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Virtual Event
Earning Roadmap Influence

Earning Roadmap Influence

Thursday, November 13th, 2025 • 12pm–1pm PT ·

Are you looking to shape product strategy with market insights? Join 150+ PMMs to learn from product marketing leaders who’ve successfully guided product teams to prioritize what customers truly need. Discover how to influence the roadmap with compelling market data, customer feedback, and competitive analysis so your voice drives impact. You’ll walk away with real examples, practical tools, and strategies to confidently partner with product and steer decisions that win in the market.

  • Date: Thursday, November 13th, 12 - 1 pm PT (3 – 4 pm ET)

  • Location: Online (link will be sent to registrants prior to the event)

  • Cost: This event is free. However, there are limited seats.

Top Questions

  • What's the most effective way you e presented customer feedback to the product team?

    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    The most effective way to present customer feedback is to analyze it across multiple dimensions and provide strategic insights rather than just raw data. I actively engage with customers across the spectrum - those who love us, those who are upset, and prospects. I also work closely with field teams to understand escalations, executive business reviews, and unusual feature requests. It's important to look at customer feedback over time while also considering current trends - you can't just rely ...Read More

    368 Views
    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    The most effective way to present customer feedback is to transform it from raw data into strategic insights and recommendations. The critical distinction is that you don't want to give product teams homework - you want to give them insight. I've seen people earlier in their PMM careers fall into the trap of treating customer feedback collection like cataloging information, as opposed to mining it for insights, strategy, or recommendations. When you present feedback as strategic insights rather ...Read More

    362 Views
    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    The most effective way I've presented customer feedback is through a centralized, systematic process that delivers actionable insights rather than raw data. This has been a challenge at almost every company I've worked at. The first step is aligning with sales and solution engineers on a single place to capture information - ideally the CRM, but sometimes it ends up being a spreadsheet that PMM maintains. At Stripe, my team runs a process where all feedback comes into a central JIRA-based system ...Read More

    395 Views

  • Best tips for earning roadmap influence when a product marketer is new to a company or industry?

    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    Lead with passionate curiosity and ask follow-up questions rather than immediately sharing your own perspective. I call this approach "going two levels deeper" - whenever a PM starts talking about their product on your first call, ask two questions about what they said instead of responding with your own point of view. People love to share their insights and expertise (that's why we're all on this panel today). By showing genuine curiosity and interest in what they have to say, you'll build rapp ...Read More

    378 Views

  • What metrics or signals do you track to measure the success of product marketing initiatives beyond vanity metrics like MQLs or leads generated?

    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    To measure product marketing success beyond vanity metrics, I focus on tracking the impact of our initiatives on product adoption and revenue generation. At one of my previous companies in the spend management space, I identified that our lack of NetSuite integration was a significant blocker to product adoption. Despite the complexity of building such an integration, I gathered concrete market data by talking to sellers and users to demonstrate that this wasn't just anecdotal feedback but a cri ...Read More

    395 Views

  • What was your turning point when you went from being just an input provider to a strategic partner to the product team?

    Jodi Innerfield
    Jodi Innerfield

    Product Marketing Consultant | Formerly Salesforce • 7mo

    My turning point came when the head of product management started asking me questions about what we should be building rather than just telling me what they had decided. The moment I realized I was more of a strategic partner than an input person was when the head of PM began asking for my insights on what we should be doing, what competitors were doing, or if our pricing was competitive. Initially, I experienced imposter syndrome, wondering why they were asking me these questions. But then I re ...Read More

    380 Views
    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    My turning point came when I found spaces where I organically empathized with the audience rather than forcing myself to learn about them. The biggest unlock was finding work where I naturally and genuinely connected with the audience. We talked about Substacks, events, and other ways to understand customers - for me, the difference came when I was genuinely interested in these things, not just because my job required it. When I found myself geeking out about the same topics as my audience in my ...Read More

    387 Views
    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    My turning points have always come when I was asked to step up into roles where I initially felt unqualified but had to trust my excitement over my self-doubt. Every major development in my career has been when I felt personally that I was wildly unqualified for something, but leadership asked me to step up anyway. I've learned to listen to what I call my "first voice" - the voice of excitement and ideas - rather than my "second voice" that tells me I'm in over my head or that I'll fail. We've a ...Read More

    396 Views
    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    The turning point came when I was brought into the roadmap planning process and asked for ongoing feedback as a market expert. The shift happens when your relationship with product moves from "you're just going to help me launch or amplify this after I've built it" to "what do you think about us exploring this?" or "can you help us get feedback?" When product teams invite you to participate in strategic planning, UX research, or talking to users to validate concepts in the ideation stage, that's ...Read More

    433 Views

  • How do you advocate for adding features to the roadmap when competitors have them but they're not seen as a priority internally?

    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    Evaluate competitive features against your strategic priorities rather than reflexively responding to every competitor move. When advocating for features that competitors have launched, first determine if they've done something truly category-defining versus just incrementally better or achieving feature parity. It's easy to over-rotate on competitor moves and end up playing follow-the-leader rather than charting your own course. Product marketing should have a thoughtful point of view on your c ...Read More

    385 Views

  • How far out is your roadmap planned, and at what level of detail?

    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    Focus on a 6-month roadmap horizon, as longer timeframes aren't realistic in today's rapidly changing technology landscape. If anyone is asking for a solid, committed two-year roadmap, that's not realistic even at the most mature companies in the world. The technology landscape is changing so rapidly that if you built plans based on a two-year horizon, you'd likely end up on the back foot. A 6-month roadmap is what you should focus on most. When thinking about competitive responses and roadmap p ...Read More

    347 Views
    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    Our roadmap typically extends about a year out, with confidence levels decreasing the further into the future we look. We do fiscal year planning, and the confidence levels follow a gradient. Features planned within the next 3 months have high confidence (80%+ certainty), and this naturally tapers off as we look further ahead. The ability to remain agile, especially in a world of rapid AI development, depends largely on company culture and size. Larger companies tend to have more rigidity becaus ...Read More

    368 Views
    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    For startups with fluctuating roadmaps, push for at least a 3-month view, ideally 6 months, by aligning with sales leadership. At Stripe, we have a more mature planning process similar to what Charles described, but I've spent most of my career in startups where roadmaps are constantly in flux. My advice for product marketers in that situation is to push your product counterparts to commit to at least a 3-month roadmap, ideally 6 months. A good strategy is to get your sales leadership bought int ...Read More

    425 Views

  • What advice would you give to a product marketer struggling to get a seat at the roadmap table?

    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    Use AI to pressure-test your ideas before presenting them to product teams or executives. If you have an idea or something you feel passionate about, put it into your LLM of choice with a prompt to act like a corporate strategist, CEO, or even profile your executive team, and have it critically evaluate your strategy. Make it poke holes in your idea, force you to flesh out all dependencies, challenge your narrative, and identify weaknesses. This simulates what executives will do when you present ...Read More

    357 Views
    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    Stay on top of market trends and establish a systematic process for gathering customer feedback. First, use AI tools to stay informed about what competitors are doing and what they're announcing. Set up alerts so you're always aware of market developments and can be the first to inform your product counterparts. Second, if your company doesn't have a process for collecting customer and field feedback, take the initiative to establish one. This is critical for earning respect from your product te ...Read More

    408 Views
    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    Leverage AI tools to scale your customer research capabilities and create more capacity for strategic work. In today's world of AI, there are many ways to scale your ability to gather and analyze customer insights. In the past, PMMs might spend hours shadowing live calls, listening to Gong recordings, and fielding surveys. While these activities are still valuable, you can now supplement them with AI tools. For example, Gong AI can synthesize summaries of hundreds of customer conversations from ...Read More

    379 Views

  • Have you ever failed to influence the roadmap on something you believed was critical, and what did you learn?

    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    Yes, I've failed to influence the roadmap many times, and the key lesson was to approach rejection with curiosity rather than frustration. Especially in mid-level roles, it can be easy to miss important context like technical debt that might prevent prioritization of your suggestions. I remember being incredibly bullish against a pricing and packaging decision that I thought was terrible, but they went forward with it anyway. About a year and a half later, I learned there was a compelling reason ...Read More

    353 Views
    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    A key lesson I learned at Visa was the importance of deeply immersing yourself in your audience's world to build credibility when influencing the roadmap. Understanding your audience and the products being delivered requires multiple mechanisms for becoming an expert in that space. Using Visa's fintech audience as an example, I found it was highly communal. To truly understand them, I needed to immerse myself in their watering holes - the industry trade shows where they congregate and the Substa ...Read More

    359 Views
    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    Yes, I've experienced situations where product prioritized forward-looking initiatives over immediate customer requests, which initially seemed misguided but proved valuable later. Looking at what's happening with AI in the last 12 months provides a good example. In my business, sales would question why we were working on "shiny" AI features instead of table stakes functionality that users were explicitly requesting. But fast forward 12 months, and those AI capabilities became essential. Product ...Read More

    387 Views

  • How do you structure your relationship with product management teams?

    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    Our relationship with product management includes regular syncs at different planning horizons and leadership levels. Similar to Charles, we have quarterly planning, annual planning (our 2026 planning has been underway for months), and recurring syncs between PMM leadership and PM counterparts. I'm fortunate that my PM counterpart was previously a PMM and understands the value we bring. It's important to note that not all PMs understand what product marketing does, especially at startups or if t ...Read More

    404 Views
    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    At Bill, we have a multi-layered sync structure with product management that serves different strategic purposes. We have quarterly syncs focused on planning and strategy, monthly syncs to review OKRs and ensure both teams are delivering on objectives, and thrice-weekly product stand-ups. While PMM always attends the quarterly and monthly meetings, the stand-ups are more selective as they often delve into R&D-oriented topics that require deeper interlock between product and engineering. Howe ...Read More

    394 Views
    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    We maintain close relationships with product leadership while using a relationship map to ensure efficient communication across the product marketing team. I'm in lockstep with our leadership team - talking to my head of engineering, CTO, CPO, and CEO almost daily. This level of access comes from consistently providing valuable insight and market context. To manage these relationships efficiently, we've created a relationship map across the product marketing team that clarifies who owns conversa ...Read More

    375 Views

  • Can you share a specific moment where you successfully influenced a major roadmap decision?

    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    I successfully influenced a major roadmap decision by advocating for a NetSuite integration that product was reluctant to prioritize due to its complexity. At a previous spend management company, we didn't have a good integration with accounting and ERP systems, particularly NetSuite. This integration kept coming up with nearly every user, but it was complicated to build and involved trade-offs for our product team who were focused on core product capabilities. I felt strongly that we needed to ...Read More

    393 Views
    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    I successfully influenced the roadmap at Visa by creating a card design simulator that solved a persistent customer pain point. While working on a new offering for fintechs launching debit or credit card programs, I kept hearing that it was incredibly difficult to design cards that complied with Visa's complex rules, which were documented in a massive PDF with countless pages. Rather than waiting for a complete rewrite of these rules, I proposed creating a simulator tool - similar to how TurboTa ...Read More

    370 Views
    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    I successfully influenced a roadmap decision at SalesLoft by advocating for proper scope in a new suite of agents rather than rushing to meet an arbitrary launch date. We were having the classic speed versus scope conversation, where engineering was focused on what could be completed within a certain number of sprints by a target launch date, rather than what would constitute a truly viable product. I walked through all the prototypes with the product team and showed them the various points of f ...Read More

    411 Views

  • What does earning roadmap influence mean to you, and how is that different than just having influence?

    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    Earning roadmap influence means being perceived as a market expert and the authentic voice of the customer and field. It's about having pattern recognition that instills confidence with product teams, making them see you as an important voice in roadmap prioritization. It's not just about relaying feedback verbatim from the field, as sometimes sellers might give feedback based on just one random account. Instead, it's about truly knowing the market and customer needs with enough depth and breadt ...Read More

    384 Views
    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    Earning roadmap influence means being seen as someone whose specific lived experience contributes something unique that cannot be obtained from any other source. It's about connecting dots that others can't naturally connect and having large-scale impact at the board level. In product marketing, we should always be trying to up-level the altitude of the conversation so that PMM isn't seen as just a high-cost center but as a strategic growth lever that improves the company's financial position. W ...Read More

    408 Views
    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    Earning roadmap influence means experiencing a pull from product to input into the roadmap, rather than pushing for inclusion. It's when product management seeks out PMM's input not because they feel obligated, but because they genuinely see PMM as THE expert in the customer and market. This expertise creates a magnetic pull where product values your perspective because you bring something new that stakeholders wouldn't otherwise be aware of. You've earned that influence by demonstrating subject ...Read More

    369 Views

  • AI tools for scale

    Charles Tsang
    Charles Tsang

    BILL Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners • 7mo

    Notebook LM (part of Google Gemini) is an excellent AI tool for aggregating and synthesizing customer intelligence at scale. Notebook LM serves as a powerful aggregator for all the intelligence you want to analyze. You can input proprietary company information like research decks and Gong recordings, and it will help synthesize everything. You can engage with it like any large language model, asking questions and getting insights. What's particularly useful is that it can even generate a short p ...Read More

    379 Views
    Priya Patel
    Priya Patel

    Stripe Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) • 7mo

    I regularly use Gemini in Gmail for daily communication and have various AI tools for different purposes. I use Gemini extensively, particularly in Gmail for helping me write emails - it's something I use throughout my workday. We also have access to ChatGPT and Claude at our company. One area where I'm still looking for effective AI solutions is slideware - I haven't yet found a tool that works well for developing beautiful slides, though I'm interested in learning what others have found succes ...Read More

    411 Views
    Gray Hardell
    Gray Hardell

    Iterable VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy • 7mo

    I use different AI tools for specific purposes and have created custom agents to extend product marketing's impact across the organization. I've developed several AI applications that have been game-changers. One is creating AI agents that help sales teams contextualize our positioning - they can input account information, the AI does research, and then it generates customized positioning and one-pagers. This extends product marketing's reach without requiring our direct involvement in every sal ...Read More

    379 Views

See Event Answers

Speakers (3)

  • Priya Patel

    Priya Patel

    Head of Marketing, SaaS Products (Revenue Finance Automation) · Stripe

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  • Charles Tsang

    Charles Tsang

    Head of Product Marketing - Accounts Payable and Developers / Partners · BILL

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  • Gray Hardell

    Gray Hardell

    VP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy · Iterable

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