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"Our work is often invisible, and our success is often attributed to others."
Nonsense.
I don’t know how this became the conventional advice, but I have always rejected it.
A Product Manager’s work remains invisible because:
PMs do a poor job of providing visibility into their value.
Product leaders do a poor job of providing visibility into their teams’ value.
PMs will continue grinding away until code is released. And then they’ll quietly accept others getting the credit.
PMs will celebrate the Sales team closing deals. And never attribute it to the roadmap they crafted to help deliver those results.
PMs will collaborate with Professional Services and Client Implementation teams on a major customer deployment. And then watch from the sidelines as those teams get the kudos.
Stop doing this.
I’m not advocating being arrogant. I’m not saying take credit at the cost of others.
But respect comes to those who demand it.
Product Managers need to:
Not wait to be recognized.
Do great work and then ask to be recognized.
Product leaders need to:
Create opportunities to allow their PMs to showcase their work.
Be the biggest cheerleaders for their team.
Being “sales-y” is icky
I get it. Sales - ew.
And we don’t like being boastful.
We’re constantly told that good leaders display humility, take the blame while giving others credit, etc.
Yes, I agree with all that.
At the same time, there is nothing wrong with a bit of chest thumping.
Even the best leaders know how to highlight their accomplishments and value.
We just have to know how to do it right.
Here’s when it really matters - and you’ve probably felt this tension:
We know we need to “sell ourself” in performance reviews and job interviews;
But we don’t want to come across as arrogant, boastful, or, worse, “sales-y.”
To make it harder, we fall into two common traps:
Trap 1: We downplay our achievements, assuming our work will “speak for itself.” (It rarely does.)
Trap 2: When we do talk about our work, we highlight the wrong things — tasks completed, features shipped, tickets closed, or generic activities like “defined the roadmap” or “led customer discovery” — instead of what actually matters: outcomes, results, and impact.
No wonder so many of us struggle to get promoted or stand out in job interviews. We’re not trained to talk about ourselves effectively.
The reality is selling is a requirement not just in business and career, but in life.
Think about it. We are actually in a constant state of selling ourselves — our ideas, our plans, our goals, our motivations, our likes, our loves, our value.
We do this to bring people along or get what we want. Without selling, we can’t get people to work with us. We can’t form relationships. We can’t connect with others.
Unfortunately, being a salesperson doesn’t come naturally to most people. And PMs are no exception. Because selling makes people feel uncomfortable.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. And it shouldn’t be that way.
So, today I want to shift that perspective. To make selling yourself feel more natural, and maybe even fun.
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