Steve Johnson on product management

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Product management evangelist and guitar player.

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November 2010

 

4 Things Amazon Didn’t Do To Make Amazon Prime A Success – A Random Jog

Amazon Prime may be the most ingenious and effective customer loyalty program in all of e-commerce, if not retail in general. It converts casual shoppers like Tinsley, who gorge on the gratification of having purchases reliably appear two days after they order, into Amazon addicts. Analysts describe Prime as one of the main factors driving Amazon’s stock price—up 296 percent in the last two years—and the main reason Amazon’s sales grew 30 percent during the recession while other retailers flailed.
via arandomjog.com

Lesson: premium price those things that you can do uniquely. Commodity price the rest.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Why You Should Read Your Wife’s Facebook Page – Marketing with Meaning

One of the things I do to learn how our consumers are using digital and social media is to read my wife’s Facebook page. When I do this, I see the kinds of things that she and her friends are talking about–and it’s usually not brands or marketing. My wife and her friends talk about their children, plans for the weekend, hobbies, and reactions to what’s in the news. So if we want her to talk about our brand, then we need to do something that connects our brand in some meaningful way to what really interests her.
via marketingwithmeaning.com

Want to know what your customers are talking about? Check their Facebook pages. They ain't talking about your products and features. They are talking about things that interest them, using their voices. To get them to notice you, you need to engage with things that interest them (not you).

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Slide or documents, not slideuments

Company standards and many event organizers seem to require bad presentations. The trick: make a set of slides to punctuate your points; make a document to fully explain your points. Don't distribute both. 

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Share this presentation with those around you. Maybe 2011 will be the year when we finally learn how to use PowerPoint and Keynote.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Why "Aligning" Sales and Marketing Never Works | BNET

That’s why it’s totally ridiculous to “align” Sales and Marketing as if the two group were co-equal.  The only real and practical alignment is for Marketing to step back, and respectfully ask the Sales team what they should be doing to help.  Submission, not alignment.
via bnet.com

Submit, you marketers!

Marketing is merely support for sales? Spoken like a truly clueless sales person. Join the stinkfest on BNet and add your own comments.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Top 5 Highly-Paid But Useless Corporate Jobs | BNET

The Role: A marketing strategist is tasked with focusing an organization’s energies and resources on increased sales and dominance of a targeted market niche. The resulting strategy is intended to combine product development, promotion, distribution, pricing, relationship management and other elements.
via bnet.com

It's one thing to have a strategy but a full-time strategist? Who's gonna do the work?

Read a humorous rant on BNET about five roles we could do without.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

The 8 Stupidest Management Fads of All Time | BNET

Consensus Management: Forget the wisdom of crowds.  Crowds are so stupid they can’t even figure out what the crowd is thinking. Specifically, consensus decision-making often results in what’s called “the Abilene paradox,” where a group will unanimously agree on a course of action that no individual member of the group desires because no one is willing to go against the perceived will of the group.
via bnet.com

Clever article on the Stupidest Management Fads of All Time, including Consensus Management, Six Sigma, Matrix Management, and so on. You've probably encountered all of these if you've been around consulting for more than a few years. Good news; each snippet has a section on how to deal with it!

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

The Truth About Branding: It's Useless | BNET

I think all the energy put into “branding” is simply a waste of mental energy.
via bnet.com

Me too.

Good article about brands and branding. (Guess what? Your brand results from how you build your products and how you treat your customers).

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Product Management Tip: How to Piss Off Customers

Are you a newbie product manager who isn’t sure how to piss off customers as fast as possible? Follow these simple steps and you can ruin your company’s brand, credibility, and sales pipeline in no time flat!
via voximate.com

New to the job? You need to understand the domain, market, product, problems. Lots to learn and you gotta work fast. These tips should point you in the right direction.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

The generic job interview

CrankPM does it again with this hysterical series on job interviews.
Part 1:

Go to http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7674775 for more in the series.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

ProductCamp Amsterdam 2010

Productcampamsterdam

The second ProductCamp Amsterdam will be held on Sunday, November 14th at the Backbase offices on the former Stork factory near Amsterdam Central Station.

via productcampamsterdam.org

I'm putting my final touches on my presentation and then headed to Amsterdam for productcamp. Over 100 people are registered. Hope to see you there.

Posted by Steve Johnson