What are two examples that you would share of how you influence the product roadmap to a Product Manager?

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.