Stop Selling Features. Start Selling Margin.
Most PMs fight over features.
Execs fight over margin, cash, and risk.
That gap is why smart PMs still lose roadmap battles, get “great job” feedback, and stall at the next level.
This week’s decision system fixes that.
Why “good work” still loses
Two truths run almost every product org:
Promotions are granted (by sponsorship), not earned by effort
Visibility compounds when you talk in P&L language
Sponsors bet their reputation on you. Speaking P&L makes you safe to champion. (Pair this with the loop in the PM Visibility Playbook.)
So here’s a reusable system you can run every week.
The Decision System: P&L Translation Table
For any initiative, pick one primary executive lever:
Revenue
New revenue, expansion, pricing, win rate, sales cycle (if pricing is the lever, use this 30-day playbook.)Retention
Churn, downgrades, renewal risk, activation, usage habitCost
Support load, manual ops, infra cost, vendor spend, time wasteRisk
Compliance, outages, fraud, trust, and reputational riskCash timing
Payback period, time-to-value, implementation time, billing triggers
Rule: If you can’t name the lever, the work is “nice,” but it’s hard to fund.
The One-Sentence Case (what execs actually remember)
Use this sentence every time:
“We’re doing X to move Y, measured by Z, by date D, and we’ll stop if K happens.”
X = the initiative in plain English
Y = the primary lever (revenue, retention, cost, risk, cash timing)
Z = 1 leading indicator + 1 lagging indicator
D = a date
K = a kill rule (what proves it’s not working)
Kill rules only work if your metrics aren’t lying; here’s the 14-day feature test to keep the signal clean.
This is what “strategy” looks like when it survives a CFO question.
The Risk Ledger (why you can’t cheat product)
Senior PM work is risk management.
Before you pitch, write your Top 5 risks in one screen:
User risk: Who won’t change behavior and why?
Value risk: Why would anyone pay or stay?
Execution risk: What breaks, what blocks, what dependency kills it?
Go-to-market risk: Who sells it, who supports it, what training is required?
Measurement risk: How will we fool ourselves with the wrong metric?
If you can speak to these calmly, you sound senior fast.
Bonus: Write these risks before your manager does. That’s how you shift from executor to advisor.
Example: Turning a “feature” into a CFO story
Feature ask
“Add an onboarding checklist.”
CFO-proof version
“We’re adding a guided onboarding checklist to reduce early churn risk costing us $X in LTV, measured by activation rate in week 1 and churn at day 60, by April 30. We’ll stop if activation doesn’t improve by 10% after 2 iterations.”
Add one tradeoff line:
“To fund this, we’ll pause two low-impact UI requests that don’t move retention.”
That last line is where trust gets built.
The 3 scripts that win hard conversations
1. Why now?
“Customer demand is steady, but churn risk is rising in the first 60 days. This is the cheapest point to fix behavior.”
2. What do we stop?
“If we want retention impact, we stop polishing. We ship the smallest behavior change that moves activation.”
3. What would change your mind?
“If activation doesn’t move after two iterations, we stop and reallocate. No sunk-cost heroics.”
Execs relax when you have an exit plan.
The weekly habit (10 minutes, repeat forever)
Every Friday, send this 5-line update to your manager or stakeholders:
Outcome moved: what changed
Evidence: metric or customer proof
Risk: what could derail next week
Decision needed: what you need from them
Next bet: what you’re testing next
This builds sponsorship because you make your manager look informed and safe in their exec meetings.
This system works. Now make it faster.
The tool below cuts this to 5 minutes and gives you a one-page version you can reuse every week.
Paid subscribers get the downloadable CFO-proof roadmap tool plus this week’s 37 verified US remote PM roles (posted in the last 7 days, direct company links) so you can test this framework in real interviews.