What are two examples that you would share of how you influence the product roadmap to a Product Manager?
1 Answer
Elizabeth Grossenbacher
Cisco Product Marketing Leader • January 19
Any time I’ve influenced the product roadmap, it was a direct result of a customer-centric research initiative. Here are two examples of this:
- Focus Groups! After dozens of Voice of Customer interviews, I put together a face-to-face focus group. The event coincided with a key industry event, so all of our focus group participants were in the same area at the same time. I worked with the PM ahead of time to select participants and establish the goals and agenda. Together, we created a set of exercises to do with the focus group. At the end of the event, I created a report and shared it with the PM team (and several other stakeholders). One of the objectives of this focus group was to inform the product roadmap. The most valuable lesson here was to engage the PM from the start and consider them as a partner.
- Quarterly customer intelligence reports! On a quarterly basis, we would put together a customer intelligence report based on VoC interviews, customer surveys, analyst reports, win-loss data, and recorded sales calls. Upon analyzing the data, we’d identify some key themes and create a report with the findings for both the GTM team and the PM team.
My biggest lesson was this: try to understand our customer’s roadmap or future vision. When I was able to uncover that in my research, and couple it with the market size, and potential dollar opportunity associated with it, then the PM team would be more interested in pursuing the features.
786 Views
Atlassian Sr. Director, Head of Product Marketing, Jira and Jira suite, Claire Drumond on Influencing the Product Roadmap
July 24 @ 10:00AM PST
Meta Product Marketing, Reality Labs, Kavya Nath on Influencing the Product Roadmap
April 3 @ 10:00AM PST
Google Head of Marketing, Google Maps Platform, Madeline Ng on Influencing the Product Roadmap
March 21 @ 10:00AM PST
Top Product Marketing Mentors
Sarah Din
Quickbase VP of Product Marketing
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing
Jenna Crane
Klaviyo Head of Product Marketing
Alex Lobert
Meta Product Marketing Lead, Facebook for Business & Commerce
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing
Christine Sotelo-Dag
ThoughtSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing
Kevin Garcia
Anthropic Product Marketing Leader
Amanda Groves
Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing
Alissa Lydon
Dovetail Product Marketing Lead
Related Questions
What tools should Product Marketing use to relay customer feedback to Product management?What are some tips for helping drive product roadmap as a product marketer if you don't have data or customer anecdotes at your disposal?For a new product launch that is under development, when is the right time to start planning and meeting with the different channels?Can you share advice for the first product marketer at a company for influencing the product roadmap?How does your approach to influencing a 3 year product vision vs. next quarter or next year's product roadmap differ?At what stage should product marketing collaborate with product design on the design process?