There is a moment in every career when you look around and wonder, “What’s next?” You’ve mastered your craft, you are successful, and you operate well within your professional comfort zone. But deep down, you feel that unmistakable itch for a new challenge, a desire to stretch yourself, to build something bigger, and to have a more profound, long-term impact.
The inflection point came after years in the Salesforce ecosystem, and it led me directly to the world of Product Management (PM).
I’m sharing my story and my biggest lessons not just to inspire you, but to provide a blueprint, especially for my fellow Solution Engineers (SEs), on how to make that leap. Product Management is the most complex, challenging, and rewarding technology role that I have ever taken on, and if I can do it, you can too.
Why Would You Want to Be a Product Manager?
Before we dive into the “how,” let’s talk about the “why.” What makes the Product Manager role so compelling, particularly when compared to the highly engaging, customer-facing world of a Solution Engineer?
The motivations for me were deeply rooted in a desire for greater influence and a shift in the nature of my work:
- Ownership: Being a PM offers a sense of ultimate responsibility for a product or feature, giving you “mini CEO” ownership over its strategy, execution, and success.
- Strategic Engagement and Influence: You move from influencing individual deals to setting the direction for a product that impacts thousands of customers globally. This is true strategic influence.
- Focused on Customer Success (Long-Term): While SEs generally focus on closing a deal, PMs focus on ensuring that the product delivers sustained, long-term customer success and value.
- A Shift from Transactional to Transformational: I personally got tired of the short-term, transactional nature of sales. I craved working on long-term projects and having a lasting impact on a platform and its users.
My Journey: From Partner to Product
My path to becoming a Senior Product Manager for CRM Analytics (CRMA) was anything but linear.
From 2018 to 2022, I co-founded and co-led a Salesforce partner consulting business, specialising in analytics. My day-to-day was largely Solution Engineering, covering pre-sales, sales, and post-sales. This gave me a full 360-degree view of the customer problem.
In January 2022, I joined Salesforce as an Analytics Solution Engineer, covering Tableau and CRM Analytics. But the itch to move into product was already there. By June 2022, I began actively interviewing other product managers at Salesforce to understand what the role truly entailed. I was intrigued!
I knew it was a long shot. Salesforce employs hundreds of PMs, but almost all (perhaps 95%) are based in the United States, with only one local PM (at that time) in my home base of Australia. But I persevered, and in April of 2024, I landed my first PM role.
Why Solution Engineers Make Great Product Managers
As one of my Salesforce colleagues, Gerard Iervolino, articulated so perfectly, Solution Engineers possess three core qualities that transfer incredibly well to the PM role. If you’re an SE reading this, recognize that you are already building the foundation you need. In Gerard’s words,
- Strong Technical Chops: SEs go deep on the products they sell, which is invaluable when interacting with engineering teams and confirming the feasibility of a product.
- Customer-Centered Mindset: As the primary point of contact with customers, SEs interact with hundreds of them annually. They deeply understand customer needs and pain, which translates into domain expertise for product development.
- Communication: SEs hone their presentation and demo skills across countless engagements and personas. This mastery is crucial for a PM when promoting the product vision, strategy, and roadmaps to cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
5 Lessons Learned in the Transition
The transition from Solution Engineer to Product Manager was, to put it mildly, brutal. But it was also one of the most significant periods of growth in my career. Here are the five most valuable lessons I learned.
1. No One Ever Grew in Their Comfort Zone
If you are comfortable, you are not growing. The moment I started in product, I found myself miles outside of my comfort zone, and I felt way out of my league.
The first three months were defined by discomfort, fear, and difficulty. I constantly struggled with Imposter Syndrome. The Product Manager role is intensely complex, highly challenging, and has a huge number of moving parts. I often felt inadequate, unqualified, and overwhelmed.
But, it was worth it! I have grown and stretched myself in ways that never would have happened had I remained comfortable.
As a new PM, the uncomfortable duties I was suddenly responsible for included the following:
- Reviewing analyst reports and customer feedback to determine which features to build.
- Documenting, prioritizing, and operationalizing feedback from customer interviews and internal stakeholders.
- Partnering with engineering and architecture to confirm the technical feasibility of ideas.
- Creating product road maps and detailed PRDs (Product Requirements Documents).
- Collaborating with design and engineering partners to refine features and finalize user stories.
- Communicating product plans to facilitate customer relationships and gather feedback.
If you feel overwhelmed reading that list, congratulations, because you’re beginning to understand the role! I persevered, and I am very glad that I did, because I learned a great deal, and I love Product Management.
Also, note that while I had no official PM experience before this, I did have plenty of experience with these duties – the difference being that instead of one customer implementation, I had to look across many more customers. Therefore, I had been slowly building the skills without actively trying to “be a PM”.
2. Relationships Are Everything
In an environment as complex as Product Management, you cannot succeed on intelligence or effort alone; you need an army of smart, capable partners. Relationships are the currency of a Product Manager.
The strength of my existing network was a massive competitive advantage:
- I built a fantastic relationship with my first Engineering Manager, who is still a great friend. He was instrumental in helping me understand the systems, processes, and core work involved in the PM role.
- I purposefully continued to develop relationships with the Analytics Solution Engineers. My SE friends proved to be a marvelous, ongoing source of customer feedback, product ideas, and general wisdom. This collaboration remains a powerful win-win.
- The guidance, mentorship, and coaching from several Product Leaders at Salesforce were, and continue to be, invaluable.
Invest in your relationships now, and they will support and propel your career far more than any single skill.
3. If You’re Not Learning, You’re Not Living
I find immense satisfaction in continuous learning, which is critical because the PM world changes every day. You must be eternally curious and constantly gaining and honing new skills just to keep up.
Learning is a lifestyle. For example, I am an avid reader, always looking for great books on such subjects as psychology, philosophy, leadership, and science. I often share and seek book recommendations on LinkedIn and via our Salesforce Slack channels, because I am absolutely convinced that leaders are readers.
This lesson requires embracing vulnerability: You have to be okay with looking stupid. Never leave a question unasked simply because you fear appearing unqualified.
There is a popular saying that perfectly captures this mindset:
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room!”
The full quote, often attributed to Michael Dell, is even more instructive:
“Try never to be the smartest person in the room. And if you are, I suggest you invite smarter people… or find a different room.” – Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies
This isn’t about modesty; it’s a strategy for growth. By consistently seeking out peers and mentors who are smarter than you, you guarantee that you will always be learning.
4. Never Sell Yourself Short
The self-doubt I experienced during the transition is universal. You will look at the job requirements and the incredible talent around you and feel the urge to back away. You can feel like you do not belong, that you are an imposter.
This is the moment to remember one simple, powerful truth: You can do more than you think you can.
I believe in the power of self-fulfilling prophecy, whether positive or negative. As Henry Ford famously said:
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
You are stronger, braver, and smarter than your own doubts let you believe:
“You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” – A.A. Milne
You can do more than you think you can. Press through the inadequacy, discomfort, and fear, and push into a land of new possibilities!
5. The Key to Success Is Range
Finally, the greatest lesson I learned, which validates the entire journey, is the power of Range.
In David Epstein’s seminal work, Range, he argues that in a highly complex world, generalists, those who draw from diverse experiences, are better equipped to succeed than singular specialists. The solution engineer’s background is essentially a “sampling period” across technology, sales, communication, and strategy, providing exactly this kind of range.
Epstein’s words now ring truer than ever in my daily life as a PM:
- “Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly.”
- “Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and different domains.”
- “Breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. That is, the more contexts in which something is learned, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example.”
The core PM job is integrating disparate pieces of knowledge — customer pain, engineering constraints, market data, and business strategy — to form a coherent product vision. This is the definition of range.
Conclusion
My purpose in sharing this is simple: to inspire and enable Solution Engineers who are interested in Product Management. It may well be the most difficult thing you do, but if you persevere, it could also be the most rewarding. No, it isn’t a perfect role, for no such unicorn exists. Being a PM comes with it;s own frustrations and challenges – dealing with unhappy customers, working through internal politics, being hindered by resource constraints, to name a few. However, if you’re looking for a challenging, rewarding and impactful technology role, product could be where you belong.
APPENDIX
What Does It Take to Move from SE to PM?
If you are a Solution Engineer or a professional in a similar consultative role, you have a wealth of transferable skills that make you an ideal candidate for Product Management.
Transferable Skills (The Toolbox)
Your current role has already given you the foundation for strategic and executive-level thinking:
- Executive-level Discussions and Negotiations
- Strategy and Vision Setting
- Sales / Persuasion (selling the vision to internal stakeholders and customers)
- Leadership and Influencing (getting things done without direct authority)
- Communication: Skilled Storyteller (translating technical complexity into business value)
- Data Analysis and Data-Driven Decision Making
- Project Management
- Personal Organization and Time Management
Personal Qualities (The Mindset)
The most important qualities are those you possess internally:
- Customer Empathy
- Lifelong Learner
- Curious Problem Solver
- Strategic Visionary
- Relentless Customer Champion
- Pragmatic Executor
- Master Collaborator & Influencer
A Most Unlikely Trailblazer 