Katie Muse (Kellogg, ‘22) spent her MBA Internship as a Product Marketing Manager Intern at Salesforce. During her experience, Katie was able to learn the ins and outs of the PMM role, and evaluate how well the role fit her desire for a career change from her previous life working in the advertising industry. During this interview, Katie shared more about her product marketing internship at Salesforce, how she navigated the virtual internship experience, and her learnings from her PMM MBA internship experience.
MBASchooled: What did you do before business school, and what attracted you to Product Marketing?
Before coming to Kellogg, I worked in business development (new business) at an ad agency called McKinney. One of my most rewarding agency experiences was getting to work part-time in brand strategy, thanks to a great mentor and strategy colleague of mine who brought me on to a few new business opportunities. It opened my eyes to the insanely creative world of B2B marketing, and that experience combined with my longtime love of tech brought me to product marketing.
MBASchooled: What did you do for your summer internship and what projects did you work on?
This summer I interned in product marketing at Salesforce. I focused on projects related to Marketing Cloud and Digital 360, a combined effort between Marketing, Commerce, and Experience Cloud areas. My day-to-day life ranged from content marketing to sales enablement, but my main project this summer was helping bring the annual State of Marketing report to life. It’s one of Salesforce’s top pieces of content each year, and I got to present key trends from this year’s report during the launch event, called Marketing in Motion. It was really exciting, and I had a ton of ownership over my work as well as opportunities to collaborate across teams!
MBASchooled: What were the important skills you had to use to be an effective PMM Intern?
One thing I worked on this summer was prioritization. Coming from a much smaller organization than Salesforce and working on many different projects at once meant I needed to ruthlessly prioritize – daily, weekly, and proactively for coming weeks. Product marketing means being able to balance tons of related tasks and effectively manage those priorities! My manager was a wonderful mentor for me in this area.
Another key skill that was valuable was the ability to contextualize my work in broader product, marketing, and business goals. As I mentioned earlier, Salesforce is huge, and there’s a lot going on. Being able to present the impact of your work within the context of the product’s overall marketing plan (or campaign plan, or product roadmap) means you are showing that you’re connected to what executives’ priorities are. That’s really important!
MBASchooled: What do you enjoy most about product marketing? What parts of the job are you curious about exploring further?
From my experience this summer, I loved developing my presentation skills and meeting with customers to learn how Salesforce’s technology transformed their business. I also really enjoyed working on sales enablement projects — from working in biz dev for 5 years, I love being close to the revenue engine of the business and developing content that sales teams will adapt and use.
Something I’m going to continue to explore is how PMMs partner with PMs to develop the product roadmap, positioning, and core messaging. The PMM-PM relationship is important, and I’m excited to get more experience with the “core” PMM function and get closer to the product!
MBASchooled: What was it like to build relationships virtually, especially within a large organization like Salesforce? What helped? What was difficult?
Thanks to Salesforce’s culture, I had no trouble finding people who were willing to share their perspective and knowledge with me. A simple slack or email explaining what I wanted to learn always seemed welcome, and I’m very grateful for the time that the Salesforce PMM team across the business offered up to me and other interns this summer.
What helped: Preparing good questions. Know how deep you want to dig beforehand. Before each “coffee chat” I had, I looked up the person on LinkedIn and in the company org chart so I could understand their experience and ask more informed questions. And good questions aren’t just about the nature of their job! Asking about people’s team leadership experience, or asking for advice on building a strong PMM skillset was also rewarding.
MBASchooled: Knowing what you know now, what would you do to prepare in order to be even more successful in your internship?
I’d have done more competitive research before starting my internship. I dug into my assigned product areas, but should have definitely done more homework on what competitors there are in the space! It would have informed some of the questions I asked during my summer coffee chats, and would have helped showcase my competitive research experience from my advertising career.
MBASchooled: What was the most important or meaningful lesson that you learned during your summer internship experience?
Find opportunities to show leadership and initiative! At one point I discovered an opportunity for PMMs between the Marketing Cloud and D360 teams to collaborate on an enablement project I was working on. I took the lead on connecting the key players and developing a recommendation. Thanks to diving in and taking initiative, I got the opportunity to present my work to my marketing org lead! I was able to demonstrate that I cared about the success of the project and was willing to get creative.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for MBA students considering internships in Product Marketing?
Network, ask good questions, and identify mentors (and stay in touch with them)! Some of the best lessons I’ve learned come from the conversations I’ve had with Kellogg alums who were generous with their time, second years who interned in product marketing, and Salesforce PMMs who I met with over the summer.
It helped me get a strong sense of the nuances of PMM roles across different types of tech companies (and within the broad Salesforce org). Having that deep understanding helped with interviews and on the job, and I was able to meet great mentors who’ve helped me along my journey now for 2+ years.