Siddharth Bhaksar, a senior product manager at Best Buy, gave a presentation on how to influence without authority. He explained that influencing is key for product managers, as they often do not have direct authority over teams. He outlined different skills needed to influence inner circle teams directly involved in product work versus middle and outer circles with different goals. Some tips he provided included understanding other stakeholders' objectives, documenting customer problems instead of solutions, letting others champion ideas, and setting shared objectives and key results. The presentation was given at Product School, an online education company that offers product management and other business courses.

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How to Influence Without Authority
by BestBuy Sr Product Manager

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8. Siddarth Bhaksar
TONIGHT’S SPEAKER
BestBuy

9. How to Influence without
Authority
Sidd Bhaskar
Senior Product Manager – Mobile App
Best Buy
9

10. My Charm is the biggest take away but here are
others
Influence is key
to product success
Different skills are
required for influencing
different people
Shared objectives
across an org are key
for disruptive products
10

11. Product Manager’s skills
Vision Customer Goals
MonitoringMarketingExecute
11

12. Product Manager Challenges
Too little
time
Team Not
motivated
External
Dependencies
Unknown
situations
Bureaucracy
No Authority
12

13. Soft skills that are also important
Influencing
Public Speaking Documenting
Motivating
13

14. What is influencing?
The art of getting others to believe in what you believe and getting them
to support your cause
14

15. Why is influencing important?
Original Idea
Actual Outcome
Organization’s
Bureaucracy
15

16. Most companies want their PMs to be influencers
16

17. Product Managers work with a lot of people
Product Manager
UX
Devs
QA
Other
Product Manager
Product Leadership
Other
Product Manager
Other
Tech Manager
Other
Tech Manager
Other
Product Manager
Finance
Marketing
Operations
Legal
Customer
Service
Sponsor/ Stake holder
17

18. Scenario:
Amie,
Product Manager
Ecommerce Company
- Apparel
App – Shopping
Experience
Sell More
18

19. Annie crafts an idea
Problem:
Middle class working parents find it hard to keep buying clothes for their growing kids
Market Size:
There are 100 million such families in USA
Solution:
Periodically auto-send clothes at a membership of $20/year and clothes are shipped
free and are sold at a flat discount of 40%
Metrics Estimate:
First year loss of $2m but 3 year gain of $20m
19

20. Inner Circle
Amie,
Product Manager
UX
Devs
Task: Lets build a subscription service
Issues
1. Team thinks its too complicated, they don’t understand
why they are being asked to prioritize this over
everything else
1. Does not believe this to be an innovation
20

21. Inner Circle
Task: Lets build a subscription service
Issues
1. I am not convinced this is the right thing to do
1. What’s the vision? Its quite un-inspiring
Bob, Checkout
Experience
21

22. Middle Circle
PM, Home Page
PM, Checkout
PM, Fulfillment
Task: Lets build a subscription service I need
A home page entry point into a browse experience
Ability to buy a subscription experience across channels
Automate the ability to fulfill orders periodically from the
warehouses
22

23. Middle Circle
Issues
1. I already have something in my roadmap that has
higher ROI
1. My boss does not think I should prioritize this over
something else
1. We need to build new services and I don’t have
resources
PM, Home Page
PM, Checkout
PM, Fulfillment
23

24. Issue1: Not making your team believe in your cause
1. Not showing them who the customer is
1. Not involving them in your research
1. Not giving them a chance to provide ideas
24

25. Issue2: Being Solution focused
Solutions create opinions
But Problems generate emotion
25

26. Convincing vs Influencing
Getting an output
from someone
Work towards an outcome
with some one
Task
s
Goals
Different Goals
Shared Goals
Be a Hero Be a Leader
Issue3: Convincing someone on something they don’t believe in
26

27. Issue4: Not understanding someone else’s objective
What’s the
problem I want to
solve?
Do I know their
goal?
Will solving my
problem also
address their
goal?
Is my goal more
powerful than
theirs?
Do I promise to
share my success
with them ?
Will they have a
stake on this with
me?
Can I tweak my
goal to also
impact their KPIs?
Will they feel
passionate about
my problem
27

28. Restate the problem
I want middle class Americans never worry about being able to afford clothes for their
growing kids.
I have evidence that 25% of American middle American families can’t buy new clothes
for their kids every year and kids are forced to wear non fitting clothes to their schools.
I really need your help solving this problem, will you be my partner and do what it takes
to solve this? We could bring a lot of smiles to kids & also make the company $10m in 3
years
I’d love to hear out how you can helps us solve this problem, I have this idea but want
to understand your perspective
28

29. Outer Circle
Issues
1. We’ll have to build a new process to accommodate
scheduled orders, please get VP approval
1. You cannot auto-sell any kind of fabric, there are some
federal rules
1. We can’t loose 20% conversion in my category in year1,
I can’t fund this
Operations
Legal
Sponsor/ Stake
holder
29

30. Gauge interest earlier
I have this idea about solving a unique problem - want middle class Americans to never
worry about being able to afford clothes for their growing kids.
I have evidence that 25% of American middle American families can’t buy new clothes
for their kids every year and kids are forced to wear non fitting clothes to their schools.
We might loose money initially but do you think the company would be interested and
I’d get all approvals if it has long term benefit?
30

31. Repeat, Repeat & Repeat informally
1. Lunches
1. Happy hours
1. At the Ping Pong Table
31

32. Strong customer & business documentation
1. Press Release
1. White papers
1. Projections
& have stakeholders contribute
32

33. Let others champion your cause
VP,
Fulfillment
VP,
Operations
PM, OperationsPM, Fulfillment
Amie,
Product Manager
33

34. Shared Objectives & Key Results (OKR)
Objective: Help working parents afford clothes for their kids through the new
subscription program
Shared Obsession!
Key Results
• Add 20 million new customers
• Generate $10m in 3 years after taking a $2m hit in year 1
34

35. Learnings
1. Influencing is key to product success
1. Understand the inner and outer circles and influence in
different ways depending on the situation
1. Shared Objectives = Shared Obsession
35

36. Thank You
36

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