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AMA: Zendesk Former Product Marketing Director, Abhiroop Basu on Influencing the Product Roadmap

January 12 @ 10:00AM PT

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As a product marketer, when and how do you communicate your product roadmap to both active and prospective customers?

Abhiroop Basu•

Square Product Lead, Payments • 5y

Discussing the roadmap with customers is a critical step in product development because it helps validate and clarify your strategy. It’s tough to give a one-size fits al...

1308 Views

2 requests

Should product marketers be "influencers" or "partners" in product roadmap decisions?

As an influencer you might just share market and customer research, competitive intel, etc. as another input for PM to consider in their own decision making; whereas if you're a true partner, you're discussing and debating with them, as equals, what product roadmap decisions should be and why, where PMs and PMMs bring different inputs and value to the table as equals. Thoughts on being an "influencer" vs. being a "partner" in guiding the product roadmap? Thank you.

Abhiroop Basu•

Square Product Lead, Payments • 5y

You’ve done an admirable job of describing the differences, however the reality can be a lot more nuanced. There are many situations in which I have felt strongly about a...

1557 Views

1 request

Did you ever consider attributing publicly damaging negative reviews a somewhat higher weight, within any kind of equation that connects user feedback/requests with product roadmap decisions?

Abhiroop Basu•

Square Product Lead, Payments • 5y

This is a really interesting question. Leadership typically look at a number of factors when determining what goes in the roadmap. For example, at Zendesk we look at indu...

1657 Views

2 requests

In terms of empowering your sales and success teams to get customers and prospects excited about upcoming features, how do you help them present the roadmap? Does product marketing create a roadmap deck that then gets shared out to the team?

Abhiroop Basu•

Square Product Lead, Payments • 5y

In almost all cases you want to have Product Marketing creating the roadmap deck and delivering it, rather than Product. There are two main reasons for this.First, some P...

2146 Views

5 requests

How does your customers' (or the market) willingness to pay influence your product roadmap?

Do you prioritize features based on their revenue potential?

Abhiroop Basu•

Square Product Lead, Payments • 5y

The mistake some Product Marketers make is to only think about net new revenue potential. For example, let’s say you are deciding between two features that will take equa...

967 Views

2 requests

As a product marketer, how do you know if you're a better fit to be a product manager?

Abhiroop Basu•

Square Product Lead, Payments • 5y

It comes down to which aspects of the role excite you the most. Depending on the company you are working at, Product Marketing and Product Management can have a lot of ov...

2392 Views

2 requests

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?

Abhiroop Basu•

Square Product Lead, Payments • 5y

This happens a lot more than you might think. The Product team looks at the market and decides to build a feature. The feature is rolled out as an early alpha and custome...

1006 Views

2 requests

How does the product marketing team's placement in the org chart (under marketing, product, etc.) effect your ability to influence the roadmap?

Abhiroop Basu•

Square Product Lead, Payments • 5y

You would assume that being in the product organization would allow a PMM more influence. However, I’ve actually found the opposite to be the case. For a brief period o...

1615 Views

1 request