Stewart Rogers on optimizing the pricing of his learning management system’s reporting solution. They talk competitive pricing, packaging and value based models. Listen now.

Got a pricing issue you could use Mark’s help with? Reach out to us at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com and you could be featured on an upcoming issue of Pragmatic Live.

Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving and our own VP of marketing, Rebecca Kalogeris, pick up where they left off in a previous episode, continuing their discussion about how they’ve implemented Pragmatic Marketing concepts over the years. They’ll highlight additional boxes from the framework and what they’ve learned from their successes (and failures) along the way.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the business of sports when Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert Mark Stiving talks with sports business consultant Troy Kirby, who runs the Tao of Sports website and podcast. Sports fans and non-sports fans alike will find plenty of interest, including sports strategies that can be applied to concerts and other events.

You can contact Troy at sportstao.com or troy@sportstao.com.

How important is finding the right price for your product? Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert Mark Stiving discusses pricing your products, changing prices and customer values with Alan Albert, founder and president of MarketFit. Spoiler alert: Pricing does not fit a one-size-fits-all model.

Learn more about MarketFit at www.marketfit.com and connect with Alan on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanalbert.

How do technology and professional services relate to each other? Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert Mark Stiving discusses how to merge the two with Dan Morris, a senior partner and managing director at Morris + D’angelo. Dan is also the founder of Verasage Institute and is an expert in value creation for professional services.

Learn more from Dan at cpadudes.com and connect with him on Twitter @morriscpa.

How do you know how the willingness to pay in the U.S. compares to the bereitschaft zu zahlen in Germany, and what else do you need to consider when pricing your product for new international markets? Find out in this edition of Pragmatic Live with Mark Stiving, pricing expert and Pragmatic Marketing instructor. Listen now!

How can you use data to make pricing decisions and understand demand patterns? Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert Mark Stiving tackles this topic with Neil Biehn, senior director of business analytics at Siemens Healthcare, a statistician with more than a decade of experience in analytics, segmentation, sales effectiveness and pricing optimization.

You can connect with Neil Biehn on LinkedIn.

If you have an idea or topic for a future podcast, contact us at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

Through a 25+ year career in technology marketing, Mark Yeager has performed over 500 buyer persona interviews. In this podcast, he shares his top 9 hints for performing successful persona interviews, quick, easy changes that you can make today to start getting more value from your market interactions. Listen now!

Want more tips for successful interviews? Download this cheat sheet from Yeager Marketing.

Imagine this: you are arrested by the police for robbing a bank. You, of course, are innocent. They also arrest another person for the same crime. In the interrogation room, the police say, “We’ve caught your accomplice. You guys are in trouble. You should confess now to make your sentence easier.” Then they explain the possible sentences:

• If both you and the other person confess, you each get three years in prison
• If neither of you confesses, you each get one year in prison
• If you confess and the other person doesn’t, you go free and he spends five years in prison
• If the other person confesses and you don’t, he goes free and you spend five years in prison

What should you do? And what can this scenario teach you about pricing in a competitive landscape? Find out as pricing expert and Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving walks you through the scenarios and provides real world examples of this pricing concept in the market today.

Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving is joined by world-renowned pricing expert Ron Baker. The founder of VeraSage Institute, a think-tank for professional-knowledge firms, Ron has been helping professionals learn how to create and capture more value. Mark and Ron discuss a range of pricing topics, including how to price professional services (hint: it's NOT by the hour).

Connect with Ron Baker on LinkedIn. If you have a topic you’d like us to tackle in an episode of Pragmatic Live, send us a note at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

So how does the company that taught the world what it means to be market-driven put it to work in their own company? In this podcast, Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving interviews our own VP of Marketing, Rebecca Kalogeris, on how they’ve implemented the Pragmatic Marketing concepts over the years and what they’ve learned from their successes (and failures) along the way. Listen now.

Find this interesting and want to hear more about how we practice what we preach at Pragmatic Marketing? Or maybe you want to share your implementation story—the good and the bad—with Mark and Rebecca? Contact us at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

In this week’s podcast, Rod Griffith, president of B2B marketing firm Market Reach, shares his tips, tools (and personal war stories) for reaching and resonating with c-suite buyers. Learn how he got Steve Jobs attention and what you can do to reach the true decision makers for your products. Listen now!

Got an idea or a topic for a future podcast? Send your ideas to experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

The pace of change in the technology industry has never been faster. Those behaviors long talked about as the secret to good leadership are simply not enough anymore. So what else do today’s leaders need to succeed in a world of rapid change? To shed some light on the topic, we invited Art Petty, world-renowned thought leader, speaker and author, and longtime friend of Pragmatic Marketing, to this episode of Pragmatic Live. Listen now as he talks about the seven critical skills required of leaders today and shares the story of how one senior product manager he knows put them to work for her and her company.

And after you’re done listening, be sure to check out Art’s article in the most recent edition of Pragmatic Marketer and visit his blog at artpetty.com.

Want to know what it’s really like implementing a marketing automation solution? Or, maybe you’re years into your implementation and just want to relive those first few months of chaos. Either way, listen in as Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving interviews our own VP of Marketing, Rebecca Kalogeris, on her recent marketing automation software implementation—what made them make the move, what the experience has been like and what they’ve learned along the way.

And if you are new to marketing automation and you have a question or if you’re an old hat who has some great advice, continue the conversation at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

So how closely aligned are buyers and vendors in the world of B2B technology sales? That’s the question that TrustRadius’ director of research, Megan Headley, explored in her recent landmark study. Listen now as she shares her findings on:

• Which information sources buyers use, find most helpful, and consider most trustworthy, versus the resources vendors focus on providing buyers
• Which selection criteria buyers care about, versus what vendors think is important to buyers
• How buyers view the role of vendors, and how vendors try to engage their buyers
• And, based on these disconnects, what can vendors do differently

To download the full study, visit TrustRadius and also check out one of our Market courses near you to learn how you can align your marketing and sales processes to how your market buys.

In this episode, we’re doing something a little different. We’re going to listen in on a conversation between Neil Baron of Barron Strategic Partners and Bob Moesta co-creator of the jobs-to-be-done theory. They chat about what “jobs-to-be-done” means and how it relates to “market problems” that we talk so much about here at Pragmatic Marketing. And since together they’ve literally worked on thousands of products, they are going to share some tips and best practices along the way. Listen in.

And as always, if you have a topic you’d like to hear us tackle in an episode of Pragmatic Live, send us a note at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

The tables are turned in this podcast as our host Rebecca Kalogeris becomes the guest and answers all kinds of questions about this year’s survey from Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor and data geek. Take a listen now and be sure to download the full survey report at pragmaticmarketing.com/survey

At Pragmatic Marketing, we teach the Pragmatic Marketing framework, those 37 key activities needed to build and market winning products. But in this episode, Kirsten Butzow, Pragmatic Marketing instructor extraordinaire, is going to talk through how you can use those same activities and strategies to improve a product closer to home, yourself. So, to find out how to use product management and marketing strategies on your own personal brand and change the trajectory of your career, listen now!

In December, Jim Semick, founder and chief strategist at ProductPlan, was our guest for a webinar on 5 Ways to Nail Your Strategic Product Roadmap. In this follow up discussion, Jim tackles questions from the over 700 attendees of that webinar on topics ranging from hot to prioritize, share and update your roadmap, to the relationship between your roadmap and your backlog. Listen now and be sure to download their free book on planning and selling your strategy through roadmaps.

Have an idea for a future episode? Send us an email at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

At the core of the Pragmatic Marketing philosophy is the importance of market data, of spending time to understand the people in your market and the problems they face. But once you do that, how do you use those facts to create real change in your organization’s culture? That’s the topic of this week’s podcast with instructor extraordinaire, Stacey Weber. Listen now!

Good product marketing people are hard to find. Great ones are rarer still. So what traits separate the good from the great? In this podcast, Andy Reid, product marketing specialist and thought leader, shares the five key skills shared by awesome product marketers. Listen now!

Got an idea for a future episode? Email us at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

Despite our titles, many of us don’t actually manage any people. But we need to influence a lot. And how well we speak directly affects how well we can influence people. In this podcast, Mark Stiving, proud toastmaster and Pragmatic Marketing instructor, offers some really good, simple tips you can implement to improve your speaking and ultimately your ability to influence the rest of your organization to make the right strategic decisions when it comes to your product. Listen now.

Got a topic you’d like to see covered in one of our podcasts? Send it to experts@pragmaticmarketing.com

The alignment between sales and marketing is one of the most critical components of successful revenue growth. But far too often, the relationship more closely resembles Athens and Sparta than a happy marriage. In this podcast, Bertrand Hazard, vice president of marketing for TrustRadius, shares his insights into why alignment is critical, how to tell if you’re out of synch and what you can do to get the relationship back on track and delivering more revenue. Along the way he shares some great tips and case studies. Listen now!

Got an idea for an upcoming podcast? Email us at: experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

Our Pragmatic Marketing training courses are chock full of tips, tools and best practices you can start to implement immediately. It’s actionable and it’s inspiring, but it can also be a little overwhelming deciding where to start. But not anymore. In this podcast, our very own Stacey Weber⎯long time Pragmatic Marketing instructor and practitioner⎯is going to breakdown what you should do first into three simple steps and walk you through how to master each. Don’t wait, listen today and find out how you can jump start your market-driven journey and start having an immediate impact on your product, your company and your career.

Knowing what your market is willing to pay is only part of the equation; you also have to know how they want to pay (annual fee, subscription, based on usage, etc.) so you can determine how best to package your product. Join Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, and David Rowley, Chief Revenue Officer from Nalpeiron as they dig into this topic and more on this edition of Pragmatic Live.

Got a topic you want to hear covered in a future episode of Pragmatic Live? Shoot us a note at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

Prices and pricing strategies are everywhere. And sometimes we can learn the most valuable pricing lessons in some of the most interesting places. In this podcast, Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, tells us some of the strangest examples of pricing he's seen in his travels and how you can apply these same techniques to your own products and companies.

If you've got an example of a strange but true pricing strategy that you've seen, we'd love to hear it. Email us and we may feature it on a future episode of Pragmatic Live. And don't forget to check out Mark's blog for more great pricing tips and information.

What if a secret sauce for winning more business was available? Would you use it? It turns out there is one: win/loss analysis. Ellen Naylor, a pioneer in competitive intelligence and win/loss analysis, and the author of Win/Loss Analysis: How to Capture and Keep the Business You Want, shares her tips and tricks for increasing your company’s positive outcomes using win/loss success.

For more on win/loss analysis, be sure to read Competitive Intelligence Gathering Through Win/Loss and visit Ellen Naylor’s website. And check out when our courses will be in your area.

We welcome back Emily Hossellman, director of marketing at Centercode, to answer questions posed by participants in September’s popular webinar How Beta Testing Can Give Your Product a Competitive Edge. 

If you’d like to learn how to dramatically increase participation in your company’s beta tests, read Emily’s eBook Reaching 90% Beta Test Participation. And be sure to check out when our courses are coming to your area.

Today’s multi-generational workplace presents unique challenges for leaders, especially since work style and expectations often differ by gender and generation. In this week’s podcast, Tracey Wilen, Ph.D., discusses her research on how gender and generation factor into perspectives on work, leadership and the use of technology and how we can all work together to create productive and healthy work environments.

You can learn more about Tracey’s work at TraceyWilen.com. And be sure to check out when our courses are coming to your area.

Think of all the things that impact your topline: pricing, discounts, incentives, etc. When was the last time you looked at these parts collectively to ensure you were optimizing overall revenue management? In this podcast, Chanan Greenberg, vice president and general manager at Model N, a Silicon Valley-based software company that delivers revenue management solutions for high-tech and life-science companies, shows you how to holistically examine the processes that impact revenue so that you don’t leave money on the table.

In football, when a play is called, everyone immediately knows their role and how they contribute to the team’s success. Neil Baron, lifelong New England Patriots fan and founder of Baron Strategic Partners, discusses how you can pick and execute winning product plays so your product team will make an impact on senior- level customers. Neil explains how the concept of a play can also apply to selling business outcomes to the C-suite.

Join Pragmatic Marketing instructor Kirsten Butzow as she explores the three main traps that keep companies from delivering truly innovative products: culture, focus and discipline. Find out what many of today’s companies are doing wrong, and what you can do to enable innovation within your organization.

Got an idea for another podcast? Have some feedback on what we could be doing better with our podcasts? We’d love to hear it! Please take a moment to complete our survey.

A good content marketing strategy should reinforce what your company does. And when your company sells its thoughts and expertise, content marketing becomes even more critical. Join Rebecca Kalogeris, vice president of marketing at Pragmatic Marketing, as she discusses how to get the most out of each piece of content, reach the largest audience and why the best content marketing is often the least obvious.

We welcome Gavin Nathan, senior consultant and partner of Ignite Advisory Group, to answer the top 10 follow-up questions posed by listeners of our recent webinar, Creating and Managing a Successful Customer Advisory Board Program.

If you would like to learn more about customer advisory boards, read the article by Gavin’s colleague, Rob Jensen: Why Advisory Boards Matter, featured in Pragmatic Marketer. And for more information on CABs, email Ignite at info@igniteag.com.

If you have a question or feedback, we’d love to hear from you! Email us at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

As the lines between product and brand become increasingly blurred, our guests discuss why—at least in terms of the user experience—it makes sense to build your company brand into the product from the outset. Join Robert Wallace, executive vice president of marketing at Tallwave and Jesus Ramirez, vice president of product at Tallwave, as they talk through the challenges product management and marketing pros face in building an appropriate product tone that resonates with customers. 

Should you set different prices depending on the cost of living in a set region? Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving looks at the techniques you can implement to charge different prices to different people without rocking the boat.

So you’ve just come back from a Pragmatic Marketing training and are wondering how to create a market-driven environment and implement the Pragmatic Marketing Framework at your company. Pragmatic instructor Steve Gaylor gets us started on some ways you can get your organization thinking strategically and focus everyone on the market.