As a product marketer, how do you build informal relationships with your product managers to stay up to date on things in a remote company?

One of the biggest things people get wrong when working remotely is accidentally forgetting to create space for human connection. It can be so easy to end up in a very transactional workflow where you only meet to check-in on statuses of projects and to talk about timelines. This can go on for months when all of a sudden you look around and realize your team is burnt out and disconnected. Something that helps me stay connected with all types of teammates, but in this case my PM is making time fo ...Read More

I think this question is relevant for all of us across all teams right now. And to be honest, I don’t have a good answer because in a lot of ways we are all still figuring out this new world. However here are some things that worked for our team: - Schedule 15 min Zoom coffee chats with PMs you don’t normally work with to stay connected. - Be present and active in PM slack channels. Goof around and show your personality when appropriate because when you are remote you lose the ability to get to ...Read More

Planning ahead for those connects - whether it's scheduled coffee or regular 1:1s or even sometimes inviting them to your team meetings for "fun" is always a great way to build and maintain relationsips - even in this virtual world. And in your 1:1s, don't jump into business all the time right away - make time for bantor and chit chat - too often, especially as we all struggle to combat Zoom fatigue, this becomes especially important. I personally find things become a lot easier / productive whe ...Read More

This is a great question! Developing and building relationships with your colleagues is so important, espeically in a remote world. Here are a few ways that I've seen success in building relationships with product managers:  Shared goals. Align on what's most important to the business (e.g. revenue goals, a user growth goal, a feature growth goal) and how each of you (or your teams) will uniquely contribute to those topline goals. For example: If the goal is to drive overall feature growth, will ...Read More

If your organization uses Slack, set up "Donut" time. Or simply set up 30 minutes monthly 1:1 with your product managers. It can be informal, build relationships. If you see a report that may be relevant to their specific product area, share it with them. If a customer insight is relevant, share it with them. Build trust and credibility and get to know your product managers personally. What are their hobbies? Do you share any interests? People are people, so get to know the people you interact w ...Read More

Although our company hasn't been officially remote, our Product teams all sit in Dublin, Ireland - while our PMMs are all sitting in San Francisco. Of course this physical (and time) difference poses some challenges - we've worked on some strategies that have helped bridge the gap.  - Make sure to set up regular checkins with your product counterparts. This may not feel informal, but it's important to stay connected - even if there isn't anything immenent to ship to market. Take the time to unde ...Read More