Nicolas Liatti

I think it depends on the company. If both are doing a similar job, they may have different titles depending on the company. Eventually a pure sales role is about selling a product, with all the process of negotiating contracts, etc. - while a PM acts on influencing the team to improve business.

On a daily basis, product manager's job is to bring clarity and alignment among teams. As a consequence, working with cross functional teams is part of the job. I wouldn't have one answer on how to do so, as it really depends on the situation. There are lots of different frameworks that can work depending on the situation, and the best PMs know which ones to use in which situation. But at the end of the day, what really matters and what makes a difference is the relationships you have with other teams. So as a PM, I would advise to spend time on creating relationships with other teams, rather than focusing on the process.

The role of a product leader is to develop products customers love, yet in a way that helps business. Specifically, the product management function's role is to help reduce the risks on value and viability of the products. I don't see any difference between a traditional "product manager" title and "product growth manager" title. Those are just titles, and eventually what is expected from them is the same: help develop the best products, in a way that helps business. What may change is their area of focus and how they achieve it.

The biggest mistake I see is PM thinking they should just apply frameworks, and that they "know" what to do, without having the legitimacy they need. Product management, in which I see growth PM as a sub-category, is an art, not a science. And like every art it takes time to craft and master it. Product management is a late rewarding career, you will see the impact you are making after 10-15-20 years. It happens by working with other people, by creating relationships. Without relationships and trust from others you don't go anywhere as a PM.

Metrics depend on the context. The most important is to have metrics that are aligned and shared with other stakeholders (marketing, sales, engineers, etc.). That's the most critical part: alignment. However, don't forget that metrics are just compass, and most of the time you don't have real influence over it. At Amazon they prefer focus on the input for example, as you can control it, than the output: if we display 10 articles on a webpage we can achieve this. What happens if we display 20? what is the optimal number of articles we should display?

Experiments are made to fail. It is know in the tech industry that around 85% or experiments fail. If we'd know in advance what would work, we would just go straight for it and not make any experiments. That's why it's critical to really treat this as an experiment - and not a full solution - and be able to move fast to the next one. You will usually get success after experimenting and failing tons of time.

First it's critical to identify clearly who are the stakeholders. Usually business, engineering and design are the 3 you should work with very closely. Then you need to create meaningful relationships with them, so that they can really do their job of stakeholders as well. It's important to realize that being a stakeholder comes with a lot of responsibilities as well towards the team: stakeholders need to show up at the product discussions, provide feedback, etc.. Looking at who shows up or not is a good way to figure out which stakeholders are really playing their role and should be prioritized to have an impact on the product, or not.

The first question is why would you want to have exposure to the C-Suite? We often think that getting exposure will help our career, but that's not really true. What will help is making impact, and having this impact being exposed to the C-Suite. This is managers job to make this happen, so if you are a junior PM I would say ask directly your manager to help you manage up the impact you are having.

Early in your career the only person you need to influence for getting promoted is usually your manager. As you grow and try to reach the C-Suite, there is not 1 single person to influence. What matters is the impact you are making. And in order to make impact at the company level, you need to influence and get aligned with a lot of different people from other orgs such as marketing, sales, etc. It's by influencing indirectly all those people that you will achieve impact and gain momentum.

I don't think there is a simple answer for this one, as each situation will be different. But first I would say if you see misalignment between them then bring them together in a room, and have them acknowledge the misalignment. Making this visible will help you to move forward for escalation up to the person who can take a decision.