Welcome to Product Management Challenges!

03008 How Can Product Managers Help Marketing?

Whether you as a Product Manager report into Marketing, Development, or another group, you play a critical role in helping Marketing position and explain the product so that the message resonates with your product’s prospects.

The Marketing folks are the experts at taking an image of your software product and polishing it until it really shines. They can make the product message sound truly compelling, and artfully express how you stand compared to the competition.

But except for a minority of exceptional “marketeers”, Marketing is submerged in the day-to-day mechanics of generating the message, the collateral, the supporting materials, and talking to all necessary audiences from media to investors to prospective business partners.

What the Marketing folks don’t have, and it’s the raw material that they absolutely need to portray the power of your product, is the specific and essential perspective on the business users of your product and why they use it.

Take a look at the ideas below to see how you as Product Manager– and you may very well be the only one who can do this — can contribute to Marketing in order to make your product’s marketing stand out in the busy, crowded, and uncertain software market that we find ourselves in today.

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03007 In the Spotlight: Demos That Sell

Lots of people give software demos to prospective customers, business partners, investment partners, and the media. Usually very uninspiring demos. In meeting rooms and on show floors everywhere, your competitors’ prospects are sitting through boring presentations as they try to figure out how on earth the discussion even relates to them.

None of these prospects is asking to be bored silly. They’re taking the trouble to sit down to understand a software product and to hear about its value. But they’re walking out of demos unenthusiastic at best, or worse, mystified as to how the software can help them.

Because Product Managers are in a unique position to understand the technical workings of the software product while also understanding customer needs, companies frequently turn to them first when a demo is called for. Even when there is a bevy of sales engineers who are supposed to be demo wizards.

There are many things you can do to improve your demo abilities. Use the tips below to improve your demo skills, and share these materials when you train colleagues and sales channel counterparts to demo your software.

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03006 Who Should Do QA Testing?

Does anybody have a really great QA testing program for their software? I’d love to learn about it, because I think I have yet to see a top-notch one in 14 years in the industry.

In this period of severe contraction in the software industry, which started in early 2000 when all the Y2K QA testers saw their jobs evaporate, it’s not uncommon to see QA positions hit harder than development. It’s pretty hard to justify eliminating a programmer instead of a QA tester.

Yet testing is not something anyone responsible for the product can afford to slight.

When it comes to QA testing resources, companies are faced with three different profiles of employees that gravitate to different functions at the company. Each profile has its advantages and disadvantages when it comes to performing testing.

Read on for a discussion of these profiles and which best meets your QA testing goals.

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03005 Tips for Delivering Consistent Services

The services you deliver with your software — implementation consulting, installation, and training — aren’t accessories to your product, they are an integral part of the product and its success. Software plus services plus customer effort equals success.

Because of this, it’s critical to take steps to make each service you deliver predictable, complete, and consistent across customers, channels, and the individuals who provide it.

Yet unlike software, the human element involved in service delivery brings the potential for wide variation in content, quality, and effectiveness. The people who shine in front of your customers, delivering stellar services, are often highly individualistic. Their priority is to perform well when they’re in the spotlight — AKA the hot seat. Like sales reps, they don’t focus on adhering closely to guidelines but on reaching their goal come what may.

To build consistency in your services, follow the seven steps described below.

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