AMA: Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing, Caroline Walthall on Influencing without Authority

The three biggest things that have helped me build influence as a product marketer have been: 1) Understanding the big picture workings of the business, including how you grow, earn, and retain revenue. 2) Building up strong credibility as a user advocate based on data and first-hand research. 3) Taking ownership and stake in the success metrics that matter most to your product, design, and engineering counterparts. This means, pitching in to get results! Strong business understanding: The reaso ...Read More

I think the most crucial skills for growing your influence are relationship building, curiosity, data-centricity, knowledge of senior leadership, open collaboration, defining clear roles, and delivering marketing impact. All these things contribute tangible value to your peers. Relationship building: This can’t really be taught, it needs to be practiced and the work is never done on this skill. It’s about putting people first, being empathetic, and staying aware of give-and-take dynamics. How we ...Read More

Face time: Face time, whether virtual or in person is always going to go farthest in maintaining connections. We’re social creatures after all. If you don’t already  have a regular cadence of seeing some of the most important stakeholders in meetings each month, now is a good time to take inventory and get a little bit of calendar time. Now, this doesn’t always need to be in the form of 1:1s. There are plenty of instances where being part of regular cross-functional meetings will be enough.  Lis ...Read More

User and Market Research Decks: These types of share outs are a great outlet for building a narrative around a product direction or opportunity that arises organically in the market.  Marketing plan decks: If you’re looking to share more of a marketing vision, make it as simple as possible. Leading with messaging and the broader market story can be really effective here, especially if you’ve validated it with your customers.  Recommendation or POV one-pager: If what you’re looking to share is a ...Read More

Information is power! Treat all your initial one-on-one calls with stakeholders as a research endeavor. Ask about their goals and challenges. Ask what they hope you can collaborate or drive forward. Get a sense for their communication style and how they process information. Ask genuine questions to both learn from them and show you respect the expertise they've built up. Outside of being a sponge and getting to know your colleagues, I would think through at least one "quick win" project you can ...Read More

I believe strongly in giving my team autonomy to progress and drive their careers, but at a certain point, we all need mentors to help us think through specific actions that can grow our leadership influence. We all have blind spots. As I've grown in my career as a people manager and leader, I've developed a PMM Growth Framework to use with my team. I think that building influence can come from many things and it helps to pull apart the threads to understand where your team has it and where ther ...Read More

Reflect:  I reflect on who I would ask to be my peer reviewer probably about once a quarter, even if we only do 360s annually. It’s worth thinking about: “How have I helped this person lately? How have I made their job easier or more impactful?” “What are their impressions of me? How could I show up as more of a leader and helpful peer with them?” Ask for feedback:  You can also ask directly for feedback on what would make your asks easier to say yes to in the future. Especially after you’ve tri ...Read More