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AMA: Google Product Marketing Lead, Vishal Naik on Influencing the Product Roadmap

December 6 @ 10:00AM PST

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Google Product Marketing Lead, Vishal Naik on Influencing the Product Roadmap

Top Questions

How do I influence the roadmap of our product, when my product team isn't very open to it?

I spend a lot of time with customers and prospects, and constantly hear feedback on our product. But my product management team doesn't seem to value this feedback.

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

Winning over stakeholders is a key part of being a PMM, and it might be your approach that needs an iterative update. IMO, influencing roadmap comes down to influencing PMs--and some are going to be easy to work with and easily malleable and some arent. So if your product management team isnt ope......Read More

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What are tips for maintaining open lines of communication amongst other product and marketing priorities?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

Time and resource allocation helps me think about this. If I know I have 40 hours of work already lined up and a new project pops up, it helps me to talk to product about when we'll be able to support a new workstream if I can detail whats currently open. That helps us jointly prioritize so that ......Read More

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What are some ways product marketing can prove their value to product management?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I'd reframe the question a bit from proving value to adding value. Proving value is a little defensive, vs adding value puts the onus on PMM to show up every day with a task to be done. I think about adding value to PMs in two parts: 1. Trust: If I had to simplify it to a few key things, its a......Read More

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How do product marketers lead a product launch when roadmaps and priorities are constantly changing?

There is a lack of alignment at my company and our teams act in silos. Consequently, my roadmap and goals seem to change on a weekly if not bi-weekly basis because marketing keeps getting pulled in different directions. There needs to be some sort of roadmap and role that aligns sales with product, but I'm not sure if that should come from product marketing or not. I want to initiate this conversation, but I don't know if it's overstepping my role or not. Advice here?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

My advice on this one is that there's no real overstepping of your role--as long as you're respectful of others (both people and functions) and act in the interest of the company. If you're doing both of those things, then act like an owner and do what you think is necessary to help the business ......Read More

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What are some tips for helping drive product roadmap as a product marketer if you don't have data or customer anecdotes at your disposal?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

If you dont have data or customer anecdotes, I'm not sure you should be driving roadmap. Influencing roadmap is an earned outcome and not something to just "do" for the sake of checking a box. Think of the roadmap as a business mechanism, and do you have enough to convince stakeholders that the d......Read More

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What, ideally, should product marketing's role be in developing the roadmap for a SaaS company?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

IMO PM creates products and PMM maps the product to the user. So I think the ideal role for PMM in shaping roadmap is to thoughtfully validate and critique the roadmap that Product creates based on your knowledge of the 1) user 2) product 3) market; with the ability to (aka having done enough hom......Read More

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Does your product marketing team have an efficient system for quantifying technical costs for new roadmap items that you request? If another team is required for estimating certain roadmap item costs, what's the best way to approach them?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I tend to think that teams like to hear their work is appreciated and their processes are modeled. So if another team is required for estimating roadmap costs, I'd ask them questions about how they do this level of modeling? What's their process and what are their inputs? Then I'd take a stab at ......Read More

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What research goes into informing Product what they should be delivering and what is the tangible output of that research?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

You'll definitely want to chat with a research agency or your internal researchers to build a game plan, but I think it starts with a list of questions you want answered. Nothing too formal, just conversationally, what insights do you need to know that will help build product strategies? For me, ......Read More

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Who should lead the creation of Customer Advisory Board? PMM with PM and CS or PM and CS with the advisory of PMM?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

As a PMM, I tend to view the RACI as PMM being responsible/accountable and CS being considered and PM being informed/potentially considered. But it depends on your org and how you're structured. The reason I say PMM is because I think the value of an advisory board is to help understand new t......Read More

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How do you hold the product team accountable for delivering on the product roadmap?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

Tracking impact of launches and defining the costs associated with roadmap slipping. Sales deals lost because a feature was promised but didnt ship. Customer trust lost because they dont have confidence in what you say is coming. The opportunity cost of internal teams working on items that didnt ......Read More

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How do you balance feature updates that dev wants to get pushed out vs. trying to hold their launch due needing to do sales training?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

Impact. If you dont do the training, will the feature be used? Will it create more bugs? I think of this as a cost benefit equation--What is the cost of holding a launch to do a training vs what is the cost of launching without the training? Being able to articulate that potential downside to doi......Read More

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What do you think of a public product roadmap for the customers as part of product marketing?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I dont really have a strong "pro" for why to do this, so I personally wouldnt put too much time and effort into it. But it may make sense for your business challenges. I think something to be aware of is that when you document your roadmap publicly, it puts more pressure to ensure dates dont slip......Read More

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How do you influence product roadmap as a product marketer.

This is an interview question we get all the time

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

Its about doing the work. I view influencing the roadmap as a byproduct of a great process rather than a task itself. So as you build up your understanding of the product and your user needs and you map that to the market and competitive landscape, formulate your own point of view on where your p......Read More

750 Views

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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.

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

IMO, your roadmap needs to be representative of your company vision. And practically, your company's growth opportunities would come from customer expansion and new deals. So I'd advise that you leverage your advisory board to really understand your current install base well. As you think through......Read More

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How can you influence the immediate product roadmap if the pre-launch customer research revealed to you that the MVP would not add significant value to your customers?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

For your sake, I'd hope that if your research shows that MVP doesnt equate to a value add for your customers, that causes your product team to make a full stop and push. That said, at this point I think you need to put your PM hat on and think about what features might make users see value in you......Read More

542 Views

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What does your product management team expect out of your product marketers in product meetings, and how do you measure if your team is delivering this effectively to your product management team?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

To bring the voice of the customer (and all of the external market concerns top of mind to a customer) to help the PM team build the best product possible. Feedback in review cycles or direct questions in 1:1s between leads helps. But its also valuable to read the room when you sit in on meet......Read More

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I am product marketer for an enterprise-level ERP. I am faced with a situation where I do not have access to the end-users of the software. The account managers are willing to help me acquire the user list but we are debating the best ways to acquire the same. Have you been in a such a situation and done something great about it?

The list of end-users with their details will allow us to target educational product content that will help them do their jobs better. We would like to engage them via such content and also the Product Managers will benefit a lot from this direct access to end-users.

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I think this one is a bit tricky, because I wouldnt recommend creating a user list without appropriate PII governance. Rather than creating a user list, I'd suggest building an outreach stratgey that can deliver content to customers in a scaled manner. Some suggestions are in-app notifications th......Read More

1900 Views

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Do you have high-level educational resources on developing your relationship with PMs?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

A great business resource on developing XFN relationships is the book "Five Dysnfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni. Its an easy read and its scalable to all relationship building in your organization. If you can establish trust, you can have conversations and meetings with productive confli......Read More

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How to understand customer journey in a B2B SaaS mobile application? Without using expensive softwares like Mixpanel or Yourstory.

1. Number of users for this application are around 500 to 1000. 2. Since the users are small don't want to spend money on Mixpanel or Your story

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

How I've understood customer journeys in the past have never actually leveraged a software tool to do so. We've started by mapping out the customer journey into normal stages: awareness, interest, consideration, preference, loyalty. Then across those stages, look to see what is the customer think......Read More

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Our product team ships feature updates incrementally, how would you decide the scope of each of the feature changes? Do you market each of the feature updates as when they come out, or group them together? Thank you!

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

At my last company we made a launch tiering playbook. It was a series of 6 steps: 1) First, we's look at product's roadmap to see what was on the horizon 2) From there, we'd review PRDs. Mainly, we'd use the PRD to know what was behind the scenes so that we could forecast impact so that we ha......Read More

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What kind of PMM organizational structure is ideal for ensuring that PMMs are set up for success (in this case, to influence the Product roadmap)?

For eg: Should PMMs be aligned with PMs (we have a 3:1 mapping), or should PMMs be aligned with the market/buyer persona or something else?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

As it relates to influencing roadmap, breadth is important. If youre spread too thin (I don't mean PM:PMM ratio, I mean commonality in what you cover--more on this later) then you wont be able to go upstream and influence roadmap because you'll be playing defense all day. I personally think b......Read More

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How do you build great working relationship/s with your PM/s and other product stakeholders?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I think I mentioned this in another answer, but I think a good framework is the Five Dysfunctions of a Team model. Build trust with your PM and other stakeholders--that's delivering results when called upon and being a key thought partner with your stakeholders. That will allow you to have produc......Read More

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How do you know when you have enough solid information to put forward a product suggestion?

This ties into convincing teams that a feature or change is needed. What level of evidence or research is needed to show that a certain feature or requirement is a "must have" on the product roadmap. "The competitor has it" is not always justifiable evidence.

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

Ultimately I view roadmap as a path to your company's vision to get more customers to use your service. Thus, I definitely dont think that meet-comp features by themselves are justfiable evidence to get something into roadmap--because the market already has that and is it really going to differen......Read More

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How do you define between a customer(s) want or request and a feature that is actually needed?

Customers may want many things, but it might not always be the right feature to implement. How do you decide this?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I'd say this is a volume game where you have to look for patterns while also thinking about your growth model and ideal customer profile. Given these data points you might find that out of the list of feature requests, a handful are commonly requested and and even smaller subset are commonly requ......Read More

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How does your approach to influencing a 3 year product vision vs. next quarter or next year's product roadmap differ?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I dont actually think my approach changes. I tend to believe that the process will yield results and my process to influencing roadmap focuses on acting (in my head) like I'm the owner of my product: * what users use my product? * what are they thinking/feeling as they go through the journey t......Read More

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How do you influence the product roadmap if the roadmap has already been laid out by product?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I think the most important part of influencing product roadmap is that its an outcome created by a strong understanding of the user, strong understanding of the product and a strong relationship with product management. If you have those items already landed, then you can better understand if the......Read More

545 Views

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How do you get teams to feel bought-in for research that they aren't leading?

One challenge I've had is that teams will disregard research if their team didn't lead it, even if it's centered on small, qualitative studies.

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

It starts with buy-in. If you can work with your XFN teams before the research is commissioned to chat about what questions the business wants solved and then once you have a vendor share the vendor proposal and then once you have qual/quant outlines share those with your XFNs to get their opinio......Read More

490 Views

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How do you partner with product/product strategy early before the roadmap is finalized and what role does your PMM team play specifically in the early phases?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

The way I think about this is that PM owns the roadmap. What I mean by that is that, none of my PMs--past or present--have sat down and brainstormed about roadmap with PMM. So in the moments where I've felt that we have an area that is unadressed within our roadmap or that by not adding an item t......Read More

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Would you advise someone looking to become a product marketing leader to get an MBA?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I personally think the biggest value of an MBA is in getting into product marketing. Most companies dont have APMM roles and so there isnt a ton of opportunities for true entry level roles. PMM roles tend to require mapping customers to narratives to products to marketing strategies, while being ......Read More

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What are the core hard skillsets a PMM needs to develop to be an effective full-stack marketer?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

The best full-stack marketers can go broad and deep. From a hard skills POV, you'd need to know enough to build a plan across any marketing dimension (product, social, email, web, growth, strategy, etc.) but IMO its more about the soft skills to build relationships, know when to do a task vs brin......Read More

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What do you bring to the conversation during product/feature discovery?

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

Empathy (insert business buzzword) around the customer and how they use the product and specifically what CUJs/JTBDs they are participating in during that specific usage. If you can really put yourself in the shoes of your customer and think critically around how it will be used and what impact t......Read More

549 Views

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how do you ensure all your messaging stays anchored in / consistent with your company's brand messaging through evolution

Vishal Naik

Google Product Marketing Lead • December 7

I like to anchor messaging to a foundational message house/messaging framework document that all other deliverables stem from. * List out details about your core persona:what their challenges/pain points are. * List out your market context. * Think about your product differentiation *......Read More

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