I just discovered the forms functionality in Google docs. What an awesome piece of functionality that will help me a ton as a product manager. In a nutshell, it helps you create a form on the fly (think about creating a simple survey) and email it to a bunch of people. The recipients get an email with a hyperlink which when clicked takes them to a web page where they get to see the form and fill it out. They do not need to be Gmail users.
The responses are automatically get entered into a spreadsheet where you can do analysis of the responses - there are a ton of plugins that are available right from within the spreadsheet. Now if that does not satisfy your analysis needs, you can export this spreadsheet as an Excel file.
Now, why does this help me as a product manager? I have done so many surveys in the past and invariably after I analyze the results, I wish I had one or two questions that would have given me more insights. Instead of having to set up another survey and send the link, I could very easily use Google forms and quickly email it to the respondents of my first survey to get a very quick response. I feel like a kid in a candy store - just because of how easy it is to use.
Ever wondered if any product management is needed for commodity products such as pencils, pens, toothpaste etc. where the customer needs have not changed for years?
Alain Breillat of Picture Imperfect has a great post on how to create product differentiation in an overcrowded market?. It is a fascinating read and gave me so many new insights. I especially liked the triangle of the consumer values - how buyers evaluate new products for the benefits they provide - I had never thought about this way. Thanks Alain for this wonderful post !
If you have not been to LinkedIn Answers, you should check it out - it has a great section on product management. There is a wealth of information there on market research, pricing, product positioning and a ton of other stuff. Have a question? post it there for free and get answers from LinkedIn members from all over the world. Even just reading the answers to the posted questions will give you a lot of food for thought. I use it as a great resource of reading material and also answer questions. By answering questions, you are also building your brand as a product manager !
I have been using twitter for maybe the last 3 months now. When I saw it for the first time in 2007, my reaction was right! who has the time for this? Then I reluctantly signed up 3 months back and now I am hooked. Many of the folks I follow the say the same thing. If you are on twitter, you can follow me.
The reason I use twitter most of the time is to get information for myself. I follow some of the very well known social media folks and based on the links that they post I have discovered new content and in the process learned a lot of new things. Not convinced that twitter is useful for personal use? Watch this great video.
OK, so from a personal point of view that is great but does it have any use for businesses? I have found good use for businesses as well. Businesses can create a twitter account, do a search for twitter users who fit the profile of the businesses customer/prospect profile and follow them. Some of them will end up following you. Then use twitter as another vehicle to establish thought leadership in your market and also to create awareness of what you do. This can be done by posting twitter links to
Articles about your company in the media
New content articles on how to best solve problems your customers have
Best practice articles (does not have to be written by you, provide links to other’s content, what is more important is to make your prospects/customers/followers get better at what they do)
Your press releases
Webcasts conducted by your company
Product promotions
Conferences or tradeshows your company may be attending
Awards received by your company
and this list can go on and on.
(I am always looking for new uses for twitter, so if you have other great uses, please drop me a comment)
You get the idea. In the meantime, make sure that you are also searching twitter to see if anything is being mentioned about your company. This is extremely important.
Let me give you an example - recently one of my twitter friends Max (fictitious name), posted the following “Problems with GotoWebinar never end… Argh. Wish THEY were listening here. But they don’t even listen when I call them up”
So I emailed Max and asked about the specific issues and Max’s customer experience with GotoWebinar because it is one of the easiest tools I have found to conduct webinars. Max send me the details and here are the three takeaways:
I’ve communicated about them online, and got no response
Instead some of their COMPETITORS have responded to us to see if they can fulfill our needs
The problems have only escalated, causing me to be somewhat more vocal about my issues
What? Competitors were listening and they responded to take away your business? Max has close to 150 followers - just by posting a tweet about real experience about a product, Max had instantly spread the word to 150 people and also competitors that GotoWebinar has issues. Within a day, somebody else had asked Max the same question - Max responded “Mostly audio issues… both telephone and VOIP, which they just introduced. And really lacking in customer communication”.
Same day, Max again posted “Surprised by the response to my GTW issues… more responses than last time I voiced some frustration…” - so did GotoWebinar folks follow what is being said about them on twitter? - maybe.
I cannot tell you how important it is for companies to have a good presence on social media channels (blogs, twitter) and more importantly follow what is being said. Rick Burnes from Hubspot recently wrote a great blog post “How to kill a conversation and suck life out of a blog” on this topic.
Liked this article? Leave me comments - I would love to hear your thoughts - or get an RSS Feed to this blog
Last month, I slammed Infusionsoft when they started spamming me with email after I had downloaded an eBook from their website.
The very next day, CEO of Infusionsoft Clate Mask apologized via comments to that blog post. Here was his comment:
“Gopal–very fair point. We should have had the language on there that communicates we will send follow-up messages when you hit submit. My bad. We will change that. I complete agree with you about permission marketing. And I admit that sometimes we get going too fast and make mistakes that result in unwanted messages. But believe me: we do want to send value, build a relationship and become a trusted advisor to folks who want to know how to build their businesses more quickly and effectively. Thanks for your comment. It will cause me to examine things and see if we’ve been too heavy on promotion and light on valuable content to our prospects. BTW, I really appreciate your perspectives and am a little embarassed to be called out by you.”
I was impressed - a CEO was reading what was being said about his company on my blog and he took the time to admit the mistake, apologize and promise that the issue will be fixed. However, I was not going to be convinced until I saw that changes were made.
I went to their website last week to see if anything had changed and nothing had. Then I received another comment from Clate last night about this same issue.
Hi Gopal, I just want to thank you for your “criticism” a few weeks ago about our opt-in and follow-up marketing practices. Your post resulted in a meeting between me and our marketing director. We have already changed a couple of things in order to be more transparent to folks who opt in to my eBook and various white papers. And we are revising some other things we are doing–toning down the frequency of communications, etc. As our company has grown, I think we have gone a little overboard with the amount and frequency of email communications we send. Again, thanks for the nudge in a better direction.
Clate had kept his word, made the easy fix and is now working on fixing his messaging problem.
Think about it - how many CEOs or others in companies are paying attention to what is being said about their products/companies in the social media, how many of them take the time to correspond with this new media, admit that a mistake has been made and then make sure it gets fixed.
I have to applaud Clate for doing this. All of us make mistakes, what takes effort is the willingness to admit that it was wrong and then take the time to fix it. I am not a customer of InfusionSoft, but people who could be their customers may be reading my blog.
Clate - you are way ahead of your CEO peers. I have to say I am impressed.
Folks, if your organization is not paying attention to social media, you are digging a big hole for yourselves. Your existence is threatened and you should be worried.
Have you heard - this is a huge untapped market, we are the market leaders and we have no competition? Such a market does not exist and the above statement is nothing but a myth. If you have no competition, you are probably in a market that does not exist.
Think about it, wealth attracts a crowd and hence if indeed there is a huge market for your products or services, do you expect your competitors to sit ideal while you dominate the market? You may start a company with a great idea (a game changer) in a large market, but it is only a matter of time before you draw attention. In fact, once competition shows up to the party, they validate that there indeed is a large market and your gut was right when you started the company. So when you see healthy competition, embrace it, because if it is a large market, the pie is usually large enough for multiple players to happily co-exist.
Big market tends to attract many competitors and initially ends up to be a very fragmented market which eventually consolidates into a few key players. Your objective should be the market leader when a few key players are left standing. But stop fooling yourself, your employees or your customers that you are a market leader in a large untapped market that has no competition.
Image: Courtesy of Jon Hirschtick, SolidWorks Corporation
Liked this article? Leave me comments - I would love to hear your thoughts - or get an RSS Feed to this blog
Shown below is an email I got yesterday (unsolicited I should say) from a company called SalesDiesel (this is a real company, they have a website and indeed do what they claim in this email).
So why do I have an issue with this?
1) The email is addressed to himself and is not a personal email which means he has BCCd a ton of people.
2) This means that he has not tried to reach me at my office a number of times (not that I am complaining) - a big fat lie.
3) Does the email look professional to you that he thinks I will respond to this wanting to place my inside sales in their hands?
4) I have to call or email him so that he does not bother me or waste my time - you already have by sending me an email with lies and you want me to waste more time so that you shall not bother me?
Why don’t some companies in this day and age just get it? Why do they think prospects are stupid and will not see through such a charade?
10 years back in Chicago, a colleague of mine was shopping for a Honda car. He went to one of the Honda dealerships. The salesman started giving him the standard pitch about the car and then told him that he should buy from him because they are the biggest dealer in Chicagoland and sell more cars than any other dealer. My colleague listened to all this and finally had it - he told the dealer - “I don’t really care how many cars you sell or if you sell the most, I only need one.”
So when a vendor spouts that they are #1 in some field, do you think buyers care? Why not tell them how you can solve their problem better for them than any other vendor - don’t you think that might work? Customers care about their problem being solved, not what your product is called or how many you sell. Yes, they do want to do business with a vendor who is financially strong and who will be around, but just being #1 will not cut it if you don’t have the best solution to back it up. If financial strength or the revenue size was the only metric, then do you think any of the startups that became juggernauts would have had a chance during the early days?
Yes, companies should not be “customer” focused first, I strongly challenge them to be “employee” focused instead and then the customer focus will come.
I have been a great proponent of being customer driven, listening to customer’s unmet needs and then creating products that serve those needs. But when it comes to focus for companies, I would be “employee” focused first. Why? Because if you hire the right employees, treat them right, give them the authority and responsibility to do the right thing for the customers, the customer focus will come automatically. The vice versa does not work.
The example I always use when I make this point is that of airlines. They all tout how they care about their customers and guess what - when I get on a plane I meet flight attendants who care less about the customers - why? they are not happy, they are probably worried about making their ends meet because their compensations are being squeezed by the airlines every time they get a chance - all in the name of cost cutting. So do I expect these employees to serve their customers very well so that the airlines can tout great customer service? These days they are even asked to bring their own food and drink on board. Imagine this - what would four to six extra lunch boxes and sodas/water cost to make sure that these flight attendants (whose primary job is to serve and ensure the safety of the passengers) stay hydrated and not hungry? All of this when I have not seen any major cuts in the airline executive compensations that makes these executives start worrying about how they will pay their bills. Who would you rather see motivated to turn the airline around - the executives or the flight attendants and the pilots in whose hands your life depends when you are flying?
Contrast that with companies such as Ritz and Nordstrom - do you think these companies have such high customer ratings by sheer luck - no - they focus on making sure they hire the right employees, develop them, make sure that they are well treated and empowered to make their customers happy. After all, hiring decisions better be the most important decisions you make in your company. Folks, It is all about relationships with people and not products.
Thank you Manny Ramirez for the last 7 years - but Red Sox nation will be just fine without you. When you become more than the team, it is time for you to move on. You were a great asset but there is a point a great asset becomes a liability - you crossed the line this year.
Our sports teams have shining examples of superstars (Tom Brady, Randy Moss, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen) who recognize the value of putting the team first and delivering the goods. You also had great teammates like David Ortiz, Mike Lowell, Josh Beckett, Kevin Millar who played their hearts out, but with you it was all about you. You were making more money that you could possibly spend in your lifetime, but all you could do is whine and cry like a baby!! I enjoyed all of your home runs like every other Red Sox fan did. But enough is enough, we will still love our Red Sox as much as we all do without you.
So have fun, pee in a cup behind the Dodgers score board, make cell phone calls while you are in the left field, party with Scott Boras, get more rich, report late into training camp, visit the car auction in NY, do whatever, we really don’t care - you are now Torre’s problem - now he can lose whatever hair he has left dealing with you. We are quite happy here in Boston that the cancer in the clubhouse has been cured once and for all. We may not win it all this year, but the concept of the team and integrity of the game will survive.
Recently, I attended a webinar. The slides were full of text and the presenter read word by word - you very well know what I said - Text on a Powerpoint slide is your greatest competition. When I gave feedback about this to the presenter via email, the response from him indicated to me that he decided to put all the text on his slides because it was a webinar.
So this brings up the interesting question - do slides need to be different for a webinar than those used for live presentations? No, absolutely not in my opinion. To me a webinar is no different than a live presentation at a conference where there is an overflow room. Imagine that you are giving a talk at a conference that has drawn a large audience that will not fit in the original room reserved for your talk. So the organizers open up another room where the audience can hear you, can see your slides on a projection screen, but cannot see you. Would you change your presentation style and your slides because you cannot see the people in the overflow conference room? No. Webinars should be treated the same way.
In fact, I will argue that webinars require even more presentation skills because you want the audience to listen to you while they have a lot of distraction compared to when you are presenting live. So if all you are going to do is put text and then read off the slide, they will read the slides ahead of you as you flip them and not pay any attention to your message.
While I am on this topic - here is another common mistake I have seen many presenters make including this webinar presenter. I signed up for the webinar to get knowledge about a topic that was interesting to me. The presenter started with introduction about who he is, what his company does and what products they make - this is not what I wanted to hear right off the bat. I wanted to hear about the topic that I signed up for. Tell me that first, satiate my hunger for it and then give me the pitch about you, your company and your products. Towards the end, you have gained more permission from the attendees to tell them about you and they are more apt to listen because you educated them first. It is all about the audience, folks. Don’t put the cart before the horse!
Like this product management blog? Leave me comments or get an RSS Feed to this blog.
Just last night, I was talking to one of my friends about how some companies are still not embracing social media to their advantage and are still relying solely on traditional marketing methods.
His response was “but I don’t think many people read blogs - for that matter, I don’t think most of my customers read blogs”. This is true - there are less people who say that they explicitly read blogs.
But my argument was that the purpose of social media is not primarily for those who are already on your site, but to help you get in front of those users who don’t know about you, but are searching for the stuff that you have via a search engine.
Couple of weeks back I attended the Web Innovator’s group event. The group has come a long way since last year - much larger room, more than 500 people (some very talkative ones who will not shut up in spite of pleas from the audience). Three main stage demos from all very early startups.
Times have really changed since the dot com era. All the three companies who demoed (Totspot, Zeer, Webnotes) were asked one question from the audience - how the heck are you going to make money? What a refreshing thought that startups need to make money to stay in business? Imagine anyone asking this before the big burndown earlier this decade?
Of the three companies, I thought Zeer and Webnotes indeed had something unique to offer. I would suggest you folks check them out.
If you were one of the attendees at the WebInno events and you were one of the talkative ones - here is a personal plea from me - please keep quiet during the demos purely out of professional respect and courtesy for these companies who have toiled hard to get their fledging products ready for this big show in front of a huge audience - would’nt you like this if you were in their shoes?
I have been asked the question - “Why do I blog?” twice recently - once by a reader of this blog from as far away as New Zealand.
Great question and one that I had to ask myself before I wrote this post. So here are my reasons (Listed in the order by which I got started on this path).
1) Get good at writing - I wanted to improve my writing skills and get better at expressing my opinions or thoughts on topics. I started off on very random topics to begin with. Even to this day, I re-read my posts on this blog and rewrite portions of it to improve my writing skills.
2) Single store for good resources I find or for my product management experiences - Services like del.icio.us were interesting at first, but got unwieldy at best after I had too many links stored there. I have come back and searched my own blog to find posts I have written myself or find other articles I referenced in my post. I know it is here when I need it.
3) Write about something I am very passionate about - product management - Identifying market problems, solving them and shipping products that solve them is what I enjoy the most at work.
4) Market myself - Let the world know that I exist. I get a great sense of satisfaction when I see other product management bloggers reference my posts in their blogs . I have also got recruiting calls lately asking me if I would interested in pursuing some job opportunities and they tell me they found me via this blog. Definitely a good feeling when others think you know something that is valued.
5) Share and learn - I enjoy reading other’s blogs, sharing my experiences via comments on other people’s blogs or my own blog posts and seeing traffic coming in from the blogs that I comment on. You can never stop learning and what a great way to do it when you can get advice from some of the smartest and experienced product managers around the world.
So what are my recommendations for new bloggers based on what I have learnt along the way - (btw, this is my third blog - I got locked out of my first blog - it is a long story, my second one was on Vox and this is the one that has been in existence the most)
1. Start slow - It is easy to go gung ho when you get started and then lose momentum and interest immediately after (exercising comes to mind). Get into the habit of writing new posts at least once a week, then get to twice a week and so on.
2. Pick a good name for your blog - “Just because you build it, they will not come” - people need to find you. Having a good name that reflects what you write about and what a lot of people search on will help since it will be in your blog’s URL and search engines give a lot of weightage if the term is in the URL. Here are some of my blog’s old names before I settled on the current name of “productmanagementtips.com”
Gopal’s random ramblings - you know how well that went
Bazaar Buzz - I knew something was wrong when I was writing about product management and most of the people visiting my site were searching for “farmer’s market” or “Bazaar”.
gopalshenoy.com - Unfortunately my name is not that famous that I can expect a whole lot of people to search my name in Google
3. Don’t blog in a vacuum - I used to just blog here and do nothing else. Then I started reading other blogs and commenting on other people’s blogs and sharing my perspectives and then I saw increase in traffic. Make sure your URL is visible in your comments and if applicable (and only if applicable) reference your blog post. If the blog you are commenting on is popular, those who find your comments helpful will likely visit your site. But don’t ever spam just because you want to bring traffic to your site.
4. Be genuine and share your experiences and knowledge - Be genuine, write from your heart (do not make it corporate speak), know what you are writing about. It is OK to be wrong about something (remember the learning part), admit if you were wrong and how you have learnt from what someone else has said.
5. Make friends among bloggers and get them to link to your posts from theirs: Pagerank matters. Just being on other blogrolls does not help (in fact, many of the blogroll links may have the nofollow tag and hence search engines completely ignore them). You want others to reference your post in the text of their posts. Write something good and useful so that they can reference your posts.
6. Return the favor: When you find some good posts on other blogs, write about them and link to their posts. There is nothing that says that every post has to be your own. If you find a good post, make your readers aware of it and write a small blurb which will get them to read that great post as well. It is all about sharing with others great things you find. But, don’t ever plagiarize.
7. Search engine optimize your blog: This is something I have not fully done yet (have done some) because I am still using the vanilla wordpress.com service and not wordpress.org service and hence have not fully exploited all the things I could do with the latter. But it is important - again you need to be found by others. SEO is an ongoing thing.
8. Generate new content - Your readers (and search engines for that matter) like new content. To make sure I have enough to write about, I jot down things as I come across it. When I have more time some days than others, I write more than one post and schedule it (wordpress allows that) so that I will have new content showing up on my blog on a regular basis. Like everything else, get into a habit of doing this. If you truly enjoy blogging, it will be fun and not a chore.
I hope this answers those who asked me the question and thanks for asking. If anyone else has other reasons why they blog and more tips for bloggers, please share with us.
Kristin Zhivago has an awesome post on her blog titled Gone! The reason customers leave. I would strongly recommend that anyone who touches a customer (sales, tech support, product management, professional services, executives) read it.
I had written last year about how customers are lot more tolerant of a vendor’s mistakes or shortcomings if the vendor keeps them informed. It is nothing but courtesy, professionalism and respect. One of the companies that I respect a whole lot in this regard is CitiCards. Twice in the last 5 years, my credit card has been compromised because of data theft at two retail stores. They proactively called me up, put my account on hold so that no fraudulent charges get made using my credit card. Do I sleep well that they are looking out for me? - oh ya ! Do you think I will ever switch credit card vendors? - oh No! Do you think I will talk great about them and recommend them? - you know the answer to that.
Doing this takes a whole lot of effort and the will to make it happen. Unfortunately companies are busy chasing new dollars, that they forget the adage “Bird in hand is worth two in the bush!”.
Good managers mostly hire good people and sometimes hire the wrong people whereas bad managers always hire the wrong people. This is the conclusion I have come to in my 15 year career. What do I define as a bad hiring manager? - one who does not have good managerial skills, feels insecure and hence tends to hire someone worse than him/her because they feel threatened if their hires are better/smarter than them. I have seen at least four such managers in my career based on the quality and hence the resulting performance of their hires.
So what are the traits of good managers:
1) They hire people smarter than them: The whole purpose of hiring people is to get work done. Good managers don’t want to lose sleep over the performance of their reports. They want people who can work with minimal direction, whose work will reflect their pride, who will go the extra mile to get the job done.They do not micro manage, they allow you to put your artistic touch to your work as long as you meet the business goals. They realize that ownership brings the best out of good people.
2) Their success is defined by the team’s success: They are fully aware that their success is determined by their team’s success. They work to remove the hurdles limiting their team and to ensure that the team is marching forward.
3) They identify and credit their team members in public for job well done: They don’t take any credit for the work done - they identify in public the people who toiled to get the job done. They relish their team’s success. They make sure that their team members get the visibility in front of their superiors or executive management. You will see them use “we” more than they would use “I”.
4) They praise in public and advise in private: People need constant encouragement and direction when things go wrong. Managers work with team members privately to reflect on mistakes and work out an action plan to fix it going forward. They use the feather to slap one’s hand and never the hammer unless they are forced to. They give immediate feedback good or bad so that successes get repeated and mistakes get corrected.
5) They train their replacements: Good managers want to move their career forward. They realize that they cannot do this until they groom someone to eventually replace them in the current job. They realize that they owe it to their current employer if they choose to leave the company.
6) They never treat all of their direct reports the same but fairly: They realize that people are different and hence one cannot treat everyone the same. Some need more assistance than others. It is more important that they are fair and transparent in the decisions they make. They set goals for their team members and reward good performance and more importantly penalize bad performance. The process is transparent and the team members don’t hold any ill will on decisions made.
7) They treat their direct reports as human beings: After all, it is not just all work. They encourage their reports to take time off to recharge themselves. They remind them to get a life outside work. In essence, they care about their team member’s well being because it directly impacts your productivity at work.
8. They cut their losses when they make hiring mistakes: When they make those bad hiring decisions, they cut their losses when it is clear that things will not work out in spite of their best efforts. They are not afraid to admit their hiring mistakes. This sends message to the rest of the team that good performance is valued and everyone is expected to equally share the workload.
So how do you find out during the hiring process if you will be working for a good manager or a total jerk? It is tough because it is easy to hide but you may be able to get some early warning signals. Here are eight ways you could possibly find out:
1) Ask the hiring manager directly about their management style.
2) Ask them about some of the successes of their team - see if it is all “I did this, I did this” and not “we did this” - do they name people on their team while they talk about the successes?
3) Ask others who you would be interviewing with (in an indirect way) including those who would be your peers about the manager’s management style. If someone takes issue with this, it may not be a good place to work after all.
4) They let you ask questions during the interview that let you get a better understanding about the job and about their management style.
5) How much do they grill you to make sure you are the right person for the job? Good managers want to make sure you indeed have the “smarts” or “skills” that you claim in your resume.
6) How well do they talk about the company’s success and work that needs to be done?
7) How long is the interview process? In good companies, interviews are likely to be multiple rounds because the company cares a whole lot about their hiring process.
8. Are they excited when they talk about what the company is doing and what the team is accomplishing?
My presentation at BPMA was well received last night. I asked the audience to walk away remembering three things from my presentation. Here they are:
1) You are the presentation: The audience has showed up to listen to you. You have the message and hence you are the presentation. If the audience can figure out your message by looking at the slides, you as well email them the slides and cancel your presentation. You could save yourselves and your audience a whole lot of time and torture.
Before you do anything, figure out your message - what three things do you want your audience to remember (just like I am doing here) to take the action you want them to take.
Once you have your message, ask yourself - will use of slides help me convey my message better? There is nothing that says every presentation has to use PowerPoint. PowerPoint is just a tool and it is up to you to determine whether you need it.
So next time someone tells you - “I cannot attend your presentation, can you send it to me” - tell them No. Tell them you can send them your slides, but if they need the presentation, they need You.
There is nothing that says that the slide deck you have to email folks has to be the same as the one you use for your presentation. In fact, I would say they have to be different. The one you send out can be full of text so that they can read it at their leisure and get the message in the absence of your voice.
2) Make powerpoint your GPS and not your competition: Now if you conclude that you do need slides, ensure that the purpose of the slides are to help guide you deliver the message. I think about PowerPoint as my GPS. A GPS system does not do the driving for me not does it take control of my car - its sole purpose is to guide me from point A to point B. When I am driving from my home to my office, I turn it off because I don’t need it - it is actually a distraction. Think about Powerpoint in the same way - if you don’t need it, don’t use it. If you need it, make sure it is only a visual aid. Don’t fill up your slides with text, fancy graphics and text animations, because it will distract the audience and they will read the slides rather than listen to you. Your audience can read faster than you can talk. After all, you are the presentation.
If you absolutely need to put text on a slide, remember - min 28 size font and use the 4×4 principle - maximum 4 bullets per slide, maximum 4 words per bullet.
3) Why does the audience care? - It is all about the audience. You are presenting to them because you want them to take the action in your favor. Find out what the audience wants to hear. Try emailing them before hand to ask them, if you have a blog ask your readers, and if nothing works, ask some of your friends or colleagues. Ask them what they would like to hear if they were going to attend your talk. This is no different from what product managers do to research market needs.
For example, if you are pitching to a VC, what message do you want to deliver to them so that they can take action - have them write you a big check?, find you the right executive talent? guide you in making some decisions?. If you are going in front of your executive management to pitch a new product proposal or a new pricing proposal, do you have the right message to make them approve your proposal?
All of this is common sense - but who was it that said “Common sense is not that common?”
I hope that I have been able to influence the attendees to use less of PowerPoint and talk more because every PowerPoint slide that is deleted will truly make this world a better place.
I am looking to hire a UI interaction designer who will work with me in creating user interfaces for new product concepts. This is a highly visible position in the company given the strategic nature of the products this person will work on.
Here is the job description. If you know someone who may be interested in this position, please have them send their resume to gshenoy at salary.com
Thanks in advance
Job Title: User Interaction Designer - this is a highly visible position and will work on brand new product concepts.
Company: salary.com
RESPONSIBILITIES
• Create UI concepts and solutions that satisfy business requirements.
• Collaborate with product managers and engineering to ensure that the final product meets usability requirements
• Design interactive navigation, controls and icons
• Create navigation trees and flow charts
• Create wire frames, mockups, and interactive prototypes
• Draft detailed UI design documents for use by engineering.
• Innovate new solutions, with the ability to present multiple design ideas
REQUIRED SKILLS
• Excellent UI design skills and an outstanding portfolio of interactive projects
• 3+ years experience in web design and a solid understanding of the relationship between content, visual design, user interface and technology
• Experience and participation in the complete product life cycle of launched websites or software applications
• Core competency in graphic design with emphasis on consistency, attention to detail, simplicity and innovation
• Possess strong communication skills with the ability to listen, articulate design and incorporate feedback
• Work collaboratively with product managers and engineers
• Be organized, work effectively under deadlines, and manage multiple concurrent projects
• Ability to work independently with minimal direction to meet creative and business needs
• Strong understanding of implementation technologies, and how to design with limitations
• Consumer Internet experience preferred
• BA/BS in fine arts, graphic arts, human factors or related field
Description: Salary.com is a leading provider of on-demand web based software for Human Resource professionals that simplifies compensation, performance management and succession planning to ensure the connection between people, pay and performance. Salary.com’s cutting edge technology is integrated with actionable data and content, empowering customers to make the best decisions about pay and performance and help them to attract, motivate, reward and retain top performers
The sky rocketing gas prices seems to have had an impact on marketing messages and offers.
Here are some that I have come across recently
1) Across town - message on a restaurant’s billboard - “Come in and have a juicy burger for less than a gallon of gas”
2) Goodyear enters you into a sweepstakes to win a $500 gas card if you fill out an online survey after they have serviced your car. What happened to those free trips to Hawaii? No one interested anymore?
3) Of course, the three year $2.99/ gallon gas offer from Dodge.
And did you notice that the prize for the All Star Game MVP was a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid that averages a whopping 22 miles a gallon (JD Drew will need a lot from those 70 million greenbacks to fill this one up) - what is next a Hybrid Hummer?
I just happened to see this quote from Bill Cosby.
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody”
How appropriate for product managers?
All product managers should have this quote stuck next to their desks so that it is in your face as a reminder. We cannot build a product that is good for everyone - pick the target buyer (who will buy) and then execute like hell. Use the target buyer to handle all the “what if we do this …” or “what if the user wants to do this …” ideas people throw at you.
Don’t know what I am talking about? Google “personas” and read all about it.
