Today on Build, host Maggie Crowley chats live in the Seeking Wisdom studio with Acquia’s SVP Products, Matt Kaplan. Matt was previously CPO and GM, Emerging Products at LogMeIn. Now at Acquia, he heads up product strategy, management and design across their digital experience platform. And, fun fact, he was on MIT’s gymnastic team back in the day.

Together Maggie and Matt chat through how great products are like great stories. Specifically, what makes a great story, untangling the relationship between stories and products and how to help your team get better at storytelling.

How Great Products are Like Great Stories with Acquia’s Matt Kaplan

Build gives you the inside track on all things product and product management. Host Maggie Crowley, former Olympian turned Harvard MBA turned Director of Product Management at Drift, sits down with the best of the best across product management, design, and engineering to bring you lessons from product greats at Atlassian, Pluralsight, VMware, and more.

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It's a special crossover episode of Build! And the first episode in our brand new dedicated feed. Today's guest? Dave Gerhardt, Drift's VP of Marketing. Dave discusses his one week spent as a product manager at Drift plus, the real meat of this episode – how to write good copy and tell a story with your product. Copywriting and storytelling are key to product management. If you can't tell the story and motivate your team, they won't know where to go next. On this episode of Build, how to build that excitement and get everyone on the same page.

Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! Be sure to check out more insights on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @davegerhardt, @jayacunzo and @seekingwisdomio.

WHAT WAS COVERED
00:38 - DG’s one week as a product manager 
2:17 - The most underrated skill at a company: internal marketing
5:15 - Read it out loud, say what you mean 
6:40 - Simplify
8:00 - Would you say that out loud? 
8:28 - Use their words
10:45 - Let your customers write the copy 
12:20 - The swipe file 
13:44 - Storytelling
14:10 - Five parts of a story 
15:34 - The best books on copywriting
18:13 - The best books on storytelling
19:00 - DG’s storytelling secret:  The Steve Jobs’ keynote
19:46 - The hardest part of storytelling in product 
21:34 - Two ways to sell a shovel

Why Copywriting & Storytelling Are Key To Product Management (With Drift's Dave Gerhardt)

In product, you always want to do more discovery, be more customer-centric, and talk to the people who are on the front lines using your product every day. But it’s easier said than done. And it’s also pretty tough to find real-life examples of what the relationship between a PM and the customer should look like. So on this episode of Build, Maggie talks to a customer she’s been working closely with for nearly a year. Rob Stevenson (Product Growth Leader at Keap) joins Maggie live at HYPERGROWTH Boston to talk about what it takes to build a partnership with a customer, how not to ask for feedback, and what it really means to build with your customers in mind.

What It Means To Build With Your Customers In Mind (With Keap's Rob Stevenson)

Contrary to popular belief, product marketing is not just about making decks. In this episode, Maggie sits down with Drift's Director of Product Marketing, Aurelia Solomon. Together, they talk through the ins and outs of a product marketing role, why storytelling is crucial to success, and how to build, and manage, a strong PM to PMM relationship. 

Like this episode? Leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review, hit the subscribe button, and share the pod with your friends. You can also connect with Maggie and Aurelia on Twitter @maggiecrowley and @Aurelia90716528

The Ins and Outs of Product Marketing with Drift's Aurelia Solomon

On today's episode of Build, host Maggie Crowley sits down with Richard Banfield, CEO and co-founder of Fresh Tilled Soil, a leading user interface design and experience agency, and co-author of Product Leadership, the manual Maggie lives her life by.

On this episode, Richard dives deep into how to build high performing product teams. Be sure to tune in for actionable insights you can apply to your own team today.

Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! Be sure to check out more insights on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @maggiecrowley, @drift, @seekingwisdomio and @RMBanfield.

How to Build High Performing Product Teams (with Fresh Tilled Soil's Richard Banfield)

On this episode of Build, Maggie and special guest Alexa Nguyen from the Drift product team talk about what happens after you write a one pager. At Drift, 'story time' is the next step in the product development cycle. It's where product managers, engineers, and designers get together in one room to outline the problem they're solving and identify any open questions. So the goal of the meeting isn't about coming up with a solution to the problem – it's about empathizing with the user and then creating a list of questions you want to answer afterwards. Want to know Maggie and Alexa's three steps to a successful story time? Listen to the full episode.

How Great Products are Like Great Stories with Acquia’s Matt Kaplan

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