How to Go From Product Manager to Senior Product Manager

Becoming a Senior Product Manager is one of the most promising career paths PMs can take. The position requires an experienced professional who can drive a product from ideation to production while managing multiple projects at the same time.

While it can be challenging to step into this role, it certainly isn’t impossible. As with any other job, it all comes down to your readiness and willingness to put in the hard work required to achieve your career goals.

Through this article, you’ll learn about Senior Product Managers – how to become one and what it takes to be successful at the job.

What is expected of a Senior Product Manager?

The Senior Product Manager role is a level above being a Product Manager, and as such, the expectations are correspondingly higher. Here are some of the key responsibilities of a Senior PM:

• Maintain and Improve Product Strategies in Line with the Company’s Mission 
• Oversee Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, and User Retention Rates
• Collaborate with Senior Management to Create Product Plans and Roadmaps
• Communicate with Internal and External Stakeholders

Let’s break these down:

Maintain and Improve Product Strategies in Line with the Company’s Mission

The Senior PM is responsible for ensuring that the product strategy is in line with the company’s overall mission. This includes regularly reviewing the product roadmap and making necessary changes to keep the product on track.

Oversee Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, and User Retention Rates

The Senior PM is also responsible for overseeing key metrics such as customer satisfaction, user retention, and engagement. They use this data to make product decisions and drive continuous improvement.

Collaborate with Senior Management to Create Product Plans and Roadmaps.

They work closely with senior management to create product plans and roadmaps. This ensures that the product is aligned with the company’s overall strategy and objectives.

Communicate with Internal and External Stakeholders

The Senior PM is the primary point of contact between the product team and stakeholders – internal and external ones. They are responsible for communicating the product vision and strategy to these groups and ensuring that they are kept up-to-date on progress.

What are the skills required of Senior Product Managers?

Senior Product Manager is a role that requires experience, knowledge, and expertise. It’s a challenging position that requires an individual to manage people as well as processes but if you foster the right skills early on, you’re ensuring that your progression to a Senior PM is easier. 

The following skills come in handy if you want to be a great Senior Product Manager in the future:

Immense Focus

As a Senior Product Manager, your job is to figure out what features and functionalities your product needs and then get them into the hands of customers. It entails learning to be comfortable with ambiguity. It also requires immense focus, which is why you must be organized and have good attention control. 

Strategic Thinking

One of the key differentiators of Senior PMs that PMs don’t is the ability to structure strategic conversations with no assistance. PMs can also have these conversations but the difference is the experience that Senior PMs bring to the table.

It is also necessary for the position to drive the strategy for the team which is why strategic thinking should be fostered early on.  

Mastery of Risk Management

The role of a Senior PM involves a layer of complexity to an already-challenging job description. It involves understanding your customers’ needs, anticipating obstacles, and managing risk factors like process disruptions and time constraints. 

A Senior PM should also keep tabs on competitors and stay up to date with market trends. The more the role knows about the industry, the better it’ll be to predict potential problems and address them before they become major roadblocks.

Senior Product Manager Career Progression

The next role for Senior PM is a director-level role. Senior PMs can be promoted to Director of the Product if they take on two critical responsibilities. Firstly, they should become a trusted advisor for other Product Managers. Secondly, they should become an ambassador for the product team to upper management.

Seniors PM who are curious and passionate about their products, customers, and the production process will find this to be especially true in their current role

To successfully fill a director-level role in Product, one must have led before and excellent communication skills. Being able to present confidently to executive leadership is also key, as is trusting your team enough that you can focus on other projects.

The Director of the Product role will focus on creating new processes, enhancing existing ones, upgrading team performance, and developing agreements between different departments in the organization. 

Senior Product Manager Salary

Now, let’s see how much a Senior PM can make annually. The position has greater autonomy and responsibility than a Product Manager. As such, Senior PMs become entitled to an average base salary of $147,000. Almost all companies offer cash bonuses, commission, tips and profit sharing so the annual income of this role could go as high as $240,000 a year.

However, keep in mind that the remuneration varies on a number of variables, including your company’s size, your industry sector, and your organization’s location. If you want to know more about the Senior Product Manager salary, check out: How much is the Senior Product Manager Salary in 2022?

How to become a Senior Product Manager

In order to become a Senior Product Manager, you need to have a lot of experience working with products and managing teams. You also need to have a strong understanding of business and how to create successful products that generate revenue for your company. Here are some ways you can grow to become a Senior Product Manager:

1. Take on Senior PM Tasks

Priority number one is to unofficially become a senior product manager at your current job. While you’re working your day-to-day job as a PM, slowly begin to take on the responsibilities of a senior PM. 

There’s no shortage of things you can do, such as:

• Assist with roadmap development.
• Interact with senior members of the team. 
• Offer to manage multiple products at once. 

You know what senior PMs are responsible for at your company. Pinpoint a handful of ways that you can unofficially work in this capacity. Not only does it show that you’re capable, but it will make for a more efficient transition when the time comes. 

2. Assist Senior Product Personnel When Possible

This goes hand in hand with step #1 above. By taking on senior PM tasks, you’re also assisting senior product personnel with their job. Along the way, this shows senior personnel — such as engineering managers and marketing managers — that you’re responsible and they can rely on you.

For example, take advantage of your relationship with the VP of product or head of product to see how much you can expand your scope of work. Most people are more than happy to pass tasks off to you, as this gives them more time to focus on other areas of their job. 

3. Get Involved with Strategic Decisions 

This is a big one as it allows you to go beyond the basic responsibilities of a product manager. Strategic decisions are for senior PMs, so you want to get involved in any way possible. 

One of the best things you can do is help make high-level decisions with no clear and obvious answer. For instance, explain why a particular path forward is better than the alternatives, even though it may not be clear to everyone else on the team. 

Yes, it can be a challenge to get involved with strategic decisions. You may even have some reservations at first. But if you want to become a senior PM, it’s a step that you need to take at some point. 

4. Ask for the Promotion During Your Next Review

Do you know when your next performance review takes place? Most companies are on a quarterly, bi-annual, or annual schedule. Once you have an estimated date, create a plan to ask for a promotion to senior product manager. 

The first step is making it clear to your boss, in advance of your review, that this is something you want. That gives them time to review your performance, ask applicable questions, and talk to other team members. The key here is to ensure that there’s no gray area. 

This will lead your boss to do one of two things:

• Give you the promotion because they know you deserve it and know that it will make you happy. 
• Tell you what you need to do to get promoted to senior PM in the future. 

You hope that you can make the move right away, but it’s not a bad thing to learn what you need to do. This greatly improves your odds of a promotion before or at your next review. 

5. Explore Opportunities at Other Companies

If you feel stuck in your current position — perhaps because you’ve yet to be offered a promotion to senior PM — it may be time to consider an opportunity at another company. 

There are a few different ways to approach this:

• Be open to incoming opportunities: As a product manager, you’re likely to receive messages from recruiters at various companies. They’ll reach out via email or LinkedIn to gauge your interest in their company and provide more information. It’s at this point that you can clearly state that you’re only considering senior PM roles. 
• Find an opportunity through your network: From your LinkedIn connections to your personal network, ramp up your search for a senior PM opportunity. The more people you speak with the greater chance there is that you’ll find what you’re looking for. 
• Search company-specific openings: Maybe you want to work at Facebook (Meta). Visit the company’s product management career page to review current openings and learn more about the application and interview process. 

Even if you love everything about your current employer, if you can’t score a promotion to senior PM you may feel that you’ve hit your ceiling. At that point, it could be time to move on. 

6. Perform Your Best in Senior PM Interviews

It goes without saying that you want to perform your best in any job interview, but that’s even more so the case when interviewing for a senior PM role at another company. This is the time to showcase your product sense, execution, strategy, and analytical skills. 

The interviewer wants to see if you have the capability of taking on more responsibility as a senior product manager. Show them what you’ve done in the past so they can be comfortable with your ability to do the same in the future. 

How to become a Senior Product Manager

The six steps above will help you go from Product Manager to Senior Product Manager. While the transition isn’t likely to happen overnight, the right approach will put you on the path to success. You just have to remember a few more things:

Network with Other Professionals in the Industry

It’s ideal for you to expand your professional network. Connect with industry professionals and those who may already have Senior PM experience so you can learn from them. You can also connect with people who share similar interests and goals, which can be invaluable when building your way up.

If you want to know more about how you can do this, read: How to Build a Network: A Guide for Product Managers.

Be a Leader, Not a Follower

A leader is someone who thinks about the big picture and how their actions will affect the team or organization as a whole. You must learn how to communicate your vision effectively with others, set goals and priorities, motivate people, and recognize when you need help from others.

How can you become a good leader within your organization? Start with your team. Support them as best you can, foster trust and communication within your team, resolve conflict effectively, and inspire them to be their best. 

Be Patient. 

There is plenty of room for you to step into this role as demand for these positions continues to grow. However, you have to remain patient, persistent, creative, and organized while waiting for your big day.

How do you prepare for a Senior Product Manager interview?

The best way to prepare for a Senior Product Manager interview is to have a solid understanding of the role and what it entails. Additionally, candidates should brush up on their problem-solving and teamwork skills. As always, preparing for specific questions that may be asked during the interview is also recommended. 

Some ways you can do to prepare are:

• Learn about the PM interview procedure
• Know the top questions asked during the interview
• Strategize for questions you might not have prepared for

It might also be beneficial to go through a PM interview prep course to refresh your PM interview skills. At PM Exercises, we have compiled a comprehensive course that can help you prep.

You can also review possible questions from over 2,000 Product Manager interview questions and responses from members of our community who have been through it on the PM Exercises website.

Lastly, become both interviewer and interviewee by doing mock interviews. This gives you the opportunity of getting feedback from your partner and vice versa. There’s a section on the PM Exercises website where you can check community members eager to do mock interviews.  

We recommend that you go through the process of preparing for the PM interview for each category. Once you’re comfortable with one category, repeat the process until you have gone through all the possible categories.

Conclusion

Becoming a senior product manager is a major transition in your career. It’s a shift from an execution-oriented approach to a strategic and entrepreneurial mindset. Before we get into the “how,” it’s important to understand what makes a good PM in the first place so that you will be ready for the significant increase in responsibility and scope of work.

FAQ

What’s the difference between a PM and a Senior PM?

The Senior PM will have greater product ownership responsibilities, whilst the Product Manager will be more involved with launch and execution on the ground. Senior PMs have invested more time in the position and workplace and are also expected to coach their junior staff.

How do you get promoted to Senior Product Manager?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question as promotion to a Senior Product Manager role depends on individual strengths and experience. However, some key things to keep in mind include the following:

• Become a Trusted Advisor for your Teams

As a Senior PM, you will be responsible for mentoring and guiding teams and junior staff.

This includes sharing your knowledge and expertise with them and providing support when

needed.

• Become an Ambassador for Internal and External Stakeholders

The Senior PM is the primary point of contact between the product team and stakeholders.

As such, you must be able to communicate the product vision and strategy to

these groups effectively. You should also be able to update them on progress and address

any concerns they may have.

• Be Passionate About Your Products, Customers, and the Production Process

Seniors and Product Managers who are passionate about their work tend to be more

successful. This is because they constantly seek new ways to improve the product and the

production process. Additionally, they are always looking for ways to serve their customers better.

How Long Does it Take to be a Senior Product Manager?

There is no set time frame for becoming a Senior Product Manager. However, most people who are promoted to this role have 3-5 years of experience working in product management. Additionally, they have demonstrated strong leadership skills and a deep understanding of the product development process.