Jalay Bisharat on Why Your Product Experience Is Your Brand

Marketing Can Bend the Curve, But It Can't Change It

Twenty years ago, you could talk your way to success. Run enough TV ads for Pepsi, craft the right aura, and you'd build a brand. Not anymore.

The customer experience is the brand. Everybody can go online, try your product, and read reviews from actual users before you ever get to pitch them. Jalay Bisharat, who's led marketing at Eventbrite, Upwork, OpenTable, and Amazon, has watched this shift play out across three decades.

You cannot talk your way into success. Your product has to be wonderful and customers have to love it.

— Jalay Bisharat

At Skillshare, where she's currently fractional CMO, Bisharat made a move that would make most marketers uncomfortable: she reallocated budget from marketing to product. "We might be too weighted towards marketing," she realized after customer interviews. "Without some product and product design refresh, marketing was not spending money as wisely as we would be if we had investing it in product."

Performance marketing can bend the growth curve, but it can't fundamentally change trajectory. If you're flatlined, look at product first. Your refund policy, customer service, and onboarding flow are all part of the product experience now, and every piece of it will be dissected on TikTok and Reddit whether you like it or not.

The Single Most Important Question: What's the 20% That Gets 80%?

Bisharat has never walked into a company where the team didn't say the same thing: we're overwhelmed, we have too much work to do. Marketing teams are especially vulnerable to this because the discipline is so creative and because everyone has opinions about it.

Her fix starts in the first 90 days. She sits down with every person on the team, junior to senior, and asks three questions: What's working? What isn't? What would you change? But she always adds a fourth: What is the 20% of the effort that gets the 80% of the result?

At OpenTable, the answer to that question changed the entire business. The company was chasing restaurants in Japan, Wichita, everywhere. Salespeople got commission on any city. But Bisharat, fresh from launching Amazon Marketplace, saw the network effect hiding in plain sight.

Dining is inherently local. Doesn't matter how many restaurants are in Japan or in Wichita if you live in San Francisco.

— Jalay Bisharat

The shift was wrenching: salespeople only got commission if they sold in one of 4 cities. Marketing only built diner networks in those same 4 cities. They created a true network effect in San Francisco, then New York, Chicago, and DC. Then they had a playbook to roll out everywhere else.

Most people on the team are just doing what they're told. They don't have the vantage point to see the single lever that changes enterprise value. That's the CMO's job: bring a North Star, identify the one or two problems worth solving, and protect the team from the avalanche of new ideas that pour in every day.

The First 90 Days: Listen, Synthesize, Then Ship Customer Insight

Bisharat's first 30 days are a listening tour. She talks to every person on the team, no matter how junior. "The senior people know they have access to you," she says. "The junior people, this is their chance."

She gives them the questions in advance and makes one thing clear: "It is my job to make you successful. The going-in assumption is you're doing a great job, and I'm here to help make you even more successful." This matters because new leadership is terrifying. People feel like they have to reassert their value all over again.

After 30 days, she shares back what she heard, with the caveat that she's only been there 30 days. After 90 days, she writes the plan. But the best early contribution isn't a strategy deck. It's customer insight.

I just did a bunch of customer interviews. I recorded them and uploaded them and said, I think these are really worth watching, but these are the 3 most important observations I found from each of these customers.

— Jalay Bisharat

At Skillshare, those interviews gave her the conviction to present to the board after just three weeks. She could say with certainty where they had opportunity to improve and where they had so much customer love that the offering was fundamentally sound. Talking to customers one-by-one is time-consuming, but it's the most efficient thing you can do.

The 3 Signs You've Built a Team That Does Career-Best Work

Bisharat's job isn't to hire the best people. It's to create an environment where people say, "I did the best work of my career." She looks for three signs that the environment is working.

First: people are externally focused. When emotional energy drains into internal politics—who said what, should I apologize, I'm stressed—that's time stolen from the customer. You want a team that thinks all day about what makes customers happy.

Second: people debate ideas fiercely, but it's never personal. After a meeting, no one says "I won" or "I lost." They say, "I love this team, we always come out with the best ideas." No one ever feels dumb.

Third: they love coming to work on Monday. Ideally, people say, "I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this."

Culture starts with your demeanor. If you're anxious, they're anxious. Bisharat thinks of herself as the flight attendant during turbulence. If the flight attendant looks calm, passengers go back to reading. If the flight attendant looks nervous, everyone panics.

When someone frustrates her, she takes a day. She reminds herself: if this person feels my frustration, they'll never do as good a job as if I sit down in problem-solving mode. Praise in public, criticize in private. The more contentious the issue, the more likely she is to pick up the phone or meet over coffee instead of sending an email.

And if someone isn't cutting it, or worse, if they're good at the work but toxic to the culture? You deal with it. The entire team gets a bounce when a disruptive person leaves. No one is good enough to justify dragging down the culture.