How often have your customers asked you for functionality that you already have in your product – functionality you have had in the product for a year or two? I have had this happen often enough in my career. There are two causes for this
1) You forgot to tell the customer
2) Your product is too [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 3 Comments »
Here is a question I received the other day – “I am a business analyst now in product management team and my boss identified me as a candidate for Product management. I am excited about the opportunity, but don’t want to accept something just t0 fail. Can you please answer the below for me?
1. Challenges [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 3 Comments »
As a product manager, there is nothing more valuable than having concrete information about the market – customers, competitors, partners – all folks that influence the “external” world outside your office building. No one inside your office is buying your product, but then why do we make a lot of product decisions depending on “I [...]
Filed under: business, customer interviews, customer needs, customer visits, marketing, product management, voice of the customer | 4 Comments »
This morning, I had to get an oil change and I drove up to the local Jiffy Lube. They charge $35 for an oil change. When I pulled in, they pulled up my car record and based on the mileage, they told me about the Honda recommended maintenance I have to do. Replacement of automatic transmission [...]
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Product managers and others, here is an opportunity to get creative.
A well known radio station here in Boston is looking for your help in coming up with some creative ideas on how they can do fund raising. Currently, they do this via their broadcast, but unfortunately this results in interruption of the regularly scheduled programs [...]
Filed under: business, customer experience, customer needs, marketing, product management | 11 Comments »
Currently, we are in a global recession (Yes I am tired of hearing it is coming, for all practical purposes we are in one). Pundits predict this to last a while since we are breaking new grounds with the global financial crisis, two wars, new President and the interlinking of economies on a scale never [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 2 Comments »
Hey, it is Halloween time, so let us talk about some candies. Heard the term “demo candy”? – almost all of you probably have. Features that are thrown into a product because it appeals to the emotions of the buyer but basically a feature of less practical value.
But there are some demo candies that are [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 3 Comments »
I listen to WBUR/NPR every day on my 50 min drive to/from work. I listen to the BBC World news (and it really is world news) at 9am and to OnPoint with Ashbrook at 7pm. At last, I had found one radio station that I looked forward to listening to and getting quality news in [...]
Filed under: business, customer experience, customer needs, marketing | 2 Comments »
A customer’s wants vs. needs – This subject has been part of numerous conversations I have had in my working life. Every time I go to India on vacation to visit my family, I always think about this topic. I come back from these trips thankful of what I have and telling myself to appreciate [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 1 Comment »
You do not need an Alpha/Beta software product to do usability testing. In fact, if you wait until then to do usability testing, you have waited too long. This late, making changes based on usability feedback will be costly and time consuming and apt to break something else.
The resistance offered by a software developer to [...]
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By now, many of you are well aware of two new products that came out this summer (and if you have not, you were probably enjoying the summer a lot more than I was) – a new browser from Google called Google Chrome and a new search engine from a startup called Cuil
I was excited [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, leadership, marketing, product management | 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Filed under: business, customer experience, customer needs, marketing, product management | 3 Comments »
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 [...]
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Everything that one tries to sell, in my opinion, starts or ends in one of three buckets.
A need sell
A category sell
A product sell
Let me explain in more detail on what I mean.
1) A need sell is the worst place for a product long term. If your product is here, you are essentially trying to convince [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 4 Comments »
Product Managers pay (or should pay) a lot of attention to finding out more about why people are NOT buying their product more than why people are buying their product. This can be framed based on the current population of users.
But we are at a tipping point in history where a large number of baby [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management, word of mouth | 2 Comments »
We as product manager are well tuned with doing a market read, determining the unmet needs of the market and then getting someone to build products that will satisfy the need.
But there is an important trap that product managers should avoid. History is full of examples of products that fell into this trap. You want [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 6 Comments »
There is a great article on Business Week titled Johnson & Johnson’s Big Design Challenge which talks about how their design director Chris Hacker is promoting sustainable design.
I thought the key sentence was when he says “The key to growing sales is not to load up the packaging with “marketing bullets,” but to “think about [...]
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Last week, I had to get a tree cut in the yard and then my garage door broke down with the door bent and the rollers popped out. Not knowing who to call, I checked out ServiceMagic. What an awesome experience that turned out to.
Within minutes, they send me names of three pros rated very [...]
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A while back, I had written why a functional spec is needed in addition to a PRD. So what does a good functional spec need to contain?
Here is what I consider elements of a good functional spec. I tend to use smaller paragraphs or bullets to make it readable. People tend not to read lengthy [...]
Filed under: business, customer needs, marketing, product management | 3 Comments »
