Chris is 29 years old and recently married. He and Karen want children some day, but she’s also got a good job, and with the pressures of a big mortgage, they think they’ll wait a few years to start their family.  For now their baby is Logan, a two-year-old springer spaniel that they rescued from a shelter.

Chris has been in the tech industry for five years. He was a product manager until the most recent reorganization created a separate product marketing group. He willingly made the move to the new department, but that was more than a year ago and he is still trying to understand just how his job fits with those in product management, marketing communications, and sales. Chris is responsible for the go-to-market planning for several products, but he spends most of his time:

• Attending meetings
• Answering emails
• Writing content for sales collaterals
• Helping sales people with customer accounts
• Driving to and from work – the new house has resulted in a longer commute and the traffic is horrible

These pressures plus a tight travel budget have limited Chris's customer interactions to times when he helps sales people with demos or prospect presentations – definitely not what he had in mind when he took this job. He knows he’s not spending enough time listening to the market or working on strategic activities, but he doesn’t have time to get focused amid the daily frenzy of requests and emails. He keeps thinking that there is a more effective way to do his real job, but can’t figure out how to get there from here.

Does Chris sound familiar?

Adele Revella brings more than twenty years of high-tech marketing experience to the development and delivery of Pragmatic Marketing's Effective Product Marketing seminar. An accomplished and entertaining speaker acknowledged by audiences throughout Europe, Asia and South Africa for her global perspective, she is as comfortable working with engineers as she is with CEOs and experienced marketers, combining knowledge of diverse technologies with a rich history of product and market successes. Adele writes the Buyer Persona blog at www.buyerpersona.com.