Harsha Kotthapalli

90 Day Build Overview

Month 01 · Understand

Week 1

Kickoff & audit

90 minutes. Product, roadmap, vision, and every customer touchpoint you already have.

Week 2

Customer calls

Five interviews. I run them, you introduce them.

Week 3

Win/loss review

Closed-lost reasons, support tickets, sales call notes.

Week 4

The Fifty

Fifty questions across six competitors, every cell sourced.

Month 02 · Diagnose

Week 5

Segmentation

ICP scored from won-and-retained accounts, not from a wishlist.

Week 6

Positioning workshop

90 minutes. Three to four viable directions, argued against real alternatives.

Week 7

Internal decision

You meet without me and choose a direction.

Week 8

Constraint named

Positioning, messaging, pricing, launches or enablement. One of them is the bottleneck.

Month 03 · Build

Week 9

Messaging workshop

90 minutes. Per persona, per funnel stage, every line tied to proof.

Week 10

Frameworks installed

Populated with your market, not a template.

Week 11

Automation wired

Four of the six stages start maintaining themselves.

Week 12

Handover

Your nominated owner runs a full cycle while I watch.

About twelve hours of your team's time across three months.

The PMM Operating System · 90 days

A product marketing function, built from zero and handed over running.

Six stages installed, four of them automated, and a team trained to run all of it. For companies where one or two people are doing product marketing across four products, and nobody owns the story.

Before you came in, product marketing was fragmented. Different teams were telling slightly different versions of the story, and there wasn't a single owner driving consistency. What changed was clarity and structure. You defined positioning, built a PMM team, and introduced a more systematic approach to launches and enablement. It reduced a lot of internal friction and made execution more predictable.

Dany Rastelli · Head of Marketing, MarineTraffic

Timeline: 90 days

Twelve weeks of live and async work. Three workshops of ninety minutes each, five customer interviews I run myself, and a handover month where your team drives while I watch. Everything between sessions is on me.

Deliverable 1: The Fifty

Fifty questions across market, product, positioning, marketing, sales and company, filled for you and up to five competitors. Every cell carries a URL and a date, or is explicitly marked unknown. Re-runs on a cadence and reports only what changed.

Deliverable 2: Product Oracle

Two pages per product. Spec, metrics, limitations, packaging, and personas including the anti-persona. The single source of truth that stops four teams describing the product four ways.

Deliverable 3: The Messaging Matrix

One line per persona per funnel stage, each tied to a proof point. Claims that cannot be supported get marked as unproven rather than quietly shipped. Audits your live site and decks for drift.

Deliverable 4: Launch Tiers

Every release scored 1, 2 or 3, each tier triggering a fixed activity checklist with owners and a critical path. Without it, every launch gets negotiated from scratch.

Deliverable 5: Trust Metrics

Five OKRs measuring research coverage, sales confidence and funnel movement, not assets shipped. Pulls its own numbers.

Deliverable 6: The Half-Life Map

Every asset mapped to its owner, its destination and its refresh cadence. Flags what has gone stale before a prospect finds it.

Not sure? If you have one product in one market and the question is "how do we take this to market", start with Foundations. If you have customers, a sales motion and nobody owning the story, you need the function. three-minute assessment

Priced by products and markets, not by what you've raised

See pricing →

The six stages, in order.

01

Research

Market, customer, and the alternative you're really losing to.

Customer interviews, sales call review, win/loss analysis, review mining and the market map. Includes the null alternative: the spreadsheet, the status quo, doing nothing. Usually the competitor that wins most often, and the one nobody researches.

Output

The evidence base

● Automated

02

Competition

Fifty questions, six competitors, every cell sourced.

A structured grid across market, product, positioning, marketing, sales and company. Every cell carries a URL and a date, or is explicitly marked unknown. No silent blanks.

Output

The Fifty

● Automated

03

Segment & position

Who you're for, who you're not for, and what you're better than.

ICP definition, beachhead selection, personas split by user, decision-maker and blocker. Positioning argued against real alternatives rather than a template filled in.

Output

ICP and positioning statement

○ Judgment

04

Message

What to say, to whom, with what proof behind it.

A message per persona per funnel stage, each line tied to a proof point. Claims that cannot be supported get marked as unproven rather than quietly shipped.

Output

The Messaging Matrix + Product Oracle

● Automated

05

Launch & enable

How big is this launch, and what does sales actually need?

A tiered launch process, the activity checklist each tier triggers, sales playbook, battlecards, and objection handling built from objections that actually get raised.

Output

Launch Tiers

◐ Half

06

Measure & maintain

Prove it worked, and stop it going stale.

OKRs measuring research coverage, sales confidence and funnel movement rather than assets shipped. Plus the asset register that tracks when each thing expires and who owns it.

Output

Trust Metrics + The Half-Life Map

● Automated

THE DELIVERABLES

What you're holding on day 90.

Six documents, populated with your market rather than a template. Every one of them is something a person on your team opens and uses, not a strategy deck that gets archived.

Product Oracle

2 PAGES PER PRODUCT

Spec, metrics, limitations, packaging and personas, including the anti-persona. The single source of truth that stops four teams describing the product four ways.

Used byEVERYONE

The Half-Life Map

1 SHEET · EVERY ASSET YOU OWN

Every asset mapped to its owner, its destination and its refresh cadence. Positioning doesn't break. It quietly stops being true, so the useful question is when each asset goes stale and where it lives.

Used byWHOEVER OWNS MARKETING

Launch Tiers

1 SHEET · 3 CHECKLISTS · 27 ACTIVITIES

Every release scored 1, 2 or 3, each tier triggering a fixed activity checklist, owners and critical path. Without it, every launch gets negotiated from scratch.

Used byPRODUCT + MARKETING

The Fifty

1 SHEET · 50 QUESTIONS × 6 COMPANIES

Fifty questions across market, product, positioning, marketing, sales and company, filled for you and up to five competitors. Every cell sourced with a URL and a date, or marked unknown. No silent blanks.

Used bySALES + MARKETING

Trust Metrics

1 DASHBOARD · 5 OKRS

OKRs measuring research coverage, sales confidence and cross-functional trust, not assets shipped. Everyone else counts output. Output is the half that got cheap.

Used byLEADERSHIP

The Messaging Matrix

1 SHEET · PER PERSONA, PER STAGE

Per persona, per funnel stage, every line tied to a proof point, so claims can be checked rather than repeated.

Used bySALES + MARKETING

ALL SIX ARE YOURS. NO LICENCE, NO PLATFORM, NO DEPENDENCY ON ME.

Why the Half-Life Map exists

"Not everything stayed perfect as things evolved, but the foundation held."

Sofia Tsekoura · Product Marketing Manager, MarineTraffic

What's still running on day 91

PMM Operating System
ModuleStatus
Research● RUNNING
Competition● RUNNING
Segment & position○ JUDGMENT
Message● RUNNING
Launch & enable◐ HALF
Measure & maintain● RUNNING
4 of 6 maintain themselves · Owner: your team

Who it's for

Good fit

  • One or two people doing product marketing across several products, and nobody owns the story
  • You have customers and a sales motion, even a small one
  • Someone will own this after I leave
  • You want the function to outlast the engagement
  • You want someone in your timezone, not on US hours

Not a fit

  • You need one launch or one market sorted, not a whole function, which is GTM Foundations
  • Nobody internally will own it afterwards
  • You want me to stay indefinitely
  • Pre-product, with nobody to interview

If you run sales

Your reps stop writing their own decks.

Product marketing that never reaches a sales call is a documentation project. Four of the six stages produce something a rep uses in front of a customer.

Battlecards

PER COMPETITOR

Claim-to-response pairs, traps and landmines, and a thirty-second talk track. Built from the competitive grid, so every rebuttal carries a source and a date rather than an opinion.

Objection handling

RANKED BY FREQUENCY

The objections your team actually hears, with the real root cause behind each, the reframe, and the question that surfaces it early enough to matter.

The sales playbook

ONE DOCUMENT

Market opportunity, buyer types, positioning, pricing, competitive advantage. The thing a new rep reads in week one instead of shadowing someone for a month.

Launch Tiers

PER RELEASE

Every release scored 1, 2 or 3, each tier triggering a fixed checklist with owners. Sales stops finding out about launches from the changelog.

I've built this for a maritime data company selling into commodity traders and shipowners, where the competitive claims were technical and the buyers were sceptical. The same structure works wherever the product is hard to explain in one sentence.

Before you joined, our go-to-market was very sales-led and reactive. We were pushing deals through but without much structure around who we were targeting or how we onboarded them. You brought a level of discipline we didn't have. Clear segmentation, proper onboarding flows, and a more joined-up way of working across product, marketing, and sales. It made things feel a lot less improvised and gave us something we could actually scale.

Dan Hunt · CEO, FoodVessel

After the build

The Maintenance Retainer.

Four of the six stages can maintain themselves. This is me keeping them pointed at the right things once the build is over, so the system stays current without your one product marketer re-running research.

  • The Fifty, re-run quarterly, with only material changes reported
  • A weekly competitor monitor on pricing, messaging, launches and hiring
  • A message drift audit against the approved messaging matrix
  • The Half-Life Map kept current, so staleness is flagged before a prospect finds it

What it isn't

It isn't a retainer, and it isn't me staying. Ninety days, an owner on your team, and a function that runs without me.

It isn't execution. I don't run campaigns, write the blog or manage the agency; I build the system they work against.

It isn't a smaller engagement stretched out. If one launch or one market is the real problem, buy GTM Foundations instead.

Straight answers.

Why ninety days?

Thirty gets you documents. Sixty gets you documents nobody uses. The third month is where the team learns to run it, which decides whether any of it survives.

What do you need from us?

About twelve hours across three months: four workshops, introductions to five customers, and access to your existing material. I do the work between sessions.

Who owns it afterwards?

Whoever you nominate on day one. If that person doesn't exist yet, say so before we start, because it changes what I build.

How do I choose between Foundations and the PMM Operating System?

By what you're missing. Foundations answers "how do we take this one thing to market" and suits one product in one market. The system answers "who owns product marketing here and how does it keep running", which only becomes urgent once you have customers, a sales motion and repeat objections.

Can we start with Foundations and upgrade later?

Yes, and several people should. Foundations covers stages 01 to 04, so the build picks up from there rather than repeating it. Foundations is credited against the build if you start within three months.

How do I know which tier we are?

Count your products and your markets. One product sold into one or two markets is the first tier. If you're not sure, tell me what you sell and to whom and I'll tell you which one applies.

Do you work with our existing agency or freelancers?

Yes. I build the strategy and the frameworks they execute against. Most of the time that makes them more useful, because they stop guessing what the story is.

What if the positioning we land on is wrong?

Then we find out in month two rather than month twelve, which is the point of doing research before messaging. Positioning is a bet, and I'll show you the alternatives I rejected and why.