From service provider to strategic partner: Level up your PMM game

Are you ever overwhelmed or caught off guard by questions and requests from partners? Do you wish you had more influence to drive strategic priorities?

Don’t worry – I’m here to equip you with the skills and frameworks you need to become a highly strategic, influential product marketing leader who can confidently navigate requests, drive business outcomes, and shift from reactive support to proactive partnership.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• How to think strategically
• A structured approach to problem-solving
• Skills for distilling and conveying insights effectively
• Ways to cultivate personal presence and credibility
• Tactics to bring partners along and drive influence

When you nail these skills, you'll be equipped to step up and guide the business toward the future like the strategic leader you were meant to be.

Let's jump right in. 

How to operate as a strategic, proactive partner

The term “strategic, proactive partner” gets thrown around a lot in business circles, but what does it actually mean to be one? I like to break it down into three core skills:

1. Strategic thinking: Identifying focus areas priorities so you can influence the business in the most meaningful way possible.
2. Problem-solving: Optimizing for both efficiency and effectiveness in the way that you solve problems
3. Moving beyond service provision: Developing a proactive point of view on what’s important so you can navigate incoming asks, manage your time, set boundaries, and be effective in the things you choose to do. 

Now, let's go into each of these skills in a little more detail. 

Core skill #1: Strategic thinking

I think of strategic thinking as the sum of three key skills.

The first is business acumen. In other words, do you know how the business that you support as a PMM makes its money? If you don't, that's the first thing you need to figure out. What are the levers that drive revenue for your business? The more you know about your business, the more of a partner you can be to your leadership teams. 

The second skill is orientation towards outcomes. By understanding how your business generates revenue and the levers your team can pull, you’ll be better equipped to define outcomes that’ll have the biggest broader impact. 

What levers drive revenue, and which can product marketing directly influence? You've now narrowed it down to a subset of levers within your control. Now you can define your team’s desired outcomes against those levers. All this will flow into your workstreams, OKRs (objectives and key results), and priorities.

This is the best way to become a strategic partner. Your partners in sales and product management are constantly thinking about growth. By adopting the lens of business growth, and defining your OKRs and priorities accordingly, you're one step ahead of their requests.

Finally, we have prioritization and trade-offs. People see strategy as this big, amorphous, magical thing. But really, strategy is about choice-making. Given the plethora of different ways to deliver desired outcomes, which ones will you strategically prioritize to drive the results you need? 

Core skill #2: Problem solving

Problem solving can be pretty chaotic at times, with people jumping to conclusions without taking the time to get to the heart of the problem. 

Let’s say your business’s revenue is declining. Your leadership may come to you claiming the issue is that the product isn’t serving customers well – that’s a pretty big leap to make if you haven’t dissected the problem properly! 

I’m going to share three steps that will enable you to do just that, so you can manage these types of conversations effectively and confidently. 

Step one: Problem identification

The first step is to identify the real problem, not just the symptoms. It's one thing to look at problems on the surface – declining revenue or lower user engagement, for instance – but it's another thing entirely to find the possible root causes. So, that’s the first skill to develop.

Step two: Hypothesis-driven analysis

The second big skill here is what I call hypothesis-driven analysis. This involves taking all the possible root causes of the symptom you're worried about and gathering enough information to zoom in on the true culprit or culprits.

Step three: Moving to solution

Eventually, once you've identified the proven drivers – the root causes truly impacting the symptom – you can focus on resolving the most critical ones. Use a framework of impact versus effort. How much effort will it take to address this cause, and how much impact will that have on your business? This allows you to prioritize the right solutions.

This problem-solving skill set empowers you to be the strategic partner who says, "Hold on. Let's examine the root causes, find the high-impact ones, and tackle those," and bring focus while everyone else runs around like headless chickens.

Core skill #3: Moving beyond service provision

The final piece of being a strategic partner is moving beyond just service provision to become truly proactive. So, how do you get there?

First, you need a really solid understanding of why you picked your current OKRs and the potential business impact you hope to drive with them. What's the reasoning behind your priorities? 

Then, be curious. When you get a new request from a partner, seek to genuinely understand what impact it could have on the business. This allows you to do some relative prioritization of the ask. 

Next, you want to ask yourself if your team is even the right one to be taking on this request, or would it be better directed to customer experience, sales enablement, or someone else?

If the request does indeed fall within product marketing’s remit, here’s the next important question: Is this new ask more critical and impactful to the business than what's already on your team’s plate? If the answer is yes – if you truly believe the new request could drive more business value than your existing priorities – then you need to decide what you can say no to on your current OKR list to make room for this.

And if it doesn't seem like the new ask is more important than your current OKRs, you need to communicate the business impact of saying no. Explain what other high-priority initiatives that “no’ enables you to say “yes” to. That will make it an easier pill for the requester to swallow.

Of course, if that doesn't work, you may need to escalate this conversation while clearly outlining the relative business impacts of your competing priorities.

Building influence and reputation as a PMM team

Let's move on to the second major step towards being a strategic and influential leader – building influence and reputation as a PMM team. Let’s unpack what that looks like.

Great influence and reputation stem from three key skills:

1. Distilling intelligence into insights: Rather than just relaying things you've heard or learned, influential PMMs can articulate what those learnings actually mean for the business and recommend actions to take.
2. Communicating effectively: The most influential, reputable leaders have mastered the art of captivating their audiences and influencing decisions. This isn’t just about charisma or style – it’s about communication skills.
3. Driving influence: This is about not only influencing the projects you’re involved in but also being seen as an influential leader.

Let's dig deeper into each of these areas.

Core skill #1: Distilling intelligence into insight 

As a PMM, you're in a great position to gather learnings from customers and markets. You may be collecting lots of intel on customer needs, market dynamics, and competitor moves. 

However, that’s not enough. To be seen as influential by the C-suite, you need to distill all this information into concise actionable insights. So, what does this involve?

First, establish context. If you're noticing poor customer feedback, a slowing market, or competitors laying people off, it’s fair to say that you're operating in a bearish climate. That context is key for interpreting the implications for your business.

Second, look for patterns across the inputs you're gathering. The more consistent the patterns, the clearer the story and recommendations you offer will be.

Third, watch for outliers. If you're collecting global inputs but one region differs greatly, call that out and dive into why.

Once you’ve analyzed the context, patterns, and outliers, it’s time to move synthesis and storytelling. To do this, I’d recommend using the "what, so what, now what" framework:

1. What have you learned?
2. So what does this mean for the business?
3. Now what actions should you take?

Without connecting insights to implications and recommendations, PMMs risk being service providers rather than strategic partners. The “so what” and “now what” provide valuable insights that will propel you to proactive and strategic partner status.

Core skill #2: Communicating effectively

Your path to becoming a strategic partner doesn't stop at synthesizing insights – you need to convey them compellingly to leadership teams and key partners. This involves communication skills and presence.

The pyramid principle is a powerful tool to boost your communication. That means leading with headlines and summarizing upfront to enable others to quickly grasp the key points of what you’re saying. 

Let's say you’re writing a one-pager. If a senior leader is skimming through this document, they should be able to look at a couple of key headers, an executive summary, and perhaps a couple of key introductory phrases and get a clear picture of what’s going on without sifting through all the details. 

If you’re giving a presentation, the same principle applies. Lead with headlines before providing details, so you don't lose your audience. That’s what the pyramid principle is all about.

The most effective PMMs answer questions succinctly and focus on the essence – the “so what.” Rather than describing the process, start with what you’ve learned and its implications for the business. The details can follow if time allows. This is a key way to communicate more effectively and to be seen as more powerful and influential.

The other key element of communication is presence – this isn't about charisma, but conveying confidence. Rushing through content doesn't convey the right kind of presence. Instead, when you speak, take strategic pauses so people can digest what you’re saying, and slow down so you sound calm and in control. 

Also, consider using a little humor to elevate. There’s a great book on this that I’d highly recommend. It’s called "Humor, Seriously" and in it, two Stanford professors examine using humor in business to foster deeper connections and open people’s minds to what you’re saying. 

Core skill #3: Driving influence

There are two key ingredients to driving influence: How you handle projects, and how you operate daily as a partner.

Let's look at projects first. A key part of driving influence is being very clear upfront on the business impact you're aiming for. That keeps everyone focused on concrete goals that matter.

It’s also important to keep in mind that when executing a project, you're rarely working solo. You likely have upstream partners influencing your work and downstream partners who'll need to activate your output. Make sure to bring those allies along with you and get them invested in the final recommendation. 

The most influential PMMs don't just present a finished idea – they build alignment throughout the process so the final proposal isn't a surprise. That's the magic of driving projects in a truly influential way.

Now let's talk about daily influence beyond specific projects. Here are some tips:

1. Be proactive about identifying impactful questions that could unlock opportunities. This shows business acumen and prevents you from being caught off guard.
2. Focus relentlessly on turning insights into action. This makes PMMs truly valuable partners.
3. Balance data with emotional storytelling when influencing partners. Tap into feelings and instinct – not just data. Sharing compelling customer stories can motivate partners in a much more powerful way than raw data.

Key takeaways

To wrap up, let’s recap the top tips that will empower you to become a strategic, influential PMM leader:

• Apply strategic thinking to connect team priorities to business levers
• Take a hypothesis-driven approach to problem-solving
• Elevate from reactive support to proactive partnership with an informed point of view
• Gauge the relative impact of the requests you receive and prioritize your workload accordingly
• Synthesize intelligence into clear, actionable insights using the "what, so what, now what" framework
• Communicate insights effectively through high-impact headlines and cultivating presence
• Drive influence by aligning partners early and bringing them along the journey
• Balance data with emotional storytelling when influencing partners

By embracing these mindsets and skills, you can shape the future of your organization.

This article has been adapted from Sudha’s brilliant talk at the exclusive Product Marketing Misunderstood event. PMA members can watch the recording in its full unedited glory here.

Hungry for more tips that’ll propel you to the executives’ table? Check out our brand-new eBook: Breaking barriers: Transitioning to the C-suite.