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.

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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.

The media (social and real) is abuzz with how Apple botched the launch of the 3G iPhone last Friday. Yes, they could have done it a whole lot better but I don’t think it is going to make much of a dent on the how many of these phones Apple will sell.

Seth Godin in his blog writes about the concept of scarcity that is written around this misstep by Apple and AT&T. It is a very fascinating read and has a lot of lessons for product managers in how creating a product experience and how treating your higher spend customers differently is crucial to eventual success of a product. Apple is likely to get away with this misstep because their product truly has a great product experience and they have the world beating to their door and hence willing to give them a longer leash.

Couple of weeks back, I came across this company called InfusionSoft. I signed up to download something that looked interesting to me called “9 proven techniques to double sales”. To do this, I had to fill out the following form.

When you do this, they send you a link via an email to download the white paper. I was fine with it until this point.

Then the trouble started - there is nothing in the above dialog that gives them permission to send me anything other than the above white paper. Now I get daily emails from their CEO Clate Mask. Here are some of the titles of the emails and some of the content in the email.

Email 1: How one incredible number skyrockets your income

…… Just imagine being able to double your sales (even when businesses all around you are falling further and further into debt.) Think how great you’ll feel when customers are begging you to serve them AND you can stop wondering if you’ll be in business next month. ……

Email 2: 7 Magnetic Marketing Secrets To Explode Your Profits

……when you’re in harvesting mode, you’re working smart and scooping up sales left and right. You can spend your time at closings, on the phone with hot leads or out on the golf course because you know your prospects will call YOU when they’re ready to move forward. ….

Email 3: Double your sales with one powerful secret

and on and on it goes.

What? Customers coming begging to me to serve them? Go and play golf because prospects will call you? Am I living on the wrong planet or what?

Do you think I will ever buy anything from InfusionSoft? No, but I sure am writing about them so that I can save others from this experience.

The emails also say this - which I thought was even more hilarious

We value your privacy, we really hate spammers, and we’re not going to sell your info to spammers (or to anyone else). If you really want to read the boring details of the privacy policy, you can read them here.

We Product marketers should take note - Just because we allowed a customer/prospect to download something free from our website, it does NOT give us permission to send them stuff. If we want to engage with them, we need to do it using Permission Marketing, a term coined by Seth Godin. Ask for their permission and then send them useful stuff that will help them get better at what they do. We need to build a trusted relationship with them such that they will hopefully buy something from us in the future. It is not a guarantee, but if we help someone, they are bound to at least invite us to the “purchase” party if we indeed have what they want.

Permission marketing is NOT getting permission from the customer to spam them - this will absolutely kill any chance of getting any future business.

Yes, InfusionSoft does give me a way to unsubscribe from these emails, but it is work I have to do.

Clate, you will not be getting the phone call from me begging you to serve me while you are having a good time playing golf.

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The green movement is going mainstream - corporations are throwing their weight behind it - from Google leading the effort in installing solar panels, GE designing more energy efficient locomotives or light bulbs to every company encouraging consumers to get electronic bills/statements instead of the old fashioned paper ones in the mail. I have been big fan of recycling for years, having migrated from a country (India) where there was no abundance of anything at least when I moved in the early 90’s.

I just discovered this company EarthFriendlyMoving that designs moving boxes called Recopacks that are completely made out of recycled material and can be reused a whole lot. I have seen similar boxes during office moves, but I am not sure if they were made out of recycled material like Recopacks are. Check it out - if nothing else their website has a lot of useful information.

If you are in Southern California and are planning to move, you should definitely give them a good look. After all renting a single Recopack only cost a buck a week.

The recycling stats are worth noting: Every 100 Recopacks prevents 256 pounds of waste entering the landfill. This translates into 7,400 hard-to-recycle plastic bottles, 600 used diapers (yikes, they use diapers?), 83 pounds of paper, 13 pounds of hydro carbons,and 64 pounds of carbon dioxide - plus it saves 3 healthy trees from being cut down to make the cardboard boxes that you would need.

The company is planning expansion within the rest of California this year and nationwide next year.

Now the product management aspect of this - do you think any customer said I wish I did not have to use cardboard boxes? Probably not - they probably asked for better cardboard boxes because of the problems taping them after filling them, trouble finding the right size, finding enough of them, having to drive to the store to pick them up and then having to dispose them of after the move - all real world pain points plus of course the negative impact on the environment.

This company to me looked at the bigger picture of moving and decided to solve this problem differently and doing it in a way that is very environment friendly. I would wager that we have a real product winner here provided the company executes well.

Is Recopack an original idea or are there others like them?

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Everything that one tries to sell, in my opinion, starts or ends in one of three buckets.

1. A need sell
2. A category sell
3. 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 the customer that he has a need and that he needs your product or service. You cannot sell to someone who won’t buy. Products that remain here either are:

• Products that are typically technology driven and hence looking for a problem to solve or just plain stupid products - someone told me that there was Sharper Image tire pressure gauge that had a clock built into it - yah, right I was missing that - guess where Sharper image ended up to be.
• Products that are way ahead of their time - the market is just not ready for it or the technology has not matured enough that the initial implementation is just not the right way to do it.

You may be able to sell a few of these products via lengthy sales cycle, but nothing to keep you going long term - the very existence of a product should be to solve an existing need and not to convince the customer that they have a need.

2) A category sell to me is where the prospect knows that he/she has a problem, but does not think it is possible to solve it and is skeptical whether the problem can be solved. New products that solve an existing problem in a very new way (pragmatic shift) could remain here for a little while. There are many examples that come to mind:

1. Salesforce.com comes to mind during its early days. The dotcom bubble had burst, people were just wary of anything related to the internet, internet connectivity was sketchy and here was a company that wanted to do salesforce automation on the web. I am sure it was a tough sell in the beginning.
2. “Data loss prevention” products - large corporations are always wary of insiders leaking confidential information to the outsiders accidentally or intentionally. Technology exists to solve this problem, but it is a little bit of a hard sell. This is not only because of the sophisticated technology, but also convincing someone that the technology actually works.

Many products/services could end up in a pilot and a longer sales cycle. You may not be able to convince everyone and hence you may sell less especially in the early days. Once enough people buy it and the product becomes mainstream, it will move into the “product sell” category. Such products/services follow the classic product adoption cycle made famous by Geoffrey Moore in “Crossing the Chasm” as long as the product can cross the chasm.

3) A product sell is basically where a prospect walks in and says “Give me this product” - the customer knows that the product solves a well known problem. You don’t have anything to sell, you just have to let the customer buy it from you. This is the sweetest spot you want to be in. You sell a ton (yes, there will be competition, but you still could do very well) at a very fast pace. This is where successful products eventually end up.

Salesforce.com is currently in this category. Microsoft Windows ended up here. Apple iPhone and iPod are here. Getting here should be every product manager’s dream. But products don’t end up here only by luck - they ended up here because they solved a real problem, solved it in the most innovative way and also enjoyed some luck by being at the right place at the right time. But products cannot be complacent once they get here, because there could very well be a competing product currently in the “category sell” that is solving the same problem in a whole different way, just waiting in the wings to take off.

As a product manager, it is extremely important that you know where your product/service lies and then try to see how you can move quickly to a “product sell” as soon as possible. If you are stuck in the “need sell” category, you may want to rethink your strategy, reinvent your product or call it day and cut your losses.

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At the SHRM Conference in Chicago that I recently attended, Monster.com had a huge booth in the expo hall. But they did something that I thought was outstanding. Apparently, Monster used to have a grand party for the conference attendees every year. This year, they decided not to do the party and instead take the money and give away a million dollars to charity. Wow !! Here is how they did it using Justgive:

1. Every person who visited their booth got a Monster bead necklace - beads with 5 cool looking monsters on it (My kids love it).
2. At the end of the necklace, was a nice looking card with a bar code.
3. If you got the bar code scanned, you won a prize and also a donation card with an amount written on it - some got $75, others got $25 etc. The card also listed a bunch of charities you could donate the money to.
4. You login to a specific URL and then enter the promotion code written on the card.
5. You choose how you want to spend the money - all for one charity and split it between different ones.

The money came from the million dollars that Monster is donating. Now that is thinking out of the box! All these parties are great - open bar, lot of food. But we have enough of these. We eat, drink, have fun and then forget about it. But think about the impact that million dollars is going to make. It is going to feed someone who is justing looking for a simple meal not the calamari and the burgers, who is looking to drink a glass of clean water and not douse beers after beers. Thank you Monster for making a difference and giving me a role in this whole thing. Hats off to you !! Good companies always give back to the community !! Liked this article? Leave me comments - I would love to hear your thoughts - or get an RSS Feed to this blog at http://productmanagementtips.com/feed

Zoho has been getting a lot of attention lately - from the first reports of its CEO Sridhar Vembu turning down a buyout offer from Salesforce.com to being briefly mentioned in Business week magazine article on Inside Microsoft’s war against Google. In a recent interview with Fox Business, its CEO said that Microsoft is the one that has the most to lose because of Zoho. OK, but how?

Zoho has an impressive array of online applications such as Docs, spreadsheets, Mail, Zoho Creator (a database app), CRM, Wiki, Blogs, HR apps etc. The apps are very easy and user friendly with a very nice looking UI. There are many features that have been copied from other apps - for example, Zoho Notes has a lot of features that look and act like the same features in MS’s OneNote. They give it all of it for free to consumers and say that they are making more than a million per month from business customers. They are hiring mostly in India. They have some good things going for them, but then a lot of companies had this for them before they fizzled out.

But after looking at what they offer and trying some of their products, as a business customer, I have been grappling with what exactly Zoho’s focus is. It is one thing to come up with a wide array of cool looking apps, but it is another thing when it comes to focusing on one thing and getting it done right. Is Zoho a MS Office killer? Is it a Salesforce killer? Is it going after SQL/Oracle? Or after Inuit’s Quickbooks or Quickbase? Or is it just another cool looking Google Apps?

I don’t know. Startups during the early days typically tend to execute one thing like hell and when they become successful, they tend to diversify into related areas that leverage their core business. But what exactly is Zoho’s core business? What happens when push comes to shove - what will be left standing? Which apps will get the axe and which ones will be left standing? As a business user I want to know, before I jump into the bandwagon.

Zoho is owned by AdventNet which has its own share of developer and database products which adds even more to the product line.

It appears to me that they are using carpet bombing hoping that something sticks as opposed to using a laser like focus in getting 1-2 of these offerings become kick ass apps with a large base of paid users. You name it - Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.com, FaceBook, SolidWorks all did it this way in their startup days. Pick one thing and execute like hell as if your life depended on it.

I could be missing something completely and would love to be educated. Please let me know.

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Talk about social media is everywhere - it is being used by everyone and some don’t even understand what it means. Francois Gossieaux has a very interesting blog post titled “We don’t do marketing with social media - social media is what caused marketing game to change” - a very interesting 5 minute read.

To me, the game changer brought on by social media is putting the customer in charge and not the vendor. I don’t spend on anything that does not have “real user” reviews whether it is making a hotel reservation, buying an appliance etc. I don’t go to any vendor’s website to read how their product is the greatest thing since sliced bread - the only thing I do is google “<productname> reviews” and if nothing comes up, conclude that the product is not any good or does not have enough buyers and just move on finding another seller who can sell me the same or similar product.

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OK, this post is more about my first and nightmarish experience with Vista than a product management tip.

Over the weekend, my aunt visiting from New York asked me if I could figure out what was wrong with her PC. She said her problem was that she just could not surf to hotmail.com using IE, but could happily get there using Firefox (go figure!!). She could get to msn and then click on My MSN and log into hotmail, but the text of all messages was blank (who would want to read text of emails anyways - after all the from and to and subject lines is all one needs, right?).

I told her that I should be able to easily fix this by uninstalling IE and reinstalling it. Last wise words spoken by me. I figured this was going to be a ten minute job - wrong - thanks to Vista. Found out that you just cannot uninstall IE on Vista - nor could I find what version of IE was installed because trying to do that started giving a never ending script error.

So started googling for solutions - so what do I find - every other Tom, Dick and Harry has run into the same issue - IE7 wants to ask the user if he wants the phishing filter on and a bunch of other settings (runonce.aspx). It is supposed to ask only once, but it has a bug before it gets to ask you. So it thinks it has never asked you and always gives you a blank page.

After 3 hours of trying to grapple with this and trying everything from using restore points (which fails) and editing registry to add two dwords that MS recommends you manually add, I just gave up. I told my aunt to stick with Firefox. She dropped her laptop on her way out - she said it was an accident, but I am not sure if she dropped it in sheer frustration - I would if I were her.

MS wants to discontinue support for XP by Jan 2009 and start shoving Vista down everyone’s throat - they are doing it to consumers now and businesses are next. What a great customer service? I think their slogan now is “Do all evil”

Then I read this article - Vista’s big problem: 92 percent of developers ignoring it - what a surprise?

It is amazing how MS just does not get it anymore. I think Bill Gates was smart once again - he quickly got off this Titanic before it is headed for the iceberg.

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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 boomers are approaching retirement and their places are being taken by a wave of new entrants. Many of these new entrants are currently in colleges. So if you are planning to develop a long term roadmap, make sure you are taking into account the behavioral aspects of the new generation.

I thought that the survery results shown below (Source: eMarketer.com) was very interesting in understanding the adoption of the latest technology by age (Low adoption of RSS feeds in the younger age group was a surprise to me). It is important that we pay attention to this because these represent the future users of our products.

The full article is titled Baby Boomers and Social Networking and is worth a read. Pay equal attention to some of the similarities called out in the full article.

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The other day I was kinda ticked off that I had to reschedule two customer presentations because Webex just would not work for whatever reason. Webex customer support had all sorts of technical reasons as to why it does not work and what the customer should do (yah, great, it is all user’s fault). It sure turned out to be something on the customer’s end, but Webex gives no clue when it does not work - why and what could the customer or me ask the customer to do.

Having very good experience with GotoMeeting in my past job, I decided to try out their free 30 day trial. It said “FREE’ all over the place and so I started signing up.

Specified my personal information, created a password and then landed on the third page to see that a credit card was required - there was nothing in the earlier steps that told me that this was needed - everything was about this is easy - unlimited - takes only 2 minutes etc.

Then I saw the hyperlink which said “Why do you need my credit card?” Clicking on it told me why they need a credit card - but it is all about them - not me the customer.

I like the first sentence - but the second, I have no idea - if they want to restrict it to one trial per customer, why can they not do it using email accounts. Yes, there will be people who will try to get multiple accounts and try to get more than one trial, but how many - the majority? Or do you want to penalize everyone because there are a few that may be unscrupulous?

So what did I do - I walked away. Interestingly, they found out (I am assuming they are tracking this on their website) and I get this email the very next day.

So what happened to their cost proposition for the free service? They don’t have these costs anymore? They don’t want to restrict it to one free trial per customer?

I understand that there are many vendors that do require a credit card for a free trial - magazine subscriptions, NetFlix, credit card protection services, travel insurance etc - but these are more of transactional or consumer facing applications. Goto Meeting to me is a B2B application, so why not trust your prospects?

Believe me, GotoMeeting is the best web conferencing tool that I have used - it is so easy to use - so what do they have to hide? - I would invite the world to do a drive thru of their awesome product - the hardware costs that they have to bear is nothing more than a marketing expense. I would rather spend on this (you have a much more qualified prospect you could try to convert because you have a great product) as opposed to spending the same money on SEO, ads etc. whose sole purpose is to attract someone to your site - but I am already on your site, way down the funnel and you threw me out.

To me this is an example of poor marketing execution of an awesome product. GotoMeeting, are you listening?

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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 to build products that customers will BUY and not JUST LIKE. You could build a product that satisfies the unmet need in the best possible manner, but if it is not something that the customer is willing to pay for, you are out of luck. Your product will languish on the shelf and it will join countless number of other products that have met a similar fate.

We have four different scenarios of Like vs. Buy as shown below.

Obviously, the two categories you want to avoid are the red ones and the places where you want to be are the green ones.

You may wonder how you could ever make a customer buy a product that he does not like - there are many classes of products that fit the bill here. For example, insurance products - not that I like them, but I have to buy them - isn’t this such a sweet category to be in? Other examples include anything related to taxes (Turbotax for example), funeral planning products (that one needs no explanation) etc.

The biggest trap among all this is the Like and Don’t Buy category. Lot of customers may tell you how much they love your new product idea, but you absolutely need to find out if they will put their money down to buy it - or in other words, is the painpoint you are attempting to solve painful enough that they will be willing to spend money on it? If not, it is not worth pursuing.

Beta programs kind of fall into this category - everyone is all excited to be part of your Beta, but not many give you feedback. It is OK to have this happen on your Beta, but you don’t want this to happen to your product.

One way to avoid this trap is to try to get customers to buy the early version of your product at a heavily discounted price - you would get them the Beta version, they will give you the feedback and then you would ship them the real product at the very low price that they paid you. If you run a subscription model, you could offer the customer a heavily discounted price upfront and the opportunity to lock down the price for say the first 2 years. If you cannot get enough customers to bite on this and sign on the dotted line, then the writing is on the wall - your product is in the trap category - how are you ever going to sell at the full prize?

Having said this, I would love to hear from my fellow product managers on other techniques that could be used to avoid falling into this trap.

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PS: I have to thank my mentor Jon Hirschtick, founder and ex CEO of SolidWorks for having drilled this into me whenever I have had different product discussions with him.

Has definition of leadership changed over the years - over the century? Countless books have been written on the concept of leadership - Amazon returns 263,761 results when you search for leadership - The 21 indispensable qualities of a leader, 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, leadership and the one minute manager and then another 263,718 more entries.

But who exactly is a leader? Have the skills needed by a leader changed over the years, over decades, over centuries? Tom Peters says it has not - his 4 minute video on this is worth watching (BTW, do you see a single Powerpoint slide in this video?). And I have to agree with Tom.

Good Product Managers exhibit strong leadership skills because they lead by influence and make their team members collectively achieve more than what each of them thought was possible.

I was checking out Surveymonkey to see if they have made any improvements since I last used it. Among the three survey tools (Zoomerang, Surveymonkey and Key Survey) I have used so far, Surveymonkey is the best hands down.

So what impressed me about Surveymonkey this time? Check out their top 10 reasons why you should choose the Monkey - do you see even one mention of a buzzword like enterprise, scalable, flexible, architecture, configurable etc. - NO, they speak like real people do - in simple sentences people can understand. Why? - because they have nothing to hide - they have a great product and they lay it out clearly in their messaging - how customers can buy without any commitments, how you can easily cancel, how well you will be supported, how they want to hear your ideas etc.

Surveymonkey, kudos to whoever wrote this masterpiece - give a pat on his/her back on my behalf. Other companies, take note and do the same. Your customers will love you because they will now understand you.

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 what motivates the consumer to take the product home.“

So well said. Always challenge your team to answer the question “What is the Customer Value?”. Agreed that you also need to appeal to the emotional side of the customers and do need to have some sizzle features or demo candy that makes the customer buy your product - but if it is all sizzle and no steak, the product will not have sustainable sales.

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 high by their customers. I called the pro, got a quote, scheduled the job and got both of these issues taken care of in a hurry. Their customer service is outstanding - they called me to find out how the project was going, they send me thank you notes via email after I had rated the pros - they did not have to do any of this.

This is one of the rare occasions in the recent past where I could say that I have received just an excellent service. We hear all the time about service is being shortchanged by companies due to the current tough economic times, but here is a company that has figured out how to use technology to the hilt to provide such a great service - their website is awesome with easy navigation, customer ratings and reviews of their pros, the results of their 10 point screening etc. They use email communication very well and as a result take many of the pain points involved in finding/hiring a contractor off their customer’s chests. Think about the effort it takes to make sure that the contractors you want to hire have the necessary license, insurance etc. to do the work? All this is done by ServiceMagic for you. Dealing with contractors has never been easy and they seem to have made this easy.

ServiceMagic sets the benchmark against which other service companies should be considered. If you have not used them, I would strongly recommend that you give them a try.

Their success is because they have thought through the entire user experience from the usability of their website through every touch point with the customer either via email or phone. Plus, their service is absolutely free for consumers, they make their money from the pros who get referrals.

Thank you ServiceMagic.

When I interview candidates, the first question I ask them is to give me their elevator pitch in one minute. Many candidates resemble a deer caught in the headlights and I am very surprised. If you cannot explain who you are, what you can do for the company, your strengths in one minute or less - are you a good candidate?

I give them one minute only because I have sat through 4-5 minutes of torture when I used to ask the question “Please tell me about yourself” - believe it or not, I have heard everything from how the CEO in one of their previous employers sucked to how the candidate filed a patent on some esoteric stuff that had nothing to do to what we do. If the open position is for a product manager, it is a good question to ask because product managers have to create positioning statements, give an elevator pitch about their products to prospects. This also displays the communication skills of the candidate.

Elevator pitches should highlight your strengths so that it piques the interviewer’s interest that he wants to know more about it - now the ball is in your court where you can further substantiate on your strengths and make the connection as to how those strengths can help the company.

So what is your elevator pitch?

I have been thinking lately of all the software tools and resources I use everyday to get my job done and to get better as a product manager - here is my list in no priority order.

1) MS Office
2) Outlook
3) Google
4) GotoMeeting, Webex - to have customers take a look at early mockups, do usability testing, review comments on specs from customers in real time, webinars etc. - GotoMeeting rocks, webex and live meeting suck.
5) Photoediting software - Photoshop Elements, Paintshop Pro etc. - to do very quick mockups of concepts
6) Snagit - I can’t tell you much I love this tool

7) Websites - LinkedIn, ZoomInfo - get information on who’s who at a prospect or a customer

8.  Salesforce.com - to get customer contact info and understand what products has the customer bought etc.
9) Internal Bug database - report bugs, do bug mining before I land up at a customer site.

What I read regularly though not as much as I want:

1) Business Week
2) Fast Company
3) Enterpreneur
4) Ask a Good Product Manager blog
5) How to be a Good Product Manager blog
6) Ecommerce times

I would love to hear other great tools or resources you have found very useful as a product manager.