Welcome to Product Management Challenges!

03020 Positioning: Making a Statement

In an earlier topic called “Product Positioning: Where Do You Stand?” I discuss product positioning to give your product a unique and highly competitive placement in the market. One of the outcomes of the process of determining the focus of your product - in terms of such elements as target market, users and features - is the development of a compelling statement describing your product.

The positioning statement paints a picture that grabs the attention of your ideal prospects and helps them remember the product and what it could mean for them if they bought it. The key to a successful statement is to make it compelling, something that speaks so well to prospects that it gets them listening and helps them distinguish your product from the competition.

Product Managers are in a powerful position to work with Marketing to build a statement that is truly compelling, because they know what speaks to their customers and what they are looking for. Even the most technically oriented of Product Managers have been called upon to explain their product’s purpose in terms that business users and executives can understand. They have seen which words and ideas work and which don’t.

Your sales reps can take the statement verbatim and use it for their “elevator speech” or “elevator pitch”, the quick synopsis of the product that they would use if they find themselves riding the elevator up to the conference room with their prospect, who has just turned to them and asked: “So tell me, what does your product do?” This same speech is the intro at trade shows and on cold calls, designed to keep the right prospect interested in hearing more.

The same statement gets repeated, in whole or broken out into its separate elements, in product presentations and all marketing materials. It’s the point in an in-person presentation where people sit up and pay attention. It’s the sentence quoted in a callout box on the brochure, the one you want the reader to remember, if they take only one thing away with them.

Follow the tips below to create a compelling positioning statement that becomes an effective basis for sales pitches, marketing collateral, and all presentations about the product.
(more…)

03019 The Product: Not Just Software Anymore

As the software industry has developed from its infancy, companies have learned to provide very specific services around the core software product. They have gradually come to understand that these services - such as project management, implementation consulting, training, and software customization - are essential to the product’s success. Companies that have pushed the envelope have created services “wrapped around” or “bundled with” the software.

But what is needed is a further step in the understanding of services. Services do no just go with the product, they are the product, or at least a part of it. Your product is not just the software anymore, it’s the services, it’s customer care, it’s your user conference, your broadcasts to the customer base, and the business insight and tips you provide via email or phone to end users and managers.

When I bought my Ford Focus, it wasn’t only because the car was a delight in terms of design (and price). I bought the Ford company as well, along with the local dealership and its service department. Like so many others, I didn’t base my purchase on an understanding of a car as a product that ends at the car doors. The product, in fact, goes way beyond the physical car itself.

The companies - old and new, big and small, heavy industry and virtual technology - that are thriving in the marketplace are the ones who realize that the whole company is the product.

Product Managers are ideally positioned to help make this sea change in perspective come about at their company. In fact, such a change, while requiring the support of the CEO and the management team, probably can only take effect with the direct effort of Product Managers, because of their ability to get involved in the details.

Read the tips below to extend the understanding of your product by the company - and more importantly customers and prospects - beyond the limits of the software itself. Do this because in your customers’ eyes the product is no longer just an implementation headache but becomes a critical business initiative with a powerful brand image connecting users to all areas of your company.
(more…)

03018 Product Positioning: Where Do You Stand?

“Product positioning” is the high fallutin’ term for deciding how your product is unique and how it compares to the competition. Companies embark on a product positioning effort in order to be able make the product appeal to the specific type of customer the company has selected as the best prospect. This target customer may be defined as “best” for a number of reasons, such as being part of a market segment that is more profitable, easiest to sell to, easier to service, most like the existing customer base, etc.

In short, product positioning is how your product is different and special. Marketing works to define the positioning of your product, and Product Managers can play a vital role in this effort by providing detailed insight into how the product is stronger than its competitors, both in terms of features and types of customers it attracts.

Take a look at the pointers below to develop or enhance the positioning that helps your product make a powerful statement to potential customers, analysts, and the media, and makes the sale of your product a difficult task for the competition to overcome.
(more…)

03017 Product Pricing and the Socratic Method

Socrates, the founding father of Greek and Western philosophy and self-styled gadfly who got under the skin of ancient Athenian society, pioneered a way of teaching that he called the Socratic Method. It consisted of asking a series of questions that challenged his students to drill down into the deepest logic of their arguments, and exposed contradictions and irrationality in their assertions.

Questions from Socrates turned your perspective on its head, and drove you to look at the issue at hand in all its complexity and from contradictory perspectives.

Today’s issue is not a simple one. It’s product pricing, or how to structure and set the price of the software product. Like philosophy, there are many schools of thought, some openly opposed to others, and Product Managers find themselves faced with a dazzling array of choices.

In keeping with the Socratic Method, here’s a laundry list of questions designed to upend your thoughts about and approach to pricing. This is by no means an exhaustive list, although you may find that thinking through the answers to some questions can be exhausting.

Take some time to run your product pricing through the question mill below. The answers point to some basic truths about pricing strategies you can use to make your customers sit up and take notice, and leave your competitors scurrying to catch on and catch up.
(more…)