Product managers need to talk — often — with actual end users and buyers. We need to listen, interview, understand and empathize with paying customers. Unmediated by marketing, sales or researchers. What organizational barriers block this essential work, and can we remove some of them?
Product Management Auckland hosted this take on internal stakeholders, their competing goals, and what they really look for in a product roadmap. Slides included.
Enterprise (B2B) sales teams deal with the world one account at a time; product managers deal with whole customer segments. This naturally creates some friction, which good companies anticipate and manage.
There are some fundamental laws of tech product economics (especially software) that should drive executive-level decisions about business and product strategies. It’s easy to forget them, or decide they don’t apply to our special situation. We’ll unpack a few while we share some war stories.
A Product That Counts podcast pulling together interviews from 5 product thinkers: what makes good products, good product managers, and scalable organizations
Product managers must be part of the (enterprise) selling process. But selling and learning are hard to do at the same time with the same customer. How do we create separate learning opportunities with a wide range of customers and prospects to deeply understanding markets, segments and fundamental needs?
Many candidates applying for product management jobs are thinking only about their side of the process, and not applying their product skills to understanding what hiring managers (i.e. buyers) want.
An interactive discussion about how to turn software into products, with some of the most innovative product managers in Silicon Valley (Mike Tadlock, Sue Raisty, Rich Mironov)
The software bits we release are not the whole product, but a part of the product. We need to make sure we ship a whole product, which includes a compelling story of interest to customers. Strategy, segmentation and customer joy matter.
Rich offered this one-day workshop for 12 participants in New York on August 15th. Agenda included product managers/product owners, portfolio thinking, and how to manage executives/stakeholders. Attendees get to revise the agenda, adding topics about “your first week on the job” and “how to say NO nicely.”