AMA: AppZen Former VP Product Marketing, Uri Kogan on Influencing the Product Roadmap
March 3 @ 10:00AM PST
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AppZen Former VP Product Marketing, Uri Kogan on Influencing the Product Roadmap
Top Questions
Uri Kogan
R-Zero Vice President of Product Marketing • March 4
This can definitely be a challenge, depending on the relationship between PM and PMM. There are a number of approaches that can help. 1. If you have had a prior launch that didn't go as perfectly as everyone hoped, have a conversation with them about some of the challenges that, easy to see in......Read More
444 Views
1 request
How do you get product management to focus more on customer problems and solving them, and less on shipping features that customers don't need?
They want to convey 20+ features to the public when we should only focus on top 3-5 features then figure out what the true benefit is to the end user.
Uri Kogan
R-Zero Vice President of Product Marketing • March 4
Based on the question, it sounds to me like your product management team isn't thinking very strategically. Perhaps they're not close enough to customers, or they're too close to a select few, who have taken over the roadmapping process for their own needs. I'd encourage you to try to translat......Read More
540 Views
2 requests
Uri Kogan
R-Zero Vice President of Product Marketing • March 4
This is such a great question. It's not easy. The best way, which is not always (rarely?) possible, is to have enough knowledge and market intelligence to identify the ways two segments are different that it becomes evident that serving both isn't practical. For example, let's say your product so......Read More
474 Views
1 request
What specific areas of roadmap influence do you think product marketing can help the most with?
Is it the decision of what features to actually build based on customer feedback and marketing opportunity OR more so naming, branding and how we position and target features?
Uri Kogan
R-Zero Vice President of Product Marketing • March 4
I have seen it go both ways. It really depends on the relative strength of the product and product marketing teams. Product marketing, though, is probably the best positioned part of the business to be a voice for segments of the market and the future customers that don't already have a voice in ......Read More
587 Views
1 request
What role should a customer advisory board have in influencing your product roadmap, and why?
Product marketing owns the customer advisory board but product management owns the roadmap.
Uri Kogan
R-Zero Vice President of Product Marketing • March 4
A customer advisory board can be a great way to capture high level roadmap feedback from your most important customers. But to my mind, it's main value lies elsewhere: in giving your most important customers the feeling (and reality) that they are being heard not just by a CSM or a sales rep, but......Read More
763 Views
1 request
Uri Kogan
R-Zero Vice President of Product Marketing • March 4
In B2B SaaS, the roadmap is an important sales tool. Buyers aren't just buying a tool, they're buying into your company's strategy for the future, and the roadmap you communicate to prospects and customers is the best way to articulate that. I like to work backwards from this, and ask myself, ......Read More
596 Views
2 requests
What template do you use when pitching customer/prospect priorities to Product leadership?
We have data points and a long backlog of features that need to be prioritized to help us win. I'm struggling to consolidate it into a consumable format for product to digest and decide
Uri Kogan
R-Zero Vice President of Product Marketing • March 4
From my experience, it's usually product that is doing much of this prioritization, rather than PMM. What I've seen that PMM can do to help is two-fold: 1. Themes. Product knows the product so well, it's very easy for them to get lost in the nuances and intricacies of how different features mi......Read More
862 Views
3 requests
Uri Kogan
R-Zero Vice President of Product Marketing • March 4
This is an interesting one. In my last company, I joined as the first PMM. In my first meeting with the product team, I spent a fair bit of time explaining the role of PMMs and what we do — how we connect the market to the goals of the organization, and the product back to the market. That hel......Read More
815 Views
2 requests
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