I’m writing about one hundred things I’ve learned about being a product manager.
People value something most when they’ve just lost it or come close to doing so. If your product prevents this happening, you need to save your client this ball-ache by helping them remember how much they value what they have now so that they don’t take it for granted.
I’m writing about one hundred things I’ve learned about being a product manager.
“Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares?… He’s a mile away and you’ve got his shoes.”
Billy Connolly
Empathy is something every product manager needs to be able to do their job well. Without it, it’s impossible to be sure what matters most to your target market and how valuable a solution to their problems will be.
Does your sales team sell your products (like, in exchange for money), or does it give them away as generous sweeteners to guarantee the sale of something else that will hit their targets? Or to put it in another way, does your sales force truly understand the value of your products and can it articulate the benefits to the customer?
Ah, pricing. Always a thorny topic for product managers as it’s one those more subjective areas of the job. I’d love to have some kind of oracular spreadsheet that foresees how much customers would be willing to pay for my new product. Ironically, I would pay good money for such a thing…
As a product manager, how do you know you’re doing your job well?
Depending on your personal motivations you may want to know for your own satisfaction, to give your boss evidence at your next pay review, or to give your resumé some teeth for your next job. This article outlines the problem with traditional metrics for product managers and offers some better alternatives for measuring success: communication, ideas, roadmapping, launch and end-of-life.
