She'd been Pragmatic certified for three months and her launches were still chaotic.
I was coaching a PMM who'd taken the Pragmatic course, memorized the framework, and tried to implement it at her company. Six months later, nothing had changed. Launches still felt like fire drills. Sales still couldn't articulate value. Product still ignored her market research.
I asked: "Walk me through how you're using the framework."
She showed me her work: beautiful buyer persona templates, comprehensive competitive analysis, detailed launch plans, extensive sales training materials.
I asked: "What changed after you built all this?"
She said: "Nothing. Nobody uses any of it."
That's the most common Pragmatic Framework mistake: treating it like a checklist of deliverables instead of a system for driving decisions.
I've hired 12 PMMs over the past three years. Half were Pragmatic certified. Every single one made at least three of these mistakes when they started using the framework. I made them too, back when I first learned it. The pattern is always the same—they build everything the framework tells them to build, share it with stakeholders, and then watch nothing change.
The framework itself isn't the problem. The problem is how people use it.
The Deliverables Trap
I watched a newly certified PMM spend her first three months at my company working through the Pragmatic Framework boxes like a checklist. Market box: build buyer personas. Focus box: write positioning statements. Business box: create pricing calculator. Programs box: build launch checklist. Readiness box: make sales deck. Check, check, check, check, check.
She presented everything to stakeholders in a polished deck. Product said "great, thanks" and then launched a feature with no input from her personas. Sales said "looks good" and continued using their old pitch. Marketing ran campaigns that contradicted her messaging. Launches happened without anyone following her process.
She couldn't figure out what went wrong. She'd completed the framework. She'd done everything Pragmatic taught her. Why wasn't it working?
I made the same mistake when I first got certified. I spent three months building Pragmatic Framework deliverables at my first company. Beautiful buyer personas with demographic data, pain points, and goals. Detailed competitive battlecards analyzing our top three competitors. Comprehensive launch templates with timelines and checklists.
I presented them to stakeholders and got polite nods. Then product launched a feature targeting the wrong buyer persona. Sales kept pitching our old value prop. Nobody followed my launch process. I'd built a perfect framework implementation that nobody used.
The framework shows you what to do, but it doesn't automatically make those things matter to stakeholders. Just because you built buyer personas doesn't mean product will use them to inform the roadmap. Just because you created positioning doesn't mean sales will pitch it. Just because you made a launch checklist doesn't mean anyone will follow it.
I learned this the hard way when product was debating whether to build feature X or feature Y. Instead of pulling out my generic buyer personas and hoping someone would reference them, I interviewed 15 customers specifically about which problem they'd pay to solve. The data was stark: feature Y was urgent for 80% of them, feature X was nice-to-have for 20%.
I presented this to product and said: "If we build feature X first, we'll lose a year before we can monetize. Feature Y drives revenue in Q1."
Product built feature Y. Not because I completed the Market box—because the Market box helped them make a better decision.
That's when I understood: don't build deliverables, build influence. Before building anything, ask yourself what decision this will inform, who's making that decision, and what would change their mind. If you can't answer those questions, don't build it yet. Wait until there's a decision to inform.
Skipping the Foundation
The second pattern I see constantly is PMMs who skip the Market box because it feels slow. They're excited to build positioning and launch products. Market box work—interviewing customers, analyzing competitors, documenting market problems—takes weeks. Positioning and launches have deadlines. Customer research doesn't.
So they skip the research and jump straight to execution. "We already know our buyers, we don't need more personas." They go straight to Focus or Programs using assumptions about buyers instead of actual research.
Then their positioning doesn't resonate. Their launches don't create urgency. Their enablement doesn't help sales win. They can't figure out why.
I did exactly this once. I ran a product launch without doing Market box work. We had buyer personas from two years ago—outdated, but I convinced myself they were "good enough." I didn't have time for research. The launch was in six weeks. I needed to position the product, build campaigns, train sales, and ship.
We launched. The launch flopped spectacularly. Sales couldn't explain why buyers should care. Marketing campaigns didn't convert. Demos didn't result in pipeline. The sales team kept asking me "why would someone buy this?" and I didn't have good answers.
Post-launch, I finally did the Market box work I should have done before launch. I interviewed 20 prospects and learned our personas were targeting the wrong role—we'd aimed at VPs, but the actual buyers were directors. Our assumed pain points weren't urgent—they were nice-to-haves, not must-haves. Competitors had shifted their positioning in the past year, making our differentiation outdated.
We'd launched to the wrong audience, with the wrong message, against the wrong competitive frame. Six months of work wasted because I skipped the foundation.
You can't skip the Market box. Ever. Positioning only works if it's based on buyer insights. Pricing only works if you understand what buyers will pay for. Launches only work if you understand trigger events. Enablement only works if you understand objections. Everything builds on Market box research.
I learned to spend 20% of my time every week on Market box work. Interview two or three customers, prospects, or churned users. Update competitive intelligence based on what I learn in sales calls. Document market problems and trigger events from win/loss interviews. Make Market box continuous, not a one-time project. The insights stay fresh, and every other box gets better.
The Comprehensiveness Problem
I watched another PMM build a 60-slide sales deck covering every feature, every use case, every persona. She created five-page battlecards with 12 competitive differentiators. She wrote objection handlers for 30 different objections.
Sales looked at all this and said: "This is too much. I don't know what to use."
They ignored her comprehensive materials and kept using their old 10-slide deck.
She couldn't understand why. She'd covered every scenario. She'd given them everything they needed. Why weren't they using it?
I made this exact mistake building competitive battlecards. I created a comprehensive document covering our top competitor: competitor overview, full feature comparison, pricing analysis, customer wins, objection handlers, market positioning. It was thorough. It was complete. It was useless.
Sales never used it. There was too much information, and they couldn't find the relevant part during a live call. A rep told me: "When I'm on a call and the prospect mentions this competitor, I need to know three things in 30 seconds. Your battlecard takes five minutes to read."
PMMs optimize for completeness. We want to cover every scenario so sales has everything they need. But sales doesn't want every scenario—they want the right tool for the conversation they're in right now.
I learned to build modular, conversation-specific tools. Instead of one 60-slide deck, I built three decks: a 10-slide discovery deck for initial calls, a 15-slide demo deck for product walkthroughs, and an 8-slide business case deck for procurement conversations. Instead of five-page battlecards, I built one-page competitive overviews usable in 30 seconds during a call, plus a searchable objection database organized by objection type.
Before building anything now, I ask: when will sales use this? In what type of conversation? How much time do they have to reference it? Then I optimize for that moment of use, not for comprehensiveness.
The Training Trap
The pattern shows up in enablement too. A PMM runs a 90-minute sales training session covering positioning, differentiation, and objection handling. She shares the recording and considers sales "enabled."
Two weeks later, sales has forgotten 80% of what she covered. They're back to their old pitch.
I ran comprehensive sales training once for a new product launch. Ninety minutes covering positioning, competitive differentiation, demo flow, objection handling. Sales loved it during the session. "This is exactly what we needed." I felt great. I'd enabled the team.
Two weeks later, I listened to recorded sales calls. Nobody was using any of it. Not the positioning. Not the competitive points. Not the objection handlers. The training hadn't stuck.
People forget 80% of what they hear within two weeks unless it's reinforced. PMMs treat enablement like an event, not a program. We deliver information once and assume it sticks. It doesn't.
I learned to run enablement as four-week programs with weekly reinforcement. Week one: core training on positioning and top three differentiators. Week two: reinforcement with a recap video, Q&A session, and homework review. Week three: deep dive into competitive positioning and objection handling. Week four: reinforcement with a customer case study and updated materials. Then ongoing support through weekly quick wins, monthly office hours, and deal reviews.
The information sticks because it's reinforced, practiced, and applied over time instead of dumped in one 90-minute session.
The Measurement Gap
I built competitive battlecards for our top three competitors once. Spent weeks on them. Shared them with sales. Moved on to the next project.
Six months later, I was on a call with a sales rep who was struggling with a competitive deal. I said: "Did you check the battlecard?"
He said: "What battlecard?"
I'd spent weeks building tools nobody was using, and I didn't know because I never measured adoption.
PMMs focus on outputs—deliverables created—instead of outcomes—business results improved. It's easier to measure "buyer personas completed" than "win rate improved because of better buyer targeting." So we build things, share them, and never check if anyone uses them or if they improve results.
Now I define two metrics for every Pragmatic Framework deliverable: an adoption metric measuring if people are using it, and an outcome metric measuring if it improves results.
For Market box buyer personas, I track the percentage of product decisions that reference persona insights and the percentage of features that drive adoption versus features nobody uses. For Focus box positioning, I track the percentage of sales calls that use new positioning by listening to Gong recordings and measure win rate improvement and sales cycle reduction. For Readiness box sales enablement, I track the percentage of reps using battlecards in competitive deals and measure competitive win rate.
I review these metrics quarterly. If something isn't being used or isn't improving outcomes, I either fix it or stop building it. No more spending weeks on deliverables nobody touches.
The Dogma Problem
I joined a PLG company once and tried to apply Pragmatic Framework exactly as I'd learned it in certification. Every box. Every activity. Exactly as Pragmatic teaches.
The Readiness box didn't fit—we had no sales team to enable. The Programs box didn't fit—we shipped daily, not in quarterly launches. The Business box was different—we had a freemium model, not enterprise contracts.
I tried to force the framework anyway. I built "sales enablement" materials for a product that didn't have sales. I created launch tier frameworks for a company that shipped continuously. I applied enterprise pricing strategy to a PLG motion.
It didn't work. The framework was built for a specific context—B2B SaaS with sales teams. My context was different, and forcing the framework created more problems than it solved.
I spent $2,000 on certification. I learned the boxes. I wanted to apply what I learned. But blindly following the framework in the wrong context was worse than not using it at all.
I learned to use Pragmatic as a starting point, not a rulebook. At the PLG company, I adapted Readiness to focus on self-serve onboarding instead of sales enablement. I adapted Programs to focus on continuous shipping cadence instead of quarterly launches. I adapted Business to focus on freemium conversion instead of enterprise pricing.
The framework is a tool. Use the parts that fit your context. Adapt or skip the parts that don't. Don't force it just because you paid for certification.
The Relationship Gap
I watched a PMM build perfect processes at a new company. Launch checklists, enablement programs, competitive intel workflows, persona templates. Everything by the book. Everything aligned to Pragmatic Framework.
Nobody followed any of it. Product kept launching without her process. Sales kept ignoring her positioning. Marketing kept running campaigns that contradicted her messaging.
She couldn't understand why. The processes were good. They were based on industry best practices. They followed Pragmatic Framework. Why wasn't anyone using them?
I made this mistake when I joined a company and immediately started building Pragmatic Framework infrastructure. Buyer personas, competitive battlecards, launch tiers, enablement programs. I shared everything through formal presentations and Slack announcements.
Nobody used any of it. Not because it was bad—because I'd never built relationships with the people who needed to use it.
Process without relationships doesn't work. You can build the best launch process in the world, but if product doesn't trust you, they won't follow it. You can create brilliant positioning, but if sales doesn't respect your judgment, they won't pitch it.
I learned to spend my first 90 days at a new company understanding how teams work before building processes. Sit with product managers and learn their roadmap process. Join sales calls and understand their challenges. Attend marketing campaign planning and see their workflow. Ask "how can I help?" and build processes around their needs, not around the framework.
Build relationships before building process. Understand the problems teams are facing, then use the framework to solve those problems in a way that fits how they work.
The Pattern Behind Everything
Every mistake I've seen—and made—shares the same root cause. PMMs treat Pragmatic Framework as a deliverable factory instead of a decision-making system.
They build buyer personas because the Market box says to build personas. They create positioning because the Focus box says to create positioning. They make sales decks because the Readiness box says to make sales decks.
None of this matters if it doesn't change decisions.
The framework isn't valuable because it tells you what to build. It's valuable because it shows you which insights drive which decisions. Market box drives product roadmap decisions. Focus box drives GTM strategy decisions. Business box drives pricing decisions. Programs box drives launch execution decisions. Readiness box drives sales effectiveness decisions.
The test is simple: can you draw a direct line from your Pragmatic Framework work to a decision someone made differently? If not, you're building deliverables, not driving outcomes.
I learned this after watching dozens of PMMs implement the framework. The ones who succeed focus on informing decisions, not completing boxes. They do continuous Market box work, spending 20% of their time every week on customer research. They build usable tools optimized for moments of use, not comprehensive materials nobody can navigate. They run enablement as ongoing programs with reinforcement, not one-time training events. They measure adoption and outcomes, not just deliverables created. They adapt the framework to their context instead of forcing it. They build relationships before building process.
The ones who struggle treat the framework as a checklist. They skip Market box because it's slow. They build comprehensive materials nobody uses. They do one-time training and call it enablement. They never measure whether their work matters. They force the framework into contexts where it doesn't fit. They build process without building buy-in.
Most PMMs who fail with Pragmatic Framework don't fail because they don't know the boxes. They fail because they treat it as a certification to complete instead of a system to use.
I've made every one of these mistakes. I've watched every PMM I've hired make at least three of them. The framework works when you use it to drive decisions. It fails when you use it to create deliverables.
Learn the framework. Use it to drive decisions. Adapt it to your context. Measure what matters. Build relationships alongside process.
That's how you make Pragmatic Framework actually work.