AMA: Twilio Principal Product Marketing Manager, IoT, Elizabeth Grossenbacher on Influencing the Product Roadmap

Story time! I once worked at a small company where two stakeholders disagreed on the product roadmap. The CTO disagreed with the CPO. In that scenario, the CTO had the experience as the customer, so this person felt that the experience was valid and warranted a seat at the table in product development discussions. As the PMM on the product, I took extra care to understand why the CTO disagreed. I took an inquisitive approach and treated the conversation like an interview with a Key Opinion Leader. I continued to bring the interview back to how this would impact the customer (current and future). Ultimately, we were able to come to an agreement and made timeline adjustments which accommodated the CPO’s vision as well as the CTO’s insights. When you have a disagreement, step one should be to have an open conversation with the customer’s best interest at heart. More often than not, the PM will have a good reason for their thinking. It’s possible that one of us has different information that maybe neither of us shared or didn’t explain thoroughly. If you still disagree after this conversation, bring it back to the customer and the customer’s priorities. More importantly, explaining WHY this is critical for delivering outstanding customer experience. Bring it back to both qualitative and quantitative information: * Use customer quotes * % or # of customers requesting the feature * Call out specific logos for customers who have credibility (champions or big logos have worked well for me) * Explain how the feature impacts buyer requirements * Provide win/loss data based on the feature * Share dollar amounts around opportunity costs from not having the feature

I view these as two different things: (1) informing the future vision of the product roadmap and (2) impacting the roadmap in the short term to meet current customer requirements. An example for #1: A few years ago, I partnered with a PM to dream up a product that was unlike anything else on the market. Once we had a few big ideas, we did some market research with secondary data from analysts. From there, we put together a focus group to get customer feedback and validate the secondary research. We had discussions around a specific problem. We got granular when diving into these pain points and exploring the current attempt to ease the pains. These insights shaped how the roadmap looked for this futuristic vision of the product. An example for #2: I conducted a win-loss analysis that consisted of interviews and sales data. The results revealed which features were table stakes and preventing us from winning deals. I was able to quantify the losses and put a dollar amount on the features we lacked. An analysis like this helps the PM team see how the features impact sales. Bonus points if you can pair the win-loss analysis with the buy team’s requirements, especially with explanation for WHY each feature is required and explain what the customer expects to solve with the feature. A few things to consider: * Seek feedback from high value customers. Winning or keeping those high value customers is critical for business health, and compliments customer retention efforts. * Your PM is your partner. Set up a regular cadence to learn how they’re dreaming up the product. Get their buyin on your research topics. Having their support from the start will make them more receptive to hearing your ideas later. * Quantify the feature in dollar amounts. Pair this with a customer anecdote or quote. * Go deep on customer pain points. Try as hard as you can to know what it’s like to be your customer and face the problem at hand. Understand WHAT the pain is, WHY it hurts, and WHY the current methods to solve the problem don’t work. Knowing their pain points will help you better articulate your ideas to influence the product roadmap.

First I try to understand why it isn’t a priority. I’ve seen this happen a lot. Many times, it’s because our brilliant product managers are trying to build a better way to “do it.” Other times, it’s because the feature doesn’t really make sense for the market, and it’s just a marketing ploy. For example, imagine that your company offers cellular connectivity to non-phone devices (think, a water meter in middle-America). In the telecom world, 5G is a really hot topic. And it’s a great technology for smartphones. But, for most of the low-data-use connected devices (like a water meter in middle-America), it’s completely overkill. Low-data devices like this are by far the bulk of connected devices in the world. Thus, 5G would only be a more expensive technology – both to build and for the customer to use. It simply doesn't make sense to put it on the product roadmap given the current market landscape. Yet, other vendors are claiming to offer it and some customers are asking about it. In scenarios like this, you have to be prepared with a thoughtful response to the customer that illustrates your expertise in the market. Still, you should have a discussion with your PM to determine why a certain feature isn’t a priority. Here are some tips that worked for me when I have conversations with PM: * Always bring it back to the customer and what the customer is trying to do. * Make sure that the competitor feature isn’t just market hype or marketing jargon. * Have a conversation with the PM about whether the feature will soon become obsolete as the product advances. * Ask the question, “Under what circumstances would this feature be a priority in your opinion?”

We have never quantified this, but I will say that we always start with assumptions (i.e., “the work of the designer”). But then we go on to validate (or disprove) and further iterate on those assumptions with what PMM uncovers from customer data. I come to every collaboration with the assumption that the designer I’m partnering with cares deeply about the usage of her design. I have a degree in design, and I can tell you that user-centric design is at the core of any formal training. World famous designers such as Tim Brown have inspired designers all over the world with concepts such as Design Thinking, which has shaped the ideal approach for product design. Therefore, I’m trusting that she’s keenly aware of the value of customer insights. So, in my mind, “trusting the designer” and “marketing learnings” will likely have some overlap. For what it's worth, most designers I’ve worked with are eager and excited to see insights from customers. 🙂

Anyone can lead a Customer Advisory Board (CAB). But when you put together the goals of the CAB, you’ll see that it’s more efficient for it to sit under PMM. Here are two main reasons for this: 1. It’s part of our job. 😉 PMMs are uniquley positioned to lead the CAB because we already aim to inform the product roadmap, create the GTM strategy, and influence the way we do business. We acheve these by delivering market and customer insights, which fits so naturally with a CAB. 2. PMMs are trained to understand the entire buyer team, while PM and CS may only be accustomed to the practitioner personas. This may come in handy when you're establishing the criteria for customers selected to be on the CAB. The first time I launched a CAB I, I had two different tracks: one for executives and one for practitioners. This made it easier for us to discuss topics relevant to these groups, while also making personas feel as though they were among peers. When you put together your CAB, I encourage you to define roles for internal stakeholders. For me, it looked like this: * PMM leads the CAB. * PM serves as the main partner to help define goals, participants, and topics. PM will also be in the room for live discussions with the CAB. * CS will contribute to the topics and provide insights or suggestions for which customers to select for the CAB. It’s important to note that the key findings of the CAB were shared with the entire company in an executive summary report. A detailed report was shared with the GTM team and PMs.

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: 1. 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. 2. 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.

My first thought is: Have you asked your PM this exact question? ;) In my experience, balancing customer wants and needs is typically handled by the PM, while PMM supports recommendations based on market and customer intelligence. How we handle this is by answering a handful of questions: 1. What is the customer trying to do? 2. What’s the best way to help the customer achieve this (based on time, money, resources, experience, etc.)? 3. Can we help the customer do it better, faster, and/or cheaper? 4. What are the economics of creating the feature? (This is actually many questions in one. ;) I would start with trying to uncover these questions: How much would it cost us to build it? How much would it cost us to NOT build it? What is the feature worth in future dollars?) 5. Does the feature request align with who we are as a company and the core problem that we set out to solve? Those questions should be part of a working discussion with your PM. 

I use both primary and secondary research. Here is a non-exhaustive list of research sources to help you get started: customer interviews, customer surveys, customer usage data, recorded sales calls (or interviews with sales if recorded calls are not available), sales data or win-loss reports, analyst research notes (Gartner, IDC, Forrester, Omdia, and 451 are the first ones I’d go to, but there are many others out there). Once I gather all of the data, I look for themes or trends. If I need more quantitative findings, then I might build a market model in excel. Once I have all of my findings, I outline everything in a slide deck. Considering your task at hand, I would put together a slide deck that outlines your research findings. Your takeaway slide should be a 2x2 matrix showing your company’s ability to execute on all of the potential strategies. The X axis should show all of the potential strategies to invest in to increase success in that market. You need to quantify them by dollar amount. Your company’s ability to execute (also show this in dollar amount) on the Y axis. There are many ways to determine the Y. I would find a similar market for which you have sales data and use that. Important note: you may need to use a scale or calibrate X and Y in a way that makes it easy to plot the numbers in quadrants. Obviously this isn’t a crystal ball 🔮 but it should give you a directionally accurate view and a nice visual as a discussion point with your stakeholders. Bonus points when you can compliment this graph with a customer story or a few customer quotes. 😉

This will depend on how your organization defines the PMM vs PM role. While I’ve never seen PMM “owning” product-specific analytics, I’ve also never seen PMM function without utilizing these metrics for analysis. Whoever “owns” these metrics will vary by organization. I would start by having a frank conversation about what datapoints the PMM can easily gather, and which ones you need to complete your analysis. Just because you need a datapoint doesn’t mean you “own” its gathering. In our business unit at Twilio, our operations team gathers usage data and makes reports available to many other teams. I use that data to inform my strategies and quarterly customer insights analysis. As another example, PMMs don’t monitor customer support metrics, but I’ve found that sifting through these on a regular basis can provide some insightful insights on how customers are using your products and where your weak points are (bonus tip: think about reverse competitive analysis with this info). Most PM teams are monitoring their own usage metrics. It’s worth your time as a PMM to look through those metrics on a regular basis and see who they fit into your market or customer analysis.