Stacey Wang

(Hot take?) I, too, am wary when product marketers' stated/primary motive is to "influence the roadmap" b/c influencing the roadmap is just a means to an end; it's not the end itself. (This is perhaps a slim bone to pick, but in my experience, genuine collaborative intent makes all the difference b/w a trusting/productive partnership vs. a guarded/challenging one.) Once there is right intent, you can influence the roadmap by becoming the absolute authority in the world (yes, I said world) in your market, customer, and story. A few key things to get right: (1) Aligning on success metrics. Work with your PM to define the north star vision for the product as well as the metrics that will gauge whether you're on target. You can then tie roadmap arguments to measurable business outcomes and isolate for the product team the set of features that are critical to achieving your mutually agreed-upon result. (2) If the goal is to win net-new customers / increase market share, PMM needs to be an absolute authority on Voice of the Market. To influence the roadmap, you need to know, better than anyone in the world, where the market is commoditizing versus innovating, where your competitors are placing bets, implications on company/product strategy, why you win and why you lose, etc.. This will be key to enabling you/your PM to make strategic trade-offs. (3) If the goal is the make the product more successful amongst current customers (increasing activation or retention, decreasing churn, etc.), PMM needs to be an authority on Voice of the Customer. You need to understand whether or not the product or proposed feature is serving customer needs and prove (or disprove) value hypotheses through betas, data, feedback, and analysis. (4) Finally, you need to understand your positioning and story at a cellular level so that you can contribute to the longer-term vision/trajectory of your product. Some roadmap choices aren't really anchored in market or customer need, but in longer-term "vision," which is just another word for "story," which PMM (at least at Ironclad!) drives. If you intimately understand your company story and strategy, you'll be able to do more than just influence the roadmap; you'll be able to help set trajectory.

- Anchor on the highest priority for the company, versus any one team. One of the hardest but also most liberating things about product marketing is that we are an inherently flexible function. Our skillsets are diverse, so we can quickly get into formation behind whatever is most important and strategic to the company at any given point in time. This is our greatest strength (and, if handled poorly, our greatest weakness; see below response), so don't let it go to waste! If the most important initiative at the company is revenue, make yourself indispensable to sales by holding your team to sales targets. If it is building a revolutionary product, prioritize product. Whatever you do, do not try to be everything to everyone. That just results in a lot of "RAM" (random acts of marketing) that don't make clear to anyone what you're actually good for. - When it comes to resolving tension between teams: Seek to find higher, common ground. Recognize that we're all trying to build a better business, so what are the highest order priorities we can all get behind? Resolve confict by bringing to the table with a point of view grounded in market or customer expertise.

It's hard to answer this in the abstract (w/o knowing more about your current culture), but these two cultural components have been critical to the influence creds PMM has earned at Ironclad: (1) empathy and (2) (a derivative thereof) "win as one" mindset. Empathy means the ability to see things from your counterparty's point of view. "Win as one" culture is something we really care about at Ironclad, and it basically means committing to driving the best results for the company. It means always looking for the highest common ground instead of devolving to the lowest common denominator. It's the opposite of factionalism (e.g., my team's needs versus your team's needs). This "win as one" mindset is really important for product marketing because we are the connective tissue b/w so many teams. When the company is trying to "win as one," PMM can be a powerful company linchpin, greasing the GTM engine for all the teams we connect. Rather than making your goal "influencing the roadmap," you can focus on the higher order goal of making the product successful by your agreed-upon metric. (See above answer.) This makes us better partners to each other, which ultimately helps us achieve our goals. On the flip side, without "win as one," PMM can easily end up in a state of perpetual reactivity, serving this or that team, unable to be proactive/strategic. How do you change your culture to be more empathetic, to actually win as one? I believe product marketing has to exemplify both empathy and "win as one," earning trust and credibility the hard way, i.e. the right way. Set an intention is to drive the right result for the company, versus to merely influence the roadmap, and prove out that intention with excellent results. 

I like the idea and intent behind increasing transparency and visibility, as well as communications efficiency—but the answer to this question totally depends on your market and customers. There may be really valid strategic reasons (you may be in a hyper-competitive market, for example, where your competitors can gain an edge looking at your roadmap) for not wanting to publish a roadmap. 

* A superpower. PMMs come in all shapes and varieties. I like building PMMs into superheroes, known for the thing they do better than anything at the org. I'm always looking for the one thing that a candidate has that sets them head/shoulders above everyone else in the game. Is it storytelling? Analytical rigor? Product aptitude? * High ownership and drive; hunger to make an impact. Ironclad is a mission-driven company and everyone on the team is here to create transformative change in an industry that hasn't seen real innovation in decades. * High integrity—no one likes working with people with bad people! * High growth mindset / hunger to continuously improve. * Great collaboration and negotiation. We sit at the intersection of a lot of teams and needs! PMMs need to be skilled not just at collaborating/bringing value, but negotiating priorities. * They're fun to work with!

This question is completely contingent on your company's business priorities and problems. No one should meet for the sake of meeting! So if the most pressing XFN problem at your company is pricing, you should implement or get PMM into the room for that meeting. If the most pressing XFN problem is opening up a new market, you should get a cadence on the calendar for that. At Ironclad, we have a regular cadence with Product, Sales, and Marketing on topics like Market/Compete, Win/Loss, and all GTM initiatives.

To the extent different teams have different cultures, I will tailor my approach, but for the most part I manage stakeholders according to their individual personalities rather than what team they're a part of. Some folks are more transactional; others are more relationship-driven. No matter the individual, I always start with empathy: understanding the person behind the ask, and what they need to be successful. 

We built a system in Coda that enables XFN stakeholders to self-serve needs asynchronously. Coda also allows us to automate email updates to relevant parts of the business. Finally, we've implemented a cadence of regular team presentations and updates on important XFN topics, e.g., market landscape read-outs, win-rates, AR strategy. 

* High growth mindset / hunger to continuously improve. * Great negotiators. We sit at the intersection of a lot of teams and needs! PMMs need to be skilled not just at bringing value, but negotiating priorities. * Great collaborators. PMMs can't drive impact if they can't collaborate. * Can't emphasize enough the importance of empathy, especially when it comes to XFN work!

Systematizing the capture and dissemination of customer and market feedback is key here. At Ironclad, we spent a lot of time designing and building a system in Coda that brings in customer feedback streams from across the company and disseminates it in real-time to the parts of the business that need it. The real-time aspect of the system allows XFN partners to self-serve asynchronously. We also meet with product and sales several times a quarter to synthesize and discuss areas of concern bubbled up from our Coda system.