How can PMMs show that they are adding value within the business to the leadership team? Are there any quick / day-to-day tactics that can help to get buy-in from senior leaders?

It's tough to answer broadly as different business will have different needs but if I were to pick one area that PMM can uniquely add value its: A compelling understanding of the customer.

There are so many teams that have knowledge & insight into the customer but PMM is in a unique position to synthesize customer insight across several areas including product, sales, success, support, market & competition and more. It takes a ton of work and time to develop this level of customer knowledge but if you are able to build it, you will be among a small group of people that can credibly represent your target customer.

No matter what topic is being discussed or who is in the meeting room, when someone says "I've spent time with 8 customers, 3 analysts and our sales team this month and this is consistently what I'm hearing", there is very little that can challenge that.

So, know your customer well. Know why they hire your product, know what problem it solves for them, know how big of a problem it is, know what benefit it provides, know why they don't churn, know how they buy. Know it all. Know your customer and you'll be able to add lots of value.

In order to add value, you need to first consider the priorities of the business and the leadership team. You could be doing some pretty great work, but if it doesn't advance the business's priorities it will likely get wasted. Once you're doing work which aligns to the business goals, its a good idea to set goals on a quarterly basis. 

At the end of each quarter or project, put together a summary of the improvements you made, and review it with business leadership. If you have a team be sure you're setting your team up for these opportunities too. Often times these presentations become very long and wordy. Avoid this. A simple deck with key results and objectives should get the job done.

Once you're ready to go to your next job and want to highlight everything you accomplished, you will have all these decks to look back on as a reminder.

Understand the needs each leader has as they will be different from your CEO to your CFO, CRO, CMO (personas), etc...and mental map what value you can bring through your playbooks, framework and content (customery journey). You are bascially running your own integrated marketing campaign and you are the product. Launch yourself with the right data and strategy that you would want for a successful product launch. 

Build relationships and find your champion in each of their orgs. I talk more about managing different stakeholders here.   

When you present your ideas, make sure you aren't going in cold and that it isn't your first time presenting it. You should have practiced it at least 3 times, already presented it to your champions for feedback, iterated on it and label it draft. By the time you get to your leaders they should've already heard about it from someone else. I talk more about consenus building here.  

When you see one of your leaders and are chatting with them in the office, on zoom or elsewhere -- use this opportunity to present your ideas as questions and get feedback and their thoughts. This will help shape your ideas and keep you aligned with them. Don't let those micro interactions go to waste, they are very valuable! Be prepared with a list of questions you want to ask them and chat away. 

Stakeholder management is an important skill of all PMMs. If you're actively driving an important program or initiative, there are a few tactics you can try out.

1. Organize, structure, and lead regular "cadence meetings" - For cross-functional initiatives, people often don't want to volunteer to be the program manager. If you're willing to put in the work and set up the calendar invites, manage the agenda, run the meetings effectively, and foster healthy participation and collaboration - you'll dramatically increase your influence. These are opportunities to speak up and share ideas. Not an easy thing to do.

2. Reporting - Every important project will require some level of reporting. If you provide transparency at the right level and offer consistent reports on a regular cadence, you can surface issues early and gain visibility. Again, reporting is not often seen as a fun thing to do.

3. 1:1s - You may get shot down but it doesn't hurt to set up a monthly or quarterly 1:1 with senior leaders to get feedback and mentorship. It's not a daily tactic but if you rotate through key senior stakeholders you'll build rapport over time.

4. Customer feedback - There's feature feedback that will come through the software but that doesn't capture customer feedback at the sales level. Sales teams often struggle to collate and prioritize feedback on why they lost a deal. As PMMs, you can help make this a regular report back to the leadership team with ACV numbers attached. Hugely influential.

The other effective thing you can do is deeply understand your persona, solution, product, market, industry - whatever. Become a subject matter expert (SME). Be the person people come to for insights and expertise. There's no quick fix for this. You have to be willing to put in the time to study the market, talk to experts, talk to customers, and get close to the sales team.

Come with data and frame your initiatives for your leaders.

Part of your first 30-60-90 days will involve understanding what's working well and not-as-well in the GTM. Talk to sales, CS, and RevOps to get a picture. Are you seeing steep discount rates in a certain segment? Are reps complaining that it takes too much time to find collateral? Is your win rate against a certain competitor low? Is your churn rate high?

Look at the data, dig in to understand the why behind the trends you're seeing, then make the case for some PMM and team investment with senior leaders. And if you don't have the data at the ready, find a way to get it (without boiling the ocean).

"Hey, VP Sales, you mentioned that rep productivity is a top priority for you this quarter. As I was meeting folks in my first week, I noticed a lot of AEs complained that material is super hard to find. I ran a 5-minute survey with the team and it turns out that 70% of reps spend over 2 hours each week just searching for product collateral. If you could get your reps back on the phone for those 2 hours this week, would that be a worthwhile initiative for you this quarter? If so, I can lead the charge with support from your sales enablement team."

Why something like this works:

• Clearly articulates the business problem in a way that's aligned with your stakeholder's priorities

• Backed by data - it's irrefutable

• Shows collaboration and leadership -- you're proposing to lead the initiative, while bringing along your leader's teammates for the ride

• Make change less frightening -- show that you've got a plan and an idea.

Even if you don't get buy-in on the idea right that second, it will help illuminate that you're thinking about the business and know your stakeholder's careabouts. It's also a great way to check in (again) on whether your initiatives are aligned with those of the business; it might turn out that the VP Sales (in this example) is worried more about competitive pressures rather than rep productivity, which helps guide you to work on something that is urgent and important to the business (which will definitely be appreciated by leadership).