Sri – The Product Management Road Ahead – 10 Lessons To Apply Going Forward – PMCNW Meetup

 

 

• Ultimate goal of a product manager: Create, Capture & Deliver value to your customers & your company
• 4 P (of the marketing mix)
  • Product
  • Place
  • Price
  • Promotion
• Conversation has shifted to:
  • Solutions (Nike does not want to sell you shoe. Tries to sell you a product that helps you achieve your goal of loosing weight by counting the foot steps – in the  form of a shoe)
  • Access
  • Value
  • Education

Who Influences Value?

• Conceptualize
  • Visionaries
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Strategists
• Design & Build
  • Product Line Managers
  • Designers
  • Manufacturers
• Sell
  • Merchandisers
  • Buyers
  • Planners
  • Category Managers
  • Pricing
  • Sales
• Analyze
  • Analysts
  • Management
  • Executives
• All these roles are essentially Incarnations of Product Managers!

 

• Empirical evidence: IE users get charged less than Chrome
• Immediate Pain Points:
  • Showrooming
  • Dynamic Pricing (Amazon changes prices up to 3 times in a 12 hour period)

Outcomes

• Get ahead of your competition (by analyzing their products, prices & brands in real time)
• improve your margins (by optimizing your pricing & mix)
• pinpoint opportunities for growth (by identifying products, categories, stores & geographies to expand to)
• monitor the pulse of your market and industry (by monitoring trends, news & buzz and how they affect your business)
• scale more efficiently and with confidence (by reinforcing your business decisions with concrete data)

Lessons Learned

1. Leave the Building (Steve Blank – Four Steps To The Epiphany)
   1. Learn whether you are creating solutions that customers want & are willing to pay for
2. Ship, then Test
   1. Get your product into the hands of people to TEST whether they really use it as they said they would
   2. It happens too often that users don’t use your product in the way they told they would (e.g. Kleenex is used to blow your nose, not to wipe off the make-up)
3. Decide with Data
4. Set Realistic Expectations – for yourself, your stakeholders, your spouse
5. Leverage Collective Wisdom – Go and ask for help! It is a sign of maturity and self-awareness
6. Access Informs Design – How, when, where your customers access your solutions should materially impact design
7. Engage and Delight – Through content, Through service, Through simplicity
8. Keep it Simple
9. Have an Alternative
10. Never Stop Learning – about your customers, products, market & competitors

-Christoph