The Common Mistake of a Product Manager

An amateur mistake in Product Marketing is to open your acquisition channels without having sorted the rest of the funnel.

I made this mistake in a B2B SaaS product once.

I setup the marketing site, integrated it with a CRM and simply turned on the SEM campaigns.

Boom. We started getting leads. Yay!

Well, the "Yay" soon turned into a "Yowzer".

Here's why.‍
1. We noticed no one was reaching out to them or following up. Everyone was expecting each other to do it.
2. Sales reps were confused whether they had to call leads or email them.
3. When they did reach out, they didn't have a demo instance to show them.
4. We scrambled during objection handling.
5. No one had any sales collateral, case studies or battlecards to lean back on.
6. CRM lead statuses were all over the place.
7. Marketing didn't know which leads to place in nurture campaigns.
8. Sales didn't have any follow-up email sequences in place.

That's why you should always solidify the bottom of the funnel and post-acquisition processes first:

1. Simulate the experience from the SERP to CRM & tweak it.
2. Ensure sales readiness with training, collateral, CRM workflows & content.
3. Have the right reporting measures in place.