As product managers, we are trained to look for ways to add value to customers such that they are willing to buy our products. Now, what does adding value actually mean?
Adding value, does not necessarily mean that customers have to necessarily see an uptick in their revenues after they buy your product. For example, your [...]
Filed under: business, marketing, product management | 1 Comment »
In every company, product managers have more things to do than you have time for. So how do you decide which products to fund? which projects to work on? and more importantly what NOT to work on? After all, if you have more things to do than you have time for, there is nothing worse [...]
Filed under: leadership, marketing, product management | 1 Comment »
As product managers, our work lives revolve around working with cross functional groups. Leading by influence and not much authority, our jobs are to motivate people to get things done for the benefit of the paying customer. Sounds easy right? But when different groups have their own goals and priorities, a product manager’s job often [...]
Filed under: business, leadership, marketing, product management, team communication | 1 Comment »
Question all data you collect or are presented with.
First of all, make sure you are collecting the right data. If you don’t measure what matters, the data is garbage. I have written before on using the right metric.
Once you are sure that you have collected the right data, never trust your first analysis of the [...]
Filed under: business, marketing, product management | 2 Comments »
Lot of activity does not necessarily equate to progress. It sounds cliche but it is true. Just because one is busy does not mean one is making progress. Having focused goals and then making sure majority of the activities relates to those goals is paramount. Identify goals, create metrics to measure progess and then align [...]
Filed under: business, marketing, product management | 1 Comment »
In one of my previous posts, I had talked about educating customers on all the different product enhancements you have made to solve their problems. But there is another problem that needs customer education.
The phone conversation goes:
Product Manager: “Mr. Customer, I am the product Manager from company X.”
Customer: “Product Manager? Who is that?”
This is not [...]
Filed under: marketing, product management | 2 Comments »
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 »
You have a great product, you have a large customer base. Awesome! But how tuned in are you to how your user base is using your product? How wired is your product? Web products can get you good deal of information such as page views, number of unique visitors, how they move through the funnel, [...]
Filed under: business, customer experience, marketing, product management, product usability | Leave a Comment »
Here are 5 suggestions that I recommend product managers adopt during the New Year.
1) Be “market” and not “marketing” driven – Talk to as many customers as possible in understanding their business, why they use your company’s products, what they like about it and what they don’t like about it. Plan to talk to at [...]
Filed under: business, leadership, marketing, product management | 6 Comments »
I was asked by Jeff Lash to answer a question for his blog on what questions a product manager could ask during a job interview to better understand the role of product management in the company. Here are my recommendations -
1) Why are you hiring a product manager? – This is an important question to [...]
Filed under: business, career development, leadership, marketing, product management, recruiting | 8 Comments »
Wondering about how to be successful – watch this video by Richard St. John delivered at Ted 2007.
Filed under: business, leadership, marketing, product management | 1 Comment »
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been asked by many folks how to get started on Twitter. I have had to give them the Twitter 101 to help them get started and hence I think it is worthy of a post.
But before I recommend on how to get started on Twitter – let [...]
Filed under: business, marketing, product management, twitter | 13 Comments »
It is quite common for people to say that doing something is a piece of cake. It is very easy to say this especially if you are not the one doing it. I have personally heard this many times from my upper management – “oh, that should be so simple to do that you should [...]
Filed under: business, marketing, product management | Tagged: Add new tag, business, software development, time management | 3 Comments »
Research analyst groups such as Forrester, Gartner, Yankee Group, Aberdeen and others that publish the various industry reports and sell them to customers and vendors should be really worried about this part of their business. Here are the five reasons why?
1) Analysts sell expensive, static and hence quickly outdated content – Many of these reports put out [...]
Filed under: business, marketing, product management | Tagged: analyst report, analysts | 5 Comments »
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 »
Here are couple more ways how you could manage products in an economic downturn. This assumes that you have enough cash in the bank to stay in business in the midst of slow sales.
1) Can your product help customers do things in a new way: Can your product help the customer do the task in [...]
Filed under: business, leadership, marketing, product management | 1 Comment »
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 »
