For someone working in product marketing, what would you deem most valuable in terms of upskilling to reach the manager level?

Building your path to product marketing management requires focusing on two critical areas - and I'll share what I've found works best based on my experience.

First, it's essential to develop true expertise in the core product marketing craft. The scope of product marketing is incredibly broad and nuanced - you need to be fluent in  everything from strategic narrative development to positioning and messaging, while building deep knowledge of your product, customers, and business landscape. Take ownership of different aspects of the PMM function and aim to excel in each one over time. This depth of expertise not only builds credibility as a subject matter expert, but gives you the foundation to effectively guide others.

Second, and equally important, actively seek opportunities to lead major cross-functional initiatives. In my experience, tier 1 product launches are perfect for this - they're complex, highly visible projects that require orchestrating multiple teams toward a shared goal. These launches let you demonstrate both your product marketing expertise and your ability to drive business impact through others. Each launch is an opportunity to build your leadership track record and develop the skills you'll need as a manager. For anyone eyeing that jump to management, my advice would be to look for these 'unofficial' leadership opportunities. They're often the best training ground for developing the soft skills that make great managers.

One thing I've learned is that the combination of these two areas - deep functional expertise and proven cross-functional leadership - creates a compelling case for advancement into management. When you can show both expertise of the craft and the ability to drive results through teams, you become a natural choice for stepping into broader leadership roles.

To become a PMM manager, I would:
- Demonstrate that you can lead people, even if you aren't a manager. That means leading by influence and leading strategy. Come up with ideas and champion them across your team/organization. Rally others around them and execute, then report on the impact it made. Do this over and over.
- ASK. Be vocal about what you want and set up a plan to get there with your manager. Possibly just ask to manage 1 person to start.
- Work on as many cross-functional and collaborative projects as possible, to build the muscle of working with many people, lots of opinions, and motivating people to take action.

Product marketers need to be great storytellers for their products, but also for themselves. Internal communications, cross-functional collaboration, and executive comms are crucial to growing your career as a PMM. This is because product marketing is not only a functional career, it's a strategic career. You have to be able to influence your product teams, your business teams, and your supporting marketing teams. You are often the face of the product and need to be able to speak publicly or with customers.
All of that said, written communication is important, but I think public communication skills are arguable more important. Verbal communication skills is where I would focus if you want to become a manager or PMM leader.

These are in somewhat prioritized order:

• First, be excellent at your craft. As a manager, you need to coach others to reach their fullest potential and to meet business expectations. That means you need to know what good looks like and teach others how to hit that bar.

• Second, be able to prioritize and decide the best course of action for high-impact projects. PMMs bridge so many teams - sales, PM, demand gen, comms, and more - if you think you get a lot of asks as an IC, wait til you lead a team ;) You need to know what’s most important for the business so you can focus your attention and your team’s attention on what matters most.

• Third, influence without authority. This will help you avoid becoming a reactive service org. Sometimes stakeholders will ask for something but you might not think it makes sense for the business. You need to be able to either push back or advocate for a different idea, and you need to be able to do that while earning the right to continue being a respected partner.

• Finally, communication. Just as you adapt your comms for different audiences, you’ll need to adapt your communication for new audiences as a manager - execs, finance, etc. Think about what these stakeholders care about and how they like to consume information. Adapt your communication accordingly.

The competencies that moves one from individual contributor to manager are not unique to Product Marketing. What is unique is how these are applied, within the PMM scope in your role / organization. Generally these are:

• Strategic thinking: the ability to break down complex and ambiguous problems into questions / topics that can help guide the work of a team, and your XFN partners. The higher you move, the larger your scope becomes. The ability to move between levels of detail to ask the right questions will help you move from a doer to a leader / guide.

• Clear and tailored communication: quality communication is usually the product of quality thinking (see above). Aside from this, 1) keeping your thoughts structured and concise will help others understand your thinking; 2) tailoring your communication to your specific audience so that it is customized in terms of level of detail, tone of voice, and context, will help you get the buy-in you ned.

Aside from these, it's important to focus on your unique areas of strengths and build on them so that as you advance in your career, these become part of your brand (what you're known to be brilliant at). These are just a few example areas.

• Strategic Vision: being able to identify paths for a company to achieve significant growth using industry trends, customer / competitive research, and data. It is important for these to not be so far fetched but also far enough where the gap from present day that can result in significant growth (in revenue, customers). Communicating these in the right formats (e.g., executive ready decks/docs or the right meeting / chat forums), and to "sponsors" who can help you get the right air time to showcase your work.

• EQ & Influence: identify motivations / detractors of every individual regardless of their tenure or background. Meeting their needs to get them on your side and create influence. This will help you both with getting sponsors as well as motivate a team.