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Raman Sharma

AMA: Confluent Vice President, Product Marketing, Raman Sharma on Influencing the Product Roadmap

November 11, 2025 @ 12:00PM PT

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  1. How often would you recommend product marketing to share insights to influence product roadmap?

    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 7mo

    There is no universally prescribed cadence for this. Ideally this should be continuous but I think sharing (or resharing) customer feedback when Product/engineering teams are in the process of planning/scheduling their next set of work, is generally a good idea. Some teams do this quarterly, some monthly, and some ad-hoc. PMM should find a seat at the table at these occasions - not just to provide feedback but also to understand the future product vision.

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  2. How do you track and demonstrate how product marketing has influenced the roadmap?

    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 7mo

    I don't think there can be meaningful tracking for this. I also don't think this is worth measuring as a metric. I know it sounds hand-wavy but usually organizations can see when PMMs are truly adding value in the product planning and roadmap creation. Everyone in the org then also automatically gravitates towards such PMMs.Putting an artificial metric around this will only lead to people optimizing for this metric e.g. "I entered three product suggestions into the internal product input portal" ...Read More

    557 Views
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  3. How do you work with the sales and success teams, in conjunction with the product team, on the roadmap? What pieces of the puzzle do you own, versus your sales and success team?

    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 7mo

    It depends on the go to market motion of the company. In self-serve businesses, PMMs can play a more direct role in engaging with customers, gathering and synthesizing feedback. In sales-led motions, usually the customer facing teams (sales and success) have way more familiarity with customer scenarios and are closer to a customer's pain points as well as language. So, in such cases, capturing feedback from such internal partners, is not a bad place to start. I still advice PMMs to get in front ...Read More

    738 Views
    1 request

  4. How do you influence product roadmap when big picture product vision hasn't been established and there are continuous changes?

    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 7mo

    In my opinion, Product Marketing primarily is a GTM function. It is critical for PMMs to be deeper (than average) on products and audience, but this knowledge is to be used in the service of GTM objectives like customer acquisition, customer growth, product adoption, etc. Lack of big picture product vision is as much a marketing problem as it is a product problem. I would encourage PMMs to sit down with their product leaders (or execs) and come up with a product/company story that makes sense. S ...Read More

    704 Views
    1 request

  5. Tips to influence the product roadmap with none-to-little budget?

    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 7mo

    In my opinion, budget has very little to do with influencing the product roadmap. Customer insights, understanding of the space, and competitive dynamics are the more important factors. Budget can definitely help with creating more avenues like Customer Advisory Boards, other in-person customer meetings, or some other form of feedback collection. However, in my experience, enterprising PMMs rarely find themselves constrained by these things. There is usually more customer feedback available than ...Read More

    703 Views
    1 request