Every product manager has colleagues they only hear from when something is needed. A requirements question. A priority negotiation. A resource request. The relationship exists entirely inside the boundaries of the work, and it stays there because nobody invested in anything outside of it. Product managers who want to build stronger cross-functional relationships often look for frameworks or stakeholder management techniques. Ben Chamberlain, Principal Product Manager at Mon Ami, takes a simpler approach.
Why Transactional Relationships Stay Transactional
The default mode for most cross-functional relationships is transactional. People reach out when they need something and go quiet when they do not. Over time, the relationship becomes defined by the pattern. Every message carries an implicit ask because every previous message carried an explicit one. The colleague on the receiving end learns to expect it. Trust does not accumulate because there is nothing for it to accumulate around. The relationship works well enough to move work forward, which means it rarely gets examined. Teams that start building relationships outside the transactional default often find that the alignment they struggled to achieve in meetings happens faster in conversations where nobody is asking for anything.
The Non-Transactional Default
Ben’s approach reframes relationship-building as something that happens in the spaces between asks. Meet people in person when the opportunity exists. Carry conversations past the work topic. Listen for personal details, not as a technique, but as a genuine interest in the person. When someone mentions a life event, follow up on it later. No agenda. No deliverable attached. The investment is small in any single instance, but it compounds over time into a trust foundation that exists independent of any specific project or decision.
What Changes When Trust Exists Before the Ask
Product managers who build relationships before the first hard conversation arrive at that conversation with a foundation underneath them. The priority negotiation lands differently when the other person has evidence that the relationship extends beyond the negotiation. Scope disagreements resolve faster when both sides have a history of conversations where nothing was at stake. The benefit of the doubt, which most PMs try to earn in the moment they need it, was already earned months earlier in a conversation about a move, a weekend, a side project. The margin between a PM who gets resistance and a PM who gets the benefit of the doubt is rarely about the ask itself. It is about everything that happened before the ask.
Ben walks through his specific approach in his How I PM tip, including the concrete follow-up pattern that makes non-transactional outreach natural rather than forced.
“Try to build the relationship so that you have a foundation of trust you can work with.”
— Ben Chamberlain
Watch the full tip to hear Ben’s approach to building cross-functional relationships before the first ask.
Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-chamberlain-pm/
The Product Guy 