Comments on: Software Product Managers – What are you selling? Product, category or need?

By: davidwlocke

davidwlocke — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 06:31:29 +0000

The need sell happens because we code to please ourselves. The remedy is finding a client and coding their product visualization on top of your technology. This makes for a slow process. Being a software company is supposed to be, but rarely is, a forever proposition.

I don’t know that Salesforce.com ever created a new category. It was just the first late market CRM (as a service) product.

As for the product sale, they span the early and late IT horizontal. They do need to be rewritten to transition to the late market, but once they do, your company better have another product entering the market. The prospect of continuing income is mostly a mirage. The transition to late market killed most of the software companies that ever existed, the once whose names we don’t recall.

You really have to do all three: need sell, then category sell, then product sell. Beyond these, you will have to do a HypeCycle, next generation sell if your company is still around.

By: Weekly Reader: 25July08 » The Productologist

Weekly Reader: 25July08 » The Productologist — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:48:16 +0000

[...] What are you selling? Product, category or need? [Product Management Tips] [...]

By: gopalshenoy

gopalshenoy — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:38:16 +0000

Hi Subrata,

Anything that is a “need” sell is a scary place to be, it is a solution looking for a problem to solve – and success is based on a lot of hope and prayer. Yes, you could get lucky and someone may recognize a need that gets solved by the solution and you could move directly to a “product” sell. It sure can happen, but as a product manager I would not bet on it. I would rather build something that is a “category” sell or a “product” sell.

Gopal

By: subrataalpha

subrataalpha — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:18:46 +0000

A “need sell” product may do well in an upbeat market, where consumers have the spending leeway to try a product and feel a (perhaps latent) need satiated.
There are instances where “Category sells” remain that for a very long time and perhaps never make it to the “Product Sell” Zone. Take open office applications for example. Google docs and friends do solve a need in a different way but there are adoption pains, pains that dissuade users to move to it. There could be situations where “Need Sell”s – especially the ahead-of-time stuff – take as much time to become “Product Sell”s as do “category Sell”s.
Btw, is this ladder progressive or is it possible for a product to get from “Need Sell” to “Product Sell” straightaway?

By: links for 2008-07-09 (Jarrett House North)

links for 2008-07-09 (Jarrett House North) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:38:15 +0000

[...] What are you selling? Product, category or need? (Product Management Tips by Gopal Shenoy) Different categories of product, and the importance of moving from a category sell to a product sell. (tags: sales productmanagement) [...]