Transformed

CHAPTER 41Objections from Marketing

Note: For the purposes of this chapter, we are combining all the different types of marketing—including product marketing, field marketing, corporate marketing, and brand marketing—into a single chapter.

Note also that much of this discussion is informed by chapter 23, “Partnering with Product Marketing.”

“We interact with sales every day, we continuously monitor the competitive landscape, we conduct focus groups with current and prospective customers, and we have relationships with all the major industry analysts. Who better to define the products we need to succeed?”

Indeed, this was how products were created in business software companies two decades ago. The reason companies moved on to the product model was because innovation was so rare in the prior model. That's because marketing, sales, customers, and even industry analysts don't know what's possible.

Steve Jobs famously captured this reality by holding up his iPhone and stating “You can conduct 100 focus groups, you'll never get an iPhone.” Today, most marketing organizations understand this.

That said, marketing does have very valuable data and insights, and product marketing managers work hard to get any information they consider potentially valuable into the heads of the relevant product managers and product leaders.

“How can we best help the product teams to create successful products?”

Product teams depend on many others across the organization, including sales, marketing, ...