AMA: Momentive Vice President, Product Marketing, Priya Gill on Influencing the Product Roadmap

Not sure I completely answer the question. Typically when I ask candidates to give a presentation, it's less about the specific products they're presenting, but rather HOW they present it. Can the candidate articulate how they effectively approached their GTM strategy, from ideation to execution and beyond. Can they effectively launch a product/feature and properly engage the right cross-functional partners to make that launch a success? Are they outcome-oriented and think about the metrics they're trying to drive with a given launch? Those are just a few things that I would be looking for in a presentation. I would also add: Can they clearly understand the customer pain points and technical capabilities of the product, and translate that into clear marketing messages that resonate? The folks that I've seen who stood out were able to tell a story with their presentation and were clearly outcome-oriented vs tactic-oriented. I don't want someone who's just going to go through the motions. I want a critical thinker who will think outside the box.

I would keep timelines directional but loose, but you need to include something to give customers an indication that you're continuously investing in your product(s) and innovating at a rapid pace. If you have high confidence that it's coming in the next 6 months, you can label that product/feature you're highlighting as "H1 planned" or "Q3 planned". If you're unsure, you could label it as "H2 under investigation". I would never give a specific date unless you're about 1-2 weeks prior to launch and are 100% confident in that date. You definitely should also get legal involved to ensure you have the right verbiage to protect your company around the timeline and customer expectations. 

Funny enough, this was completely a Marketing led rebrand. Product roadmap didn't play a role in guiding the process because we already had the right set of products, we just didn't have the right message or name in the market. An important part of this repositioning was strongly signaling to the market that we are no longer just a surveys company. This has actually been true for a while, but even our own customers had little awareness of some of the other products in our portfolio. But it’s hard to convince the outside world that we’re more than a surveys company with a name like SurveyMonkey, hence the change.

Persistence? :) That's a tough one and something that I've experienced many times in my career. I've always approached that as a challenge that I strongly desire to overcome. Similar to a question I answered above, I always start by building a great working relationship with Product by clearly showing the expertise and value that I uniquely bring into the partnership. As a PMM expert, you want to be seen as the central hub for a lot of critical information regarding not only your customers, but the products you sell, competitors, industry analysts, and many other constituencies. To be considered a subject matter expert, you need to continually gather and analyze data and business intelligence from all of the sources mentioned, Sales and CS, plus external sources — and use this data to inform the evolution of your recommendations around strategy and messaging. This is what separates great PMMs from good PMMs, and the type of expertise that Product values. Competitive intelligence and industry expertise tend to be weakness areas for Product that PMM can uniquely deliver, so that would be a good place to start to beef up your knowledge base to show how you provide value.

The start of building a great working relationship is clearly showing the expertise and value that you uniquely bring into the partnership with Product. As a PMM expert, you want to be seen as the central hub for a lot of critical information regarding not only your customers, but the products you sell, competitors, industry analysts, and many other constituencies. To be considered a subject matter expert, you need to continually gather and analyze data and business intelligence from all of the sources mentioned, Sales and CS, plus external sources — and use this data to inform the evolution of your recommendations around strategy and messaging. This is what separates great PMMs from good PMMs. Competitive intelligence and industry expertise tend to be weakness areas for Product that PMM can uniquely deliver, so that would be a good place to start to beef up your knowledge base.

You need to prove that there's market demand for it and that the customer is willing to pay for it. Or that it's a major cause of churn which clearly shows monetary impact. That can be validated in a number of ways: analyst validation, customer/prospect validation, willingness to pay research. A good place to start would be talking to Sales. Are we losing deals because we don't have that feature? What was the impact of that loss? What risk does it pose to the business by not building that capability? I would also talk to Customer Success (if you have that team). What are they hearing from customers? Are we seeing customers churn because we don't have that capability?

If it's something that's truly needed, you will see many customers asking for the same thing. You can validate this by speaking to other customers or running a survey to assess business needs. Sometimes when you dig a bit deeper, you discover that they have a pain point that could be solved a completely different / better way, so I wouldn't always take what they say at face value. Additionally, if it's critical to their business, you will also see customers churning to competitors who do offer it. You would also see sales not win certain deals because of it. It would also be fruitful to start talking to your Sales and CS teams.