The case for
practice

Athletes practice before games. Musicians rehearse before concerts. Lawyers run mock trials before stepping into court. Surgeons train on simulations before operating on patients.

But Product Managers? We prepare for a board presentation by making slides. We get ready for a difficult stakeholder conversation by thinking about what we might say. We approach our skip-level by hoping we remember our talking points.

Then we walk into the room and discover that preparation in our heads is nothing like performance under pressure.

It is not that we do not want to practice. It is that practicing conversations is awkward. Asking a colleague to pretend to be your skeptical VP feels strange. They are too nice, or too busy, or the dynamic is just off.

So we default to the only option that feels practical: we wing it. We learn through live fire. Every real conversation is also our practice session.

This works, eventually. With enough experience, you develop instincts. But the cost is real. The fumbled executive presentation. The discovery call where you talked too much. The negotiation where you folded too quickly. These were not just learning moments. They were missed opportunities, damaged relationships, stalled careers.

We believe that communication skill is not innate. Some people seem naturally articulate, but what you are seeing is the result of thousands of conversations, processed and refined over years. That same skill can be built deliberately, in months instead of decades, if you practice with intention.

We believe that speaking is different from thinking. You can know exactly what you want to say, but the words come out differently under pressure. The only way to close this gap is to practice speaking, not just planning.

We believe that confidence comes from preparation. The PM who has already navigated a tense stakeholder conversation three times in simulation walks into the real one differently. Not because they have a script, but because they have been there before.

We believe that feedback in the moment is too late. By the time you realize the meeting went poorly, the meeting is over. What you need is a way to see your mistakes before they count.

Sage is your practice partner. For each scenario, Sage becomes the person you need to practice with: the skeptical engineer, the impatient executive, the frustrated customer, the ambitious peer.

You speak. Sage responds. The conversation unfolds naturally, with the kind of pushback and curveballs you actually encounter at work. When the session ends, Sage becomes your coach, highlighting what worked and what did not, with specific suggestions for how to handle it differently.

This is not role-play with a friend who pulls punches. Sage is calibrated to push back authentically, to surface the objections you would actually face, to make the practice feel real enough that the real thing feels easier.

We did not create 51 scenarios by imagining what might be useful. We built them from the moments that actually matter in PM careers.

The discovery interview where the customer is telling you what you want to hear. The roadmap defense where the exec wants to cut your project. The sprint planning where engineering is pushing back on scope. The skip-level where you need to make your case for promotion. The crisis response where a customer is threatening to churn.

Each scenario targets specific skills. Active listening. Saying no gracefully. Quantifying impact. Building alignment. Managing up. These are the muscles that determine whether you are a PM who gets things done or one who gets steamrolled.