Get the Yes: Strategic Communication & Influence for Product Leaders

5.0 (4)

Elena Leonova

ex-Product Exec @Spryker, Commerce, eBay

Get leadership to say "YES" to your proposal

You know the problem. You have the data. You believe in your recommendation.

But when you present it to senior leadership, the conversation does not go as planned. Your audience questions your assumptions, focuses on a different issue, asks for evidence you did not prepare, or postpones the decision.

Knowing your subject is not enough. You also need to communicate your proposal in a way that helps senior decision-makers understand it, evaluate it, and act on it.

In this one-week course, you will work on a real proposal from your job. You will practice how to:

Structure a clear and persuasive argument
Connect your proposal to leadership priorities
Decide which evidence strengthens your case
Anticipate objections and difficult questions
Adapt your message to different senior stakeholders
Respond to pushback without becoming defensive or losing your recommendation
Manage the people and dynamics around the decision

This is practical training, not a presentation-skills lecture. You will revise your own proposal, receive feedback, and practice the parts of the conversation that are hardest to prepare for alone.

What you’ll learn

Turn real ideas into proposals senior leaders can act on—and handle the stakeholder dynamics and pushback that determine whether they land.

Turn your idea into a clear recommendation, business case, and specific decision request.
Select the evidence, risks, and trade-offs leaders need to evaluate your proposal.
Leave with a stronger structure for a real proposal from your work.

Identify who can approve, block, reshape, or champion your proposal—and what each person needs to support it.
Connect your recommendation to stakeholder priorities without burying it in product detail.
Leave with a stakeholder map, tailored message, and pre-meeting influence plan.

Identify the assumptions, evidence gaps, risks, and competing priorities leaders are likely to challenge.
Prepare clear responses to questions that could weaken, delay, or redirect your proposal.
Leave with an objection map and Q&A plan for your real meeting.

Respond to difficult questions without becoming defensive, overexplaining, or abandoning your recommendation.
Adapt when the conversation goes off-script while keeping the room focused on the decision.
Pressure-test your proposal through live practice and feedback.

Learn directly from Elena

Elena Leonova

Contact

Founder & CPO, OneRank.io, ex-CPO @ Spryker, VP of Product @ BigCommerce

See all products from Elena

Who this course is for

Product managers at any level who need senior stakeholders to approve, prioritize, fund, or support proposals that have not landed before.
Product leaders and executives who need to align leadership teams, executive peers, CEOs, or boards around high-stakes product decisions.
Engineering, design, and marketing leaders who need senior stakeholders to back cross-functional proposals, investments, or change.

Prerequisites

Bring a real proposal that needs to get approved.
Use an upcoming or previously rejected proposal, strategy recommendation, investment request, roadmap decision, or leadership update.
Be responsible for influencing a senior decision-maker.
No specific title is required. You need an audience whose approval, support, resources, or action matters to your work.
Attend both live sessions and complete the applied work.
Plan for two two-hour sessions and one to two hours between them to revise and pressure-test your proposal.

What's included

Live sessions

Learn directly from Elena Leonova in a real-time, interactive format.

Applied work on your real proposal

Use the course exercises to structure, revise, and pressure-test an actual proposal or leadership recommendation.

Live practice and feedback

Practice communicating your recommendation and receive direct feedback from Elena during the sessions.

Optional group office hours

Bring your revised proposal, difficult questions, or an upcoming leadership conversation for additional feedback.

Course slides and practical exercises

Keep the materials used to structure your argument, prepare stakeholders, anticipate objections, and plan your response.

Lifetime access to course recordings

Revisit the sessions, slides, and exercises whenever you are preparing for another high-stakes proposal.

Certificate of completion

Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.

Maven Guarantee

Your purchase is backed by the Maven Guarantee.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Sep 28—Oct 4

Sep

LIVE Session #1: Build a Proposal Senior Leaders Can Support

Mon 9/285:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)

Assignment to Work on Between Sessions

1 item

Sep

LIVE Session #2: Influence the Room and Handle Pushback

Wed 9/305:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)

Oct

Optional: Optional office hours: Refine your proposal before the real meeting

Fri 10/25:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

Optional

Free resources

Schedule

Live sessions

4-5 hrs

Two required two-hour working sessions plus an optional one-hour office hour. Build a proposal for a real leadership decision, map the stakeholders you need to influence, anticipate pushback, and practice responding under pressure. You’ll receive live feedback from Elena and your peers.

Mon, Sep 28
5:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)
Wed, Sep 30
5:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)
Fri, Oct 2
5:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

Applied Work

1-2 hrs

Complete a short pre-work brief to choose your idea, decision, audience, and stakes. Between sessions, apply the frameworks to strengthen your proposal, prepare for likely objections, and bring a revised version to the second session for practice and feedback.

Testimonials

It helped sharpen my thinking around financial realities, prioritization, and... how to communicate product strategy in a way that resonates with executive leadership.
Vova Lunov
Senior PM, Spryker Systems · Cohort 1
Elena will help you see the obvious gap between 'product strategy theater' and real strategy... grounding decisions in defensible thinking that holds up under executive scrutiny.
Mathias Holmgren
Product Coach, mathiasholmgren.com · Cohort 1
Elena teaches something much more rare and I'd argue important: how to decide what to build in the first place... I feel more confident in strategic conversations and have so many ideas about how to apply this in my current role.
Stephanie Neave
PM, WeVideo · Cohort 2
Elena Leonova draws students deep into the executive mind... [she] challenges students to frame product decisions in the language of business drivers, strategic bets and forced trade-offs... and cultivate trust with their executives.
Travis Fell
Senior Technical Product Owner, Texicare · Cohort 1