AI & PMM
Workflow.
The actual tools I use for product marketing, competitive intelligence, positioning research, and writing. Updated periodically. No affiliate links.
AI tools.
Primary
My main tool for positioning work, messaging iteration, and long-form writing assistance. I use it for drafting positioning documents, stress-testing value propositions, and restructuring arguments. Particularly strong for nuanced B2B writing: it understands the difference between what is technically accurate and what is actually persuasive.
Research
Real-time competitive research, tracking what competitors are saying, finding recent analyst commentary, and synthesising news fast. Better than Google for research tasks that need synthesis rather than a list of links. I run competitive landscape updates through Perplexity before every major positioning review.
Deep Research
Market sizing and analyst report synthesis. Deep Research mode pulls Gartner, Forrester, and IDC coverage into a structured briefing. I use it to prep for analyst interactions and understand the state of a market before building positioning. Does in five minutes what used to take half a day.
Documents
I upload customer call transcripts, analyst reports, and competitive intelligence documents and use NotebookLM to find patterns and answer specific questions across all of them. Particularly useful for win/loss analysis: it synthesises themes from thirty-plus call transcripts in minutes.
How I use AI for specific tasks.
Perplexity for real-time tracking. Claude for synthesising competitive signals into positioning implications. ChatGPT Deep Research for quarterly landscape reviews.
Claude for first drafts and iteration. I write the core argument, Claude pressure-tests it and rewrites alternatives. I decide. Never Claude decides.
NotebookLM for synthesising call transcripts and survey data. Upload the sources, ask specific questions, use the answers to identify patterns you would have missed reading linearly.
I write the first draft. Claude edits for structure and clarity, not for voice. If I cannot tell the difference between my draft and the AI edit, the AI edit is wrong.
ChatGPT Deep Research for the analyst's current published view. Perplexity for their most recent positions. Claude for structuring my counter-narrative.
Strategic judgment. Understanding what a customer actually fears versus what they say they fear. The conversation that changes a CIO's mind. AI makes me faster at the craft. It cannot replace the insight.
How I write
I write everything in plain text first. No formatting, no structure, just the argument in the order I am thinking about it. Then I read it, find the real opening (almost always the second paragraph), and restructure from there. The test I use: if I read a sentence and I am not sure whether I wrote it or the AI wrote it, I rewrite it until I am sure it is mine.