AMA: Qualia VP of Marketing, Charlene Wang on Influencing the Product Roadmap

Most disagreements come from people having different sets of assumptions or information. I've found that if you lay out the reasons why you believe the product roadmap should be a particular way and make it easy to prove or disprove your hypotheses, it's easier to make better decisions. For example, in one of my prior product launches, our sales team strongly disliked our mobile app interface and disagreed with the product team on whether the product was ready for a broader launch. Rather than arguing about this subject, I worked with the product team to set up a few additional usability workshops that anyone across the team could attend. We brought in a couple of actual end users to test the mobile app and provide feedback directly. This quickly showed that we needed a redesign of the mobile app and avoided more back-and-forth discussion of the topic based on different opinions across two internal groups. In general, when there's a disagreement on product direction, I try to lay out the assumptions and look for easy, low commitment ways to test hypotheses and inform more objective decisions.

While monetization is a clear way to measure a product launch, it's not the only success metric. There are many other ways to measure a launch that are relevant to specific products or features. Broadly speaking, new products could also impact market awareness, pipeline creation, win rates, adoption, and upsell / renewal. Some features/products were specifically created to unlock new markets or future capabilities. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to measuring the success of a launch. In general, Product Marketers should aim to understand the objectives of the company and how the product roadmap helps advance those objectives. PMMs should work with Product and other teams to define what success looks like and provide informed perspectives on where the roadmap should take into account the market and buyers. PMMs should try to articulate how roadmap decisions impact GTM success, put out a hypothesis for what should be adjusted in the roadmap, and define ways to validate whether or not the hypothesis was correct. Over time as the Product team sees that PMM's input helps with better product decisions, PMMs gain more credibility to further influence the roadmap.

A Product Marketer can influence the product roadmap by bringing valuable insights to the table and building a trusted relationship with the product team. In terms of insights, great Product Marketers are experts on the market, buying process, and psychology of the buyer. Product Marketers can contribute to product decisions by highlighting relevant findings from Voice of the Customer programs, competitive analysis, sales analysis (e.g. win / loss programs), and market research. Product Marketers should also build trust with the product team. To do so, Product Marketers should aim to understand the objectives of the product team and why product decisions are made, including any constraints that the team faces. Product Marketers should ideally work closely with Product throughout the launch process, clearly communicating how different product directions impact GTM outcomes and collaborating with Product to achieve collective goals. By bringing informed perspectives and working together frequently and collaboratively, Product Marketers become an indispensable part of any product launch and will naturally influence the roadmap.

The closer you are to the product launch, the more tactical the PMM has to be in influencing the roadmap. Products that are coming out in a quarter are close to being built (if not already built) and have very little room for adjustment. If Product Marketers are only being brought in at this stage, the PMM's primary way to influence the roadmap is to work with Product to define launch success metrics and provide feedback post-launch on what did or did not work. This will help with future iterations of the product. More strategic Product Marketing teams generally work with product teams to plan launches about a year in advance. With a year's worth of lead time, PMMs can more effectively share perspectives on what should be adjusted in the roadmap based on market and buyer insights, competitive intel, win/loss analysis, customer feedback, etc. This gives PMM and PMs time to collaborate back-and-forth before jumping into launch execution. One year of lead time to plan the roadmap tends to be a good goal for SaaS companies that want to create a strategic launch process that accounts for perspectives from across the product and GTM teams. At three years of lead time, most companies are defining their overall strategy and vision, not necessarily just a product roadmap. At this time horizon, PMMs can help the company think through overall positioning and how this needs to evolve given the dynamics of the market and movement of competitors and other players in the industry. Here PMMs can contribute towards a SWOT analysis of the company, providing recommendations for areas to pursue and avoid as the organization considers where to focus in the coming years.

The product team ultimately wants to be successful and launch products that will help the company achieve better outcomes. Most teams are happy to give you a seat at the table if you can bring valuable insights that they didn't previously have. Great Product Marketers often dive deep into the market, competitors, buyer personas, buying process, analyst community, voice of the customer, etc. The product team generally won't have the capacity or direct exposure to all of these areas to have a very informed perspective on all of these audiences. If you can pull together valuable insights and present them clearly to show where the product roadmap should be adjusted and how this can help achieve better outcomes, most teams would welcome the input. I would start by picking one area where you can provide an easily actionable recommendation that will help the product team achieve a quick win. I would make it easy for the team to incorporate your suggestion into the roadmap and measure how this helped improve the outcome of a launch. Try to get a few quick wins that you can point to and then build momentum with the product team over time. As you show over time how you've helped everyone drive better outcomes, the product team should become more willing and eager to involve you early and often in the planning process.