Steve Johnson on product management

Personal observations on technology, music, Star Wars, and more.
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Product management evangelist and guitar player.

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September 2010

 

The biggest lie in business | Revenue Journal

the salesperson is still portrayed as having more knowledge than the customer. He is described as the main player who acts as a guide to the customer's buying process - as if the customer were ignorant and needed the salesperson's help.

This is completely untrue. Now more than ever.

via revenuejournal.com

Kristin offers a these insights on how sales people build real relationships with customers in the 21st century.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Video Thursday: Where good ideas come from

BTW, it's a different Steve Johnson. Great piece but not me. Alas.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

5 Steps to Building a Great Product Management Organization

A reality of Product Management teams is that they are usually relatively small, particularly when compared to larger departments such as Engineering, Marketing or Sales.  And perhaps it is because these teams are small, that not much thought is given to how to best structure them.

But given the critical cross-functional role Product Management plays, having a well structured, scalable and properly staffed team is absolutely critical, and can make a huge impact on the top-line of a company’s balance sheet.

Here are the 5 steps to building a great organization.

via pragmaticmarketing.com

Another fine article by Saeed. Nice job!

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Engineers and Sales People

Believe it or not, there are still people out there that think that a technology company is really about two types of people: engineers and sales people.  People to write the software, and people to go sell it.  Everyone else is overhead and at best a necessary evil.

Ironically the combination of sales people and engineers (even good sales and good engineers) is probably one of the surest paths to mediocrity or worse.  It almost always leads to specials, wasted release cycles, weak products, frustrated engineers, and especially unhappy customers.

Nice piece by Marty Cagan at the Silicon Valley Product Group.

Who is leading the research for the next big thing in your company? Is it engineers? sales people? Or the market? NIHITO.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Leadership, Trust and Pronouns | Rich Mironov's Product Bytes

dictionaryA thoughtful choice between “I” and “we” and “you” is a reflection of the workplace emotional temperature: are managers and executives motivating line employees to do their best, or “throwing them under the bus?” Are we rewarding cross-functional cooperation and market impact, or angling for promotion and impressing our peers?

What I listen for is "they" as in "they won't let me" or "they don't do that here." As if "they" aren't also "you and me."

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

The 5 Deadly Sins of Voicemail | Duct Tape Marketing

If you’re calling someone because you have something you would like to sell them, then you better not commit one of the following sins or you can forget about a call back.
via ducttapemarketing.com

Leaving a voice mail is a good practice when setting up appointments. Having a hard time getting call backs? Maybe you're breaking one of these rules.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Customer Centric Market Model | Tyner Blain

A market can be thought of as the collection of contexts in which you might sell your product. You can split your market into a set of market segments. Each of those segments represents a group of customers, each of whom shares a set of problems for which they would pay for solutions.
via tynerblain.com

Scott Sehlhorst at Tyner Blain offers a nice article on markets and segments of customers. The key (of course): customers who have a problem that willing to pay to solve.

Filed under  //  product management  
Posted by Steve Johnson