Welcome to Product Management Challenges!

04023 Marketing and Sales Materials: Business First

Technology companies, since they are largely peopled by technically oriented individuals, often fall into the trap of creating marketing and sales materials that are overly focused on the technical side of the product. Product Managers usually play an indispensable role in pulling the development of marketing collateral and sales tools over towards the business perspective.

There are a number of reasons why marketing and sales efforts at technology companies tend to be too technical despite the fact that there is a great deal of specialized marketing knowledge out there in the market, with plenty of skilled marketeers. First, as with all other industries, people who start at a company due to their technical training rise through the ranks and take positions in the Marketing department. Such individuals may have a bent for marketing or sales, but lack a systematic exposure to marketing concepts and skills.

Second, formally trained but very business-oriented marketeers at technology companies find themselves dealing with a complex and inaccessible product that is a challenge for a typical non-techie to learn. Therefore they depend upon a cadre of technical people for explanations of how the product works, how it’s used, and why people use it. Their best efforts to provide clear and plain spoken explanations still reflect the strong technical bias of their sources of information.

Third, technology companies are more than happy to target prospects in IT and other technical areas because they think that is their audience of potential buyers. This is usually incorrect, since the buying power is with the business users or the executive team, but if you assume you are targeting IT departments, you craft a very technical message.

Product Managers, as individuals whose job it is to understand the business perspective on the product in order to translate it into requirements and other technical instructions, can also provide the right input to Marketing and Sales, input that focuses on the business side.

Read on below for some pointers on creating business oriented collateral and sales tools that successfully convince executives and non-technical managers to make a purchase.
(more…)

04022 New Features Won’t Solve Business Problems

Companies that make software have one big strong point: they know how to make software. They know how to build all sorts of cool features that work in amazing ways. And when they do that, they create businesses that succeed.

But the problem comes when this strength at making new features is not rounded out by other strengths, such as good marketing, delivering compelling demos, strong salesmanship, or good consulting.

The management team at a software company may be too used to solving problems by developing features in the software. This can lead to expending effort to develop capabilities in response to problems that are actually solved well outside the domain of software development.

Product Managers are uniquely situated in positions whose responsibilities span both technical and business functions at a company. This placement means that they can serve as the conduit that directs the team away from a time consuming technical change and towards a business solution.

Read on below for some examples where the correct response is not a development effort but a business solution.

04021 Guerilla Training: Learning the Product

It’s an unfortunate characteristic of our economy today that inadequate time is spent on training employees on a product. Usually, companies look to Product Managers to be the gurus on the product, understanding the ins and outs of all the features. So how do you get to the point where you know the product inside and out, especially when you are assigned a new product or change companies?

The hard fact is that if you want to really learn the product, you’re going to have to figure out how to do most of the learning yourself. Read on for some tips on how to go about learning the product in all its depth.
(more…)

04020 New Features: Moving Ahead On All Fronts

When it comes to developing new features for a software product, every Product Manager is faced with the following dilemma: more new features are needed than there are resources to add them to the product. You can’t possibly get all the features in that you want to put in.

We are told to prioritize, which most people take to mean determining which features we think are most and least important. Then you’re supposed to only do those features that are most important.

But there’s a problem with choosing to develop only the highest priority features. New developments in the marketplace are rarely limited to only one, two, or three key features. There are usually several important features being developed in the market at any given time. Competitive advantage goes to the product which manages to move forward with all those features, not the ones which only succeed at a couple of them.

Which is why I try to push for moving forward on all major fronts at once. But this is something that is much easier said than done. How can you possibly do it with so few resources? Read on for some tips on how to keep making progress on several new features with each software release.
(more…)