What skills do you consider most important to transition from PMM to Sr. PMM?

• Communication and executive presence (and if in a management role, delegation).

• As one moves into more senior PMM roles, it becomes more about the softer skills (you already know how to do the core job!)

• In a senior role, your success depends a lot on how well you can communicate internally (upward to execs, to peers, to different departments and/or leaders in the business) and externally (with customers, prospects, analysts, influencers etc).

• Learning how to clearly articulate your position in a way that resonates and influences will be key to you and your teams success

• If managing a team, communication remains critical (provide transparency about leadership decisions, explain the why behind decisions, share information from other teams) but delegation will be your superpower. How can you elevate your team by giving them responsibilities that challenge them and help them grow? All while freeing you up to focus your time on coaching them (and the team) and making space to strategic think and work on meaty, cross-functional business initiatives.

In our PMM career ladder at BILL we evaluate PMM career progression in the following areas:

• Ability to uncover market insights

• Influence product strategy and development

• Create positioning and messaging

• Orchestrate Go To Market plans
  

At the level you're asking about - PMM to Sr PMM - there are two areas we look for a step change in performance. (1) We like to see more fluency in your ability to leverage market research to bring insights back to product managers; and (2) and we also like to see that not only can you execute against a GTM plan, you have started to create small scale GTM plans, and that you are able to drive execution through others in marketing.

• Build great relationships across the org

• Have a strong internal brand associated with something people look to you for (Ex, you are the goto person for X) - show value and expertise you bring

• Strong communication, presentation and storytelling skills will take you really far

I often get asked about the difference between a PMM and a Sr. PMM, and I think it’s a critical distinction to understand. In my opinion, the difference is less about what you do and more about how you do it.

Some of the key distinctions I see include:

1. Self-Reliance:

   • As you move into a Sr. PMM role, you're frequently expected to be able to do a task or a project with significantly less oversight than a PMM.

   • While coaching and feedback are still part of the process, you should be able to take a project from inception to completion independently.

   • The shift is from needing guidance on what to do to receiving feedback on how you’ve done it

2. Critical Thinking:

   • I you're completing an exercise and are provided an approach for completing it, you should be able to do it as directed, at the PMM level.

   • As a Sr. PMM, you’re expected to assess whether a new approach is needed and propose alternatives. For example: “Here’s the work we discussed, but I believe there’s a better way. Here’s my recommendation.”

3. Ability to Navigate Ambiguity:

   • As you grow into roles of greater seniority, you'll be expected to deal with questions and problems that are increasingly ambiguous.

   • At the PMM level, you should expect a good deal of guidance on how to navigate these situations.

   • At the Sr. PMM level, it's generally expected that you're able to navigate them with a fairly high degree of independence, asking for support only where needed.

4. Pattern Recognition:

   • Your ability to quickly and easily identify potential solutions because you've encountered the problem (or a similar one) before is a big difference between PMM and Sr. PMM.

5. Scope:

   • There may not be a difference between what you're focused on at the PMM and Sr. PMM levels.

   • But, your leaders should be able to trust that you can take on problems or areas of responsibility that are significantly more complex or important to the business as you move to the Sr. PMM level.

   • For example, you might move from managing secondary features to owning primary, business-critical ones.

The biggest shift is your ability to take direction and independently find solutions without requiring detailed guidance. As a Sr. PMM, your leaders rely on you to independently chart a course and solve complex problems, driving outcomes with confidence and minimal oversight.