ProductMarketing.com

You Might Be a Product Manager If... | Product Beautiful: Building Product Management by Paul Young

Since we at Pragmatic Marketing just released our 2010 Product Management Survey, the time is right to revist one of my favorite topics: You Might Be a Product Manager If…  In the spirit of the American comedian Jeff Foxworthy (“You Might Be a Redneck If…”), this year, product managers around the world contributed to the #YMBAPMI list over Twitter, LinkedIn, and this blog.  And the results were excellent.  So without further ado, I present the 2011 list:

via productbeautiful.com

You might be a product manager if you use the term "requirements" in discussions with your spouse and children.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

The Most Important Characteristic of Innovative Companies — On Product Management

For a company to do this once — i.e. have one successful product — can mean they have created an innovation, but it doesn’t mean the company is innovative?

Why?

Because to be an innovative company, means to be able to repeatedly identify and create new products and have them succeed in the market.  A lot of companies can do it once, but to do it 2, 3, 4 or more times is what it means to be innovative. It’s a characteristic of the company, not simply an activity the company engages in.

via onproductmanagement.net

Nice piece from Saeed at On Product Management. Yes, to be an innovator more than once is the trick. And it has to be baked in to the company culture.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Why Do Customers Lie to Salespeople? | BNET

I recently posted a gallery of the 10 most common lies that customers tell.  Most of those lies are, of course, directed at salespeople, since they are the main interface between a customer and the firms from whom a customer buys.

As I read over all those different lies, I realized that there was one unifying element that lay behind all of them: a lack of connection.  Most people don’t hand their  colleagues, friends and family a line of BS, because that would be a violation of a social contract.

via bnet.com

Great article from Geoff James on connecting with customers. True for product managers as much as for sales people.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Maintaining Customer Relationships — Pragmatic Marketing

Do you rely on customer references for closing deals, working the press, and communicating with the analysts? Attendees in the Effective Product Marketing class learn that the customer database decays at a rate of 3% each month. In a year, more than a third of all customer information is invalid. Who is keeping those references alive and up-to-date?

Further, it's easier to keep a customer than to get one! We go to all the trouble and expense of acquiring a customer and then make little effort to maintain the customer. Unfortunately, dissatisfied customers don't complain; they just disappear!

via pragmaticmarketing.com

What are you doing to maintain your customer relationships? Social media and sales visits are great but are you connecting with customers consistently? And are you connecting with all of them, or just the few that are buying?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Two Secrets to writing copy for today's customers | Revenue Journal

It can't be any of these things, though, if you don't know who you are writing to. Guessing who that person is just doesn't work. They can see your big fat assumptions about them from a mile away. They know that you are actually clueless about what really matters to them. So they ignore you.

via revenuejournal.com

If you're writing to someone you don't know, you're wasting your time. Whether writing about products you want to build or products that you have built, product managers and product marketing managers need personal knowledge of their buyer & user personas.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

2011 Training Top 125 | trainingmag.com

Top companies realize how vital training is to their success and continue to invest in it, even in trying times.

via trainingmag.com

The "Training Top 125" survey reveals that the average company dedicates 2.9% of its payroll budget for on-going training, while the top companies allocate 6.7%. Either way, training is a great way to get your team up-to-speed on the latest techniques.

Maybe it's time to send your team to one of the great seminars at Pragmatic Marketing. Learn more about product management, product marketing, roadmapping, agile, and launch. More at http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/seminars

Job Interview Questions & Answers

A friend asked me for some advice on searching for a job. The one interview question I always have trouble with is "What is your weakness?" I never really knew what a good answer would be. Mine? "I don't tolerate incompetence well." Not a really good response I fear. So I found this:

"What is your greatest weakness?"

Be careful with this one. Most interview guides will tell you to answer it with a positive trait disguised as a weakness. For example, "I tend to expect others to work as hard as I do," or "I'm a bit of a perfectionist." Interviewers have heard these "canned" answers over and over again. To stand out, be more original and state a true weakness, but then emphasize what you've done to overcome it. For example: "I've had trouble delegating duties to others because I felt I could do things better myself. This has sometimes backfired because I'd end up with more than I could handle and the quality of my work would suffer. But I've taken courses in time management and learned effective delegation techniques, and I feel I've overcome this weakness."

via best-interview-strategies.com

For a typical job interview, see the Cranky Product Manager's Generic Job Interview video series.

Going Wrong by Listening to Your Customers

How can you go wrong listening to your customers?" may sound like a rhetorical question. But, in fact, you can go wrong by listening to customers, if you hear them out and then assume that they are typical of other customers when they're not.

via blog.vovici.com

As a friend puts it, "You don't want your customers to DEFINE your products; you need your customers to INSPIRE your products."

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter

A slightly more sophisticated form of the Willingness to Pay question (“How much would you be willing to pay for this?”) is the Van Westendorp PSM (Price Sensitivity Meter), which is a battery of four questions.

via blog.vovici.com

Interesting post from Jeffrey Henning of Vovici on using research to set prices.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Working from home - Justifying it to the boss - Blog - SharedStatus

There are few things more frustrating than knowing you have to do something that doesn't really add much value. Going in to the office every day can be one of them. You have a high-speed internet connection at home, a fast and powerful computer, a phone and pretty much everything you need to be productive. You even have a CD of office noise you can play in the background to make you feel like you're at the office. The problem is you have a boss that doesn't like the idea of you not being in the office.

via sharedstatus.com

SharedStatus is my new project management solution. David Alison has a blog that I've been following with lots of tips for managing the projects in your life.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Friday fun: Focus Groups (2)

Focus Groups are a helpful method for validating innovative ideas, but only if you get the right people in the room.

(Thanks to John for sharing this)

For an exploration of 7 research tools for managing risk in innovation, watch for my webinar with Vovici. The recorded session should be posted this weekend.

The Role of Feedback in Product Innovation l Vovici

Great products are grounded in an understanding of market problems. Exploring the role of market and customer feedback in driving innovative products, Scott Blacker of Vovici and Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing look at how research can support your product decisions. Which research tools are best for which steps of the innovation process? When do you use qualitative and when to use quantitative? And which customers do you listen to?

via webinars.vovici.com

Join me today for my webinar with Scott Blacker of Vovici on "The Role of Feedback in Product Innovation." Starts in just a few hours!

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Video Thursday: Sales is direct; Marketing is subtle

Thanks to Jeremy Epstein for sharing this.

Source: http://jer979.com/igniting-the-revolution/heinekentiger/

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

You can build it, but can you market, sell and support it? | On Product Management

Let’s assume (and this is a big assumption) that the company has the skills, internal experience and discipline to build version 1 of this more complex product.  That’s great, but it’s only 1 part of equation.  Let’s look at everything else that needs to happen:

via onproductmanagement.net

If you build it, will they come? And if so, can you market it? Sell it? Support it? Saeed asks some challenging questions in this insightful post.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Friday fun: focus groups

(Thanks to Dave J for sharing)

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

On the wire

On Thursday, February 10th 2011 at 2 p.m. EDT, Vovici, the leading provider of intelligent online survey management and feedback solutions, and Pragmatic Marketing, the world's most popular product management and marketing training company, will explore the role of market and customer feedback in driving innovative products.

via vovici.com

I hope you'll join me for this webinar. Research is always a popular topic and this webinar should be a lot of fun. Sign up details are in the press release.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

2011 Program

JUST CONFIRMED!  PRAGMATIC MARKETING
The World's Most Popular Product Management and
Marketing Training

Jon Gatrell
Pragmatic Marketing

Be Market Driven:
A Strategic Approach to Your Go-To-Market Activities

This interactive session will provide insights on determining what
products, features and markets an organization should pursue.
No matter what tactics are used in your Go-To-Market effforts
(email, social media, blogs, SEO, SEM), attendees will be able
to prioritize which strategies and critical activities to use to be
more effective with outbound programs and products launches.

via acetech.org

Our own Jon Gatrell will be leading a talk on applying market-driven principles to your go-to-market efforts at the Annual Whistler Symposium.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

First step: focus

My daughter has started a business. She's seen a huge interest in homeschooling and is now focusing on it full-time. With a market of 3+ million families, she's got a target rich environment. Everyone we meet knows someone with homeschool kids.

The challenge? Focus.

As with any job she has more to do and only so much time. Where to begin?

I've given her a new rule: allocate one day per week to each of the Pragmatic 'P's. Problem, product, promotion, place.

Monday is for problems: Interviews, reading, reviewing existing research, planning new research. Honing her buyer and user personas.

Tuesday is for product: Updating, reviewing, assessing the products she offers.

Wednesday is for promotion: Participating on blogs and discussion forums, writing ebooks, evaluating promotional opportunities, attending trade shows and events.

Thursday is for Place (sales): distribution strategy, evaluating wins and losses, comparing the sales cycle to the buying cycle.

In other words, a product manager or entrepreneur should not spend every day in sales mode or development mode but be sure to spend time planning and researching too.

In my first job as a product manager, I was based in Virginia but my developers were in California. Once a month, I traveled there for a week of development planning and review meetings--what we'd now call demos and retrospectives. They'd show me what they were working on, solicit my ideas on the prototypes and initial designs; I'd tell them what I had learned from the market since my last visit. Updates on wins and losses, current revenue for the quarter, results of interviews and surveys.

And with that, I would leave them alone until next time.

In the remaining three weeks I'd allocate a week at corporate to work with marketing, support, finance, whoever and a week allocated for sales calls and customer visits. That left a week in my home office to do the writing part of product management.

Whether you do this on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, successful product managers focus on every aspect of the business of their product(s). Don't get caught up in sales support or working with development to the detriment of the rest.

What techniques do you use to focus on the business?