THE PMM FIELD GUIDE · WORKING EDITION
Five tools for doing
the actual work.
The questions and working formats I use for positioning, customer research, launches, sales conversations, and AI-assisted analysis.
05 tools · practical promptsPOSITIONING
Positioning worksheet
Write down the buyer’s current alternative before deciding which capabilities and proof belong in the message.
Include spreadsheets, headcount, delay, and “do nothing,” not only competitors.
Name the change that makes the old way newly expensive, risky, or limiting.
Choose the capabilities that matter because of the tension, not every feature.
Use evidence matched to the claim: behavior, product fact, customer result, or expert authority.
CUSTOMER RESEARCH
Evidence ladder
One interview gives you a clue. Confidence increases when the same problem appears in behavior, commercial data, conversations, and the market.
Usage, conversion, retention, workarounds
Win/loss, sales friction, willingness to pay
Interviews, support, community, call notes
Competitors, category language, macro shifts
GO-TO-MARKET
Launch behavior brief
Before listing channels and assets, define whose behavior should change, why it should change, and which signal will show progress.
Specific enough to deprioritize someone.
The action that creates product value.
Tension, promise, proof, and objection.
Leading, lagging, and qualitative evidence.
SALES ENABLEMENT
Conversation brief
Build enablement around the moments where a seller must reframe a problem, diagnose impact, answer risk, or earn a next step.
Reframe the problem
What changed, and why does the old approach now carry a cost?
Expose the impact
Which questions help buyers connect the problem to an urgent business consequence?
Match evidence
What proof resolves this persona’s specific risk?
Earn the next step
What is the smallest useful commitment the buyer can make?
AI-ASSISTED PMM
Research review
Use AI to examine more material and surface counterarguments, while keeping sources visible and a person responsible for the recommendation.
Bring source material, customer language, and product context into view.
Generate patterns, alternatives, counterarguments, and missing questions.
Trace claims, test contradictions, and separate evidence from inference.
Choose the implication and make the tradeoff explicit.
Feed market response back into the next cycle.