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Recent Articles
06004 Push-Me-Pull-You: Reconciling Maintenance and New Releases
February 22, 2006
One challenge facing a Product Manager is how to balance limited Development resources between the need for maintenance work on the one hand and for new capabilities on the other. Devoting too many resources to one or the other can cause your product to be out of whack and lose ground to competitors who do a better job of mastering that balance.
With limited resources, it is always a struggle to determine what portion to devote to maintenance over new features. It’s a little like trying to fight a two-front war: each front draws precious attention and time, and requires careful consideration of priorities. Too much spent on one front may cause you to lose on the other. And as the need for maintenance grows as your customer base grows, your more mature product is probably facing stiffer competition as its market matures and moves towards commoditization. All the while, you can’t afford to neglect your base of existing customers.
Read on below for a discussion of what you need to consider as you continually strike a balance between development on maintenance releases and on new feature releases.
06003 Sales Training: Revving Up the Troops
February 8, 2006
One of the duties that frequently falls to Product Managers is to train the sales force, getting it prepared to sell the product. As the person who has scrutinized and measured the market opportunity, as the person who has heard the needs of customers and prospects, as the person who has prioritized the benefits required and the associated capabilities that go into the product, the Product Manager has plenty of vital knowledge to pass along to the sales force to help it sell.
However, one of the challenges of having a Product Manager deliver training is that seldom does a Product Manager have experience selling. Most Product Managers seem to have traveled a career path that has come out of a Marketing or Development role. So it’s easy for a Product Manager to deliver a training session that doesn’t do much good.
Read on for a discussion of what to include in your training to the sales force so that they are best positioned to make your product succeed through strong sales.
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