You need the engineering team to prioritize a critical customer fix. Marketing wants a better value proposition and more credible positioning. Sales is pushing for features that don’t align with your strategy. And you have exactly zero direct reports. 

Welcome to product management. If you’re waiting for positional authority to get things done, you’ll be waiting a long time. Product managers don’t succeed because they can just ask; they succeed because they can influence without it. 

Why Influence Matters More Than Authority 

Here’s what I’ve learned training tens of thousands of product managers over two decades: the most effective product managers aren’t the ones with the loftiest titles. They’re the ones who’ve mastered the art of getting things done through others. 

Influence isn’t manipulation. It’s earning trust, building relationships, and helping others see what you see. It’s about making the right thing to do the easy thing to do. 

Four Ways to Build Real Influence 

1. Deliver on your commitments consistently. Nothing builds trust faster than reliability. If you say you’ll have the competitive analysis done by Friday, have it done by Thursday. Small promises kept compound into serious credibility. This is similar to Stephen Covey’s idea of making deposits into the emotional bank account. 

2. Help others succeed. When you make the engineering lead look good in front of their VP, they remember. When you help marketing hit their quarterly goals, they return the favor. Influence is built through generosity, not hoarding. In my book, The Product Manager’s Desk Reference (3^rd edition) I use the phrase “help till it hurts.”   

3. Use data, not opinions. “I think we should build this” gets you nowhere. “Here’s the customer research showing this problem costs them $50K per quarter” opens doors. Ground your requests in facts and relevant data, and people will listen. In a similar vein, take your engineers and others on your customer visits.  Teach them to see things through the eyes of a customer. 

4. Understand what motivates others. Engineering cares about technical elegance. Sales cares about quota attainment. Finance cares about margins. When you frame your requests in terms of what matters to them, you’ll get further faster.  

The Real Secret 

Product managers who earn influence share one trait: they act with integrity in everything they do. They don’t play political games. They don’t take credit for others’ work. They stand for something meaningful and defend it with managerial courage. 

Your influence grows when people trust that you’ll do the right thing, even when it’s hard. 

Want to develop your influence skills systematically? Start by building one strong cross-functional relationship this week. Help someone else succeed without expecting anything in return. Watch what happens. The best product managers aren’t the loudest voices in the room. They’re the ones everyone listens to. 

To learn more about how to influence others, consider my short course on how to create influence.