The Power of Relationships with Product Managers
Learn insider information and improve stakeholder management through product management relationships
Have you wondered if collaboration with product managers is a good use of your time? If you are prioritizing customer conversations over talking to a product manager, you are missing a great opportunity for concentrated industry and technical information. You can benefit from building relationships with product managers.
Benefit 1: Insider's Information and The Big Picture
Product managers are a great source of information you can't find on the Internet. Between customer conversations and cross-functional projects, product managers at all levels are a great source of inside information.
Suppose you are the architect of a SaaS product and you notice customers are using your reporting APIs frequently. You are concerned because the team doing these APIs and the analytics have been re-assigned to other priorities. In your regular meeting with your product manager, you discuss a new customer trend of building data analytics to catch potential security issues. You and the product manager agree the reporting APIs need to be staffed.
Benefit 2: Stakeholder Insights
Product managers communicate with senior leaders and stakeholders pretty often. The next time you need to present to leadership, you can ask a product manager about their last presentation. If you already have a good relationship with the product manager, they will be happy to give pointers about your presentation. Building strong relationships with product managers takes time and effort.
How to Build Relationships with Product Managers
Building strong relationships with product managers requires a combination of effective communication, active listening, and trust-building. Some steps to take are:
Open communications: Be open to feedback and suggestions
Listen actively: Pay attention to product managers and understand their perspective
Build trust: Follow through on commitments and provide updates on issues
Empathy: be responsive to their needs
Be proactive: initiate the relationship before needing something
Show gratitude: appreciate and recognize their efforts
Be transparent: share your knowledge and be clear on your decision-making process
Conclusion
Whether you are a product manager or not, it is valuable to have a relationship with product managers. There are benefits from learning inside information and getting stakeholder insights from the product managers in and out of your organization. Your understanding of industry trends can grow exponentially by building relationships with product managers.
This week's article was inspired by The Product Party Newsletter from Mike Watson. Mike writes about product management topics and the importance of relationship building.
The Power of Relationships with Product Managers
I sometimes forgot how much insider knowledge PMs have, but it makes sense given all of their cross-functional touch-points. Thanks for sharing!
Great newsletter Amy! Thank you for the shout out.
I love the framing of insider information regarding product managers. Some of my favorite conversations are with random fact seekers within the org who stumble upon a conversation with me or my team and are blown away that there's a group of people who know all the things.