Keeping with the world cup fever, where No.10 is center of everything for success, thought of writing this post on success of product managers, who are the No.10 for success of products.
Here in plan to share 10 tips for successful product management. This is based on my dozen years’ experiences in the function, working in Ramco, Hyperion and SAP, rolling out both successful and not so successful products, primarily enterprise software products.
1. Network to thrive: product managers most important tip is to be really networked, this needs to be in person in 1×1 and 1xN interactions, through social media and web and with internal team for key influencing, especially if you are in a bigger organization.
Network across
- Build key customer circles
- Stay close to Sales
- Specialist groups
- Coffee corners and peer to peer networking
2. Communicate to succeed: closely connected to the networking, the success to networking is communicate, communicate, communicate…product managers should constantly be communicating with all stakeholders. Whom
- Internal – Influence without managing, especially with designers, developers and architects
- Internal – Talk technical or functional
- Internal – communicate to executives
- External – Speaking in events, develop Executive presence
- External – Speaking with customers/prospects
3. Specialize: Remember product managers are the Specialist…
- Different levels of specialization – Level 1 across company portfolio and strategy, Level 2 across your product portfolio and functional, Level 3 in your product and best practices
- Functional & Technical expertise (product managers need a balance and understanding of both)
- Better customer exposure levels will only be more when you are a specialist
4. Know your competitors: product managers need deep understanding of competitors through publically available…Analyst Reports, websites, interacting with sales/presales, Win stories, loss analysis participation.
Important tip is to contribute to competitive differentiation.
- Both feature/function as well as more strategic levels.
- Have different comparison charts, ones for your field/sales that will help to highlight how products are better than competitor’s products to sell and for development that highlights weaknesses that will help better the product or build new ones.
5. Know your markets: product managers do not make products for specific customers, but for markets. So it’s important to understand which markets that you are focusing and understand the dynamics of those markets.
- Understand Developed and Emerging market dynamics.
- Understand Nuances of each market, cultural aspects e.g. US: Keep it simple and bit high level, Europe : Get to the details.
- Style of business function e.g. whether in general the focus market is more result oriented or more believers in process oriented style.
6. Negotiate: Product managers spend most of their time negotiating, so acquiring some tips to better negotiate is very important.
- Talk like a customer to developer, brining customer perspective and value for every key step
- Be face of development to sales and customers, and bridging the business /technology gap
- Build data points to back up every discussion
- Build credibility across internal/external stakeholders, remember the expert tip which is interconnected to make this happen
- Talk use cases/real life examples/personas…
7. Senior management buy in : connected to the negotiation, but more important is the ability of product managers to negotiate and influence their management.
Remember it’s not enough if you have great idea, you need to convince senior management
- Be prepared for a 15mins, 30 mins…meetings with ideas & how it can be monetized
- Leverage every opportunity :
- Investment in new areas
- Convincing to continue investment
- Strategic acquisitions for fast time to market
- Managing different point of view – as management may have a broader understanding so you need to think and be prepared to tackle those povs.
8. Spread your knowledge: product managers are the experts, but experts are known only if they share their expertise. Important you spread your knowledge
- Find all avenues to share your knowledge on product, best practices and the “whys?” more than what? Or how?
- Blog, tweet, build content, do trainings, challenge yourself against real life examples
- Drive discussions towards the way you want to position your product
- Pick on customer advisory board sessions
- Tell your customer success stories
9. Balance your time: Product managers face customers/sales, development and strategic (with management). Time is precious. Important tip is to balance and spend equal time amongst different or else you can’t be successful
10.Mini CEOs: Finally product managers have to behave like mini CEO, within the scope of the products they work. Essentially product managers
- Claim ownership – with which comes the responsibility of success or failure of the product
- Have Business (for sales), technical (for development) and user (for designers) views
- Compare it with market – and constantly strive to improve or reinvent
- Know your numbers – important to know how is the business doing and what are financial or other goals
- If you are product manager or one aspiring to be, the above tips should be very handy. While you may or we all have come across, consciously following this may help, as i have found it to be useful as i practice it in my past years of experience as product manager.
Let me know if you have other tips to share, questions on the above or other comments
