How do I influence the roadmap of our product, when my product team isn't very open to it?

There are a few questions here: How do I influence the team, how do I influence the roadmap, and how do I get them to listen to the feedback I'm bringing from customers.   First, seek to understand. Approach your product team and roadmap decision makers with the intent to understand their values, motivations, goals, concerns, and needs. Once you've developed this level of understanding of your stakeholders, you can then truly understand what it is they want. After understanding my product team, ...Read More

Winning over stakeholders is a key part of being a PMM, and it might be your approach that needs an iterative update. IMO, influencing roadmap comes down to influencing PMs--and some are going to be easy to work with and easily malleable and some arent. So if your product management team isnt open to customer or prospect feedback on your product, what are they interested in? How are they making their decisions about what to include into roadmap? How are you packaging the insights you hear from c ...Read More

Echoing what Josh and Ross have mentioned, to influence the PM team it's all about figuring out the gaps that the product team has and how you can add value. Competitive intel weak? Share a feature matrix. They haven't talked to customers since the dawn of time? Interview a few, record the convos (with permission), pull out some quotes, and share - this can be really eye opening.  For real roadmap influence, I highly recommend the "Jobs to Be Done" approach. Many product teams are looking at the ...Read More

Bring them market insights, not feature requests. I share recorded interviews and sales calls with the product team to help them understand our customers. Also, I hunt down helpful analysis of the larger market landscape and distribute widely across the org on a regular basis.  Remember where they're coming from - product people usually want to know where to focus their time with the least risk of throwing away work or winding up with the pressure of trying to build for competing priorities. The ...Read More

I really like what Mary, Ross and Josh have to say - great insights What's the product's objective? With the current plans will the business objectives and goals be met?  I'm asuming you are coming from the angle that the business objectives will not be met. Building a business case around gaps, challenges, customer insights, competitive assumptions, sales challenges and opportunities. Building a case isn't enough, build a framework that shows how success can be acheived and communicate it among ...Read More

That's tough since a lot of it is interpersonal dynamics. I don't think there's a silver bullet but a couple thoughts that might help:  1. Bring product into some of the meetings/focus groups where you're hearing the feedback. That may help them crystallize what you're hearing. 2. Set up a 1:1 with your PM counterpart and see what you can do to be helpful in getting feedback to her/him. It could be you're talking past one another. For example she may want data and you're bringing qualatitative f ...Read More