Steve Johnson on product management

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:

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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?

In our industry — advertising, marketing and media — there is no shortage of innovators who subsequently lost out to the next innovation. Why? Like Ken Olsen, they had a tendency, as well as a need, to focus on the business at hand. There were numbers to make, deadlines to meet, work to produce, clients to serve, awards to win. Of course this short-term mindset — a focus on current clients, an obsession with known competitors rather than emerging foes, and a determination to leverage existing competencies instead of developing new ones — was a deterrent to preparing for the future.

Innovation is the brass ring of technology. (Speaking of which, the "brass ring" on a carousel hasn't existed in my lifetime but I digress.) Some companies are obsessed with chasing the next innovation; others sit on their laurels and focus on today. Surely there is need for both.

"If the other guy is getting better, then you’d better be getting better faster than the other guy is getting better... or you’re getting worse.

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.

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.

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

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

"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."

A friend asked me for some advice on searching for a job and I found this website. 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.

For a typical job interview, see the Generic Job Interview video series at http://crankypm.com/2010/11/video-generic-product-management-interview-part-1-2/

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.

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