AMA: Slack Former VP of Product & Solutions Marketing, Katherine Kelly on Influencing the Product Roadmap

The hard way - you earn it. First, I should clarify that when I think about influencing roadmap, I'm not thinking about it as "getting a feature I think is important onto the roadmap" - if that's the approach you're putting yourself in the same category as every other person who lobs requests at a product manager and they'll see it as just more clamouring for more, more, more. When I think about influencing the roadmap, I think about building a real partnership with product. Understanding the tradeoffs they're trying to make, the limitations they're facing. What are the factors that go into their decision making and then what information does my PMM team have to add to that conversation. This starts with listening. Ask to join a planning meeting (or two or more) as a silent observer. Listen to how they're making decisions and note what factors are going into their decision making. After the meeting, follow up with some of the product leaders and offer to help. Over time, ask for a role in planning where you/your team can present information / input into that planning session. Over more time, you'll notice you get questions proactively from product and they'll seek your team's advice, over more time you'll be an integral part of that planning process with an assigned role to play. 

VOC is so powerful and it's a great place for PMM to help build that connection between product and GTM. If there's already an ad-hoc process in place, essentially what you're looking to do is add guardrails and formalize a process. Here's three things I'd focus on developing: * What information will you collect (deal/opp size, use case, industry, competitor, etc) and where will it live (this can be as simple as a google sheet to start, don't let a tech decision stand in your way) * A regular forum and cadence to discuss the feedback - this could be part of an existing planning meeting, it's own meeting or it could be a Slack channel ;) the important thing is that people know when / where to go to hear and respond and that they commit to that * A mechanism for accountability - what commitments are each team making (internally, or to customers) and how will you track that they've been done? Then of course, you need buy in from product leadership and GTM leadership (sales, success/services) on all of the above. As you go you'll find and smooth out the wrinkles. Good luck!

While products are in development the best thing to focus on to get a jump on your GTM is defining the target audience. The specific features may change and that may impact your specific messaging and content etc, but the overall use case should be fairly stable if it's in development so you can work on who you're going to go after and what you want them to do (adopt, upgrade, buy, etc) and then start making links to any existing GTM plays, is this product going to be part of an existing play or will you need to build a new motion for it? It's essentially the foundation of your positioning which you'll then be able to build your launch messaging off of and ultimately your launch plan. Since we're talking about influencing roadmap - sharing this with product and collaborating on it is super effective in continuing to hone the product. For example, let's say you think this product is going to be really effective at bringing a new audience to your company, but product was building it to be an add-on to an existing product...that's great fodder for a roadmap prioritization discussion. Is the new audience opportunity big enough to justify changing it to a stand-alone product, or is it better to adjust your GTM to focus on existing customers at launch. 

This feels like an executive level misalignment of goals. I don't know the specifics in your company but if product management / product leadership is being measured by how well they hit their timelines, then that will trickle down to their teams and be what those teams focus on. This is probably feedback you should share when crafting next year's goals and metrics.

I'm potentially not understanding this question - all of the companies I've worked at beta test features and products prior to launch, so product always explicitly solicits this type of feedback prior to a launch. In fact it's a great place for product marketing to get feedback and customer stories that can help with launch positioning, messaging and content as well!

A critical piece of information is missing from this question: why isn't it seen as a priority internally? There are several valid reasons not to launch something even if your competitor has it and customers want it - the main one that comes to mind is that it takes you too far out of your core audience and core use case which would then require a significant investment not only in product to maintain that new line, but also in GTM to spin up a motion to build that new funnel. It could be a simple cost benefit analysis of the direction that investment would take the company, versus other possible investments for the product. This is a theme that will come up in a lot of my answers - but "influencing the roadmap" shouldn't be about getting a particular feature on the roadmap. It should be about getting a seat at the table where the strategy and direction are being set. It should be about building a relationship with product that goes beyond dates and deliverables and into the why behind the decisions. If PMM and Product are aligned on the direction of the company (the audience, the use cases, the priorities for the business) then you'll have a lot more alignment on the roadmap itself as well.