Every feature you add to your product must generate revenue or ROI.

As a Product Manager, you need to understand what that means and how to show it.

Today, I’ll share tactics to help you do that.

First, let’s get past the usual pushbacks:

I’ve already covered these in earlier posts and episodes — plenty of times:

So, let’s move on.

Bottom line:

Your job as a product manager, is to deliver monetizable customer value — customer value that leads to financial return.

Here’s the kind of thinking you’re held accountable for:

Consider this case study:

Design wants to do a full UI overhaul. It will look and feel better. But is it really worth it?

Most PMs will agree. They’ll justify it by saying it will make customers happier. After all, intuitively, happier customers will result in more revenue, right? Isn’t that just intuitive?

They’ll propose tracking success via some usage or engagement metric.

And here’s where they’ll stop with their justification.

Which is why most fail.

They’ll get mad that leadership “doesn’t get it.”

Sorry to break it to you, but it’s not their fault. It’s yours.

Here’s the argument you need to make:

If it takes 3, 6, or 9 months of dedicated effort at the expense of everything else, will it:

Maybe yes — then it's worth it. Maybe not — then it’s not.

What’s important is that you ask the question.

That’s the level of rigor you are expected to apply as a Product Manager.

Don't stop at metrics like DAU, NPS, or conversion. Translate it:

Prioritize with math, not feelings:

Which would you build first?

Your ability to make this case is what sets you apart.

As Rich Mironov says, “Business Cases Are Stories About Money.” He talked about it on my show, Street Smart Product Manager Live!

I agree. So, here are practical ways to build those “money stories” — economic impact arguments for your feature proposals.

Here are 9 heuristics (rules of thumb) to assess feature impact. Which to use depends on the feature, your business model, and product strategy and goals.

You don’t need perfect precision. In fact, the specific number is less important, since we’re multiplying guesses. You just need enough to judge direction and scale.

The key question you’re trying to answer is “how impactful is this?” so you can decide if it’s worth doing.

This helps you ignore 85% of requests and focus on the 15% that truly matter.

For new products or priced features, use basic financial tools:

This one is straightforward. There are a number of financial analyses you can perform for this, such as:

None are perfect, but all are useful. And familiar to Finance and executives.

Tie product initiatives to company objectives:

Metrics should be tied to achieving specific product goals, which are themselves tied to top-level business objectives.

This way, if your feature moves a metric that tied to company goals, it should get priority.

Example 1:

→ So, prioritize features that expand coverage.

Example 2:

→ Prioritize product work that improves efficiency — e.g., improvements in the manufacturing and production process.

Example 3:

→ Prioritize features to improve mobile usability.

Examples:

You’re not pulling numbers out of a hat. Use real product or sales data when possible.

Then add a confidence score. This allows you to control situations where you think a feature could have a huge impact but don’t yet have the data to back it up.

For example:

Multiply the average LTV per customer by the estimated reach of your feature to compare its potential economic value to others.

Example:

Here, item 1 has a higher impact than item 2, so it gets priority.

How many more customers could you win with this feature?

Here’s the formula:

[guesstimated deals lost due to lack of C]
✖️
[guesstimated % we could realistically win if we had capability C ]
✖️
[Average new buyer price]

For example:

Remember: you’re looking for rough order of magnitude, not precision.

Whether this is worth it or not depends on the business goals and what else is competing for the roadmap

Sales Velocity is how quickly customers move through the sales pipeline in a given timeframe – i.e., dollars per day/week/month/quarter.

Calculated as:

[# opportunities in the pipeline]
✖️
[average deal size]
✖️
[win rate]
➗
[sales cycle length]

Where:

For example:

Let's say a feature could win us 10 more deals:

We can also use this to compare product opportunities:

Using sales velocity can be especially useful when acquiring new customers is a priority (typical for a startup or new product).

Note that if you use this method be sure to validate the approach with your Sales leadership.

How many existing customers could you upgrade with this feature?

Here’s the formula to calculate the guestimated revenue:

[Total current customers]
✖️
[estimated % upgrade]
✖️
[upsell price]

For example:

If it costs you $200K/year, it could be a huge win. If you’ll spend $4M, then pass.

Remember: you’re looking for rough order of magnitude.

If a feature helps customers go live faster, you can recognize revenue sooner — especially important for enterprise SaaS deployments or any product that requires configuration or installation.

I’ve covered revenue recognition earlier:

Examples:

In some cases, this may be easy. Examples:

In other cases, it may require a bit of calculation.

Example 1:

Work with the Support team to calculate the cost of those tickets. 4-6% is fairly low. If the UI improvements could eliminate, say, 25% of tickets, and the savings outweigh the development cost, it may be worth doing the UI improvements.

Example 2:

Given this is a 2-month payback, it may be worth doing this.

Example 3:

I already wrote about this here. Event tech debt has ROI if it saves time or risk later. You need to quantify this in currency.

Instead of counting the number of requests for a feature, look at the $ value of those customers.

You could also use the lifetime value, MRR, or renewal value of those customers.

Pro tip: Highlight any that are at risk of churning or are considered “strategic” by leadership.

You can compare opportunities with different economic values as long as you use money as the common measure.

In the above example, which one you’d prioritize will depend on the economic gains, your product strategy, and the business objectives.

Examples:

You don’t need perfect numbers. Just solid reasoning.

Translate product ideas into money stories.

That’s how you show impact, earn trust, and lead with confidence.

That’s all this week.

Have a joyful week, and, if you can, make it joyful for someone else too.

cheers,
shardul

Shardul Mehta
I ❤️ product managers.

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