How are you influencing how Product thinks about AI in the roadmap? What can I do to be a more credible partner to the product team in this area?

Oh boy, this is a fun one.

First, it's important to note that my team has a really strong working relationship with Product. It's not always the case in every company, and I think it's fair to those who don't that I provide this context.

I do my own reading and research. I need to know enough to understand what good looks like and what's not meeting the bar for differentiated innovation. You can't do that if you're just sitting around and waiting for Product to hand you a list of features.

I am also incessant with asking PMs questions about everything. I am constantly asking clarifying questions and challenging assumptions - both to learn and to stretch the sometimes-constrained thinking of my peers. Before you reach out, come with a baseline level of understanding to help the conversation be as productive as possible.

Do a lot of competitive research. It will be non-stop because the market is changing so rapidly. Become a source of market knowledge to your PM counterparts. Draft potential stories you can tell in market. Come up with new ways of packaging or branding your AI offerings that might seem unconventional. Push the limits and be radical. It's more fun that way and you'll be able to work with Product to find a happy medium between what's explicitly in the code and the aspirational marketing fluff.

Right now, a lot of Product teams are scrambling to identify the best places to apply AI, and businesses are eager to turn AI into their next wave of growth. The great news for PMMs is that you’re uniquely positioned to help guide Product and your broader business during this time of change. Here are a few areas to focus on:

• Understand AI trends and technology: Follow AI news and trends, and learn more from leaders in the space. Become well-versed in key concepts to collaborate effectively with technical teams. This knowledge helps you anticipate market trends and translate product capabilities into understandable benefits. It also allows you to contribute meaningfully to product strategy discussions.

• Understand the market and competitors: At Zendesk, we’ve doubled down on competitive monitoring to help inform Product and our company leadership. Track competitor announcements, and provide timely updates to your PMs. Use this intelligence to inform product strategy, identify gaps, and pinpoint opportunities for differentiation.

• Understand your customers and GTM process: Leverage win-loss analysis and maintain feedback loops with Sales, Customer Success, and technical teams to figure out which feature gaps impact deals and where customers struggle and where they find the most value, quantifying ARR and TAM when possible. Share insights with Product to help them prioritize and build for the right customer profiles and segments. 

For PMMs working at AI companies, turn to the people who use your AI products every day. Learn about their AI use cases, understand the gaps in the product, and listen to their aspirations to use AI in new ways. There's so much we don't know about the potential of AI, so informing the product roadmap isn't just about filling product gaps but also about shaping what the future of AI might look like.

For PMMs working at non-AI companies and trying to influence Product teams to add AI to the roadmap, start exploring specific use cases of AI. Would launching AI-powered personalization into your products improve the customer experience? Would translating content for global audiences help expand your reach? The key is to propose a few solutions backed by real customer examples, and then work with your Product team to focus on one solution to start testing.