Product Managers, value first hand experience

How well does a product manager perform on his job depends upon how much he / she understands their customer and their product users. This understanding is important for building confidence which in turn directly influences performance of a product manager, and hence it is important that product managers get this understanding first hand. This requires product managers to meet customers and prospects on regular basis. Visit production site, conditions under  which users use the product and get the first hand experience of pain and pleasure points.

Plan your visit

1. Have a single agenda meeting. Do not club meeting  your courtesy visit with any other agenda. Do not pitch in new business ideas, repeat orders etc
2. Meet the buyer (person taking purchase decision) to understand his/ her satisfaction level. Is the buyer happy about purchase or does he believe that he should have opted for some alternate product.
3. Spend good time with product user. Observer the conditions under which user is using your product.  Do they take too many phone calls? what other tasks (physical and on computer) do they perform while using your product? etc
4. Do not ask too many question but instead prefer to play the role of an observer. Observe usage pattern, behavior etc as user works on the product.
5. Given an opportunity, limited your queries to 'What you like and What you don't like?".

Remember, user often may not be able to articulate his or her preferences, pain points or liking clearly or even if they can they may not know the exact root cause of their liking and disliking. It is important to observe users as accurately as possible to know "Whys?" along with "whats?".

It’s imperative for product manager to understand the customer as they understand customer's requirements. Speak with customers and product users on regular intervals to listen and to understand pain points, newer needs, evolving business etc. A requirement drafted post this effort is likely to be far more accurate and is sure to boost product manager's confidence levels. So meet your customers frequently and get first hand understanding of your customer.

@mathurabhay

Product Success: Invoke the Salesman in Engineers

It talks two to close a sales deal, a salesperson and an engineer. Sales folks are front end who would typically meet the customer and demonstrate the product to customers, whereas engineers work in back end and are responsible for design and develop a product that exceeds the customer expectation.

Let’s consider this medical simile. Salesperson’s role is like that of a needle, who knows how to get into the nerves to inject the medicine, or push the medicine in the nerves. The rest boils down to the quality of medicine, flowing thrown the nerves to reach the right pain points and being effective in solving these pain points. The quality of medicine here can be equated with quality of the software product. Deal once signed is job half done. Your software should flow through the customer business process and customer habit to solve the pain point for which customer pays you the money. This makes software a success and completes the sales cycle. Fitting into customer’s business process is possible only when your software design is flexible and robust, while the user friendliness of the software will help your product stay in customer habit for long. The needle alone is of no good use unless the medicine knows where to flow and what to solve. It’s only then the customer values your product and your product gets to see life beyond beta cycle. The second part of sales is owned by engineering folks.

Trust me, selling a product is tough, be it washing powder or sophisticated software. And if you have an engineer who believes that selling is ‘talking sweet’ then push him in street with your salesperson for few weeks to realize that selling at times is tougher than solving. They would realize that customer today is smart to judge the product best fitted to their needs. Engineers who have done this (been on street) appreciate the need to have quality medicine in your injecting process and they are those who develops success products.

Traits that Creates a Success Manager - III

"Success Manager is truly a social animal"

In the very first post of my blog, I mentioned that one of the characteristics of a success manager is that he concentrates and advocates customer needs and opportunities. Now how and when do a success manager do it, in board rooms? No way...... board rooms for me are meant for sign-up and not for decision making.

Decision making requires a lot of offline efforts where you go all out to build conviction on any subject matter. You meet people and talk to them over coffee, in cubicle or cabin or in aisle. At times pool a van back home is also a good idea. Not once or twice but meet regularly, talk about your experience of customer meetings, your understanding of the market, and your idea of addressing available opportunity. Conviction are build when you talk opportunity at right opportunity. One cannot effort to leave everything to chance and start steps 1 2 3 in board rooms. It is always 9 10 and close in the board room.

If you are not getting social then you are not playing with a full deck. And who knows what you are missing on, may be an ace. And when do you think that people will start believing you or take you on face value? it's when you have an image of being accessible, acceptable and applicable. All these means lots of socializing, within company, within the delivery modules and within the market place. In the corporate jungle, Social animal services longer than any other know beast.

Start socializing before you extinct.

Traits that Creates a Success Manager - I

‘how high you go, depends upon how deep your roots are”

This one trait of going deep into the requirements, customer expectation & engineering process takes product manager & product to greater heights. As a success manager, you are expected take the bull by the horns. So how do you manage these expectations. The only way forward is to get deep into the expectation, neck deep, deeper than anyone’s imagination and then, hold your horses till such time that you are ready to bounce back on top of the market.

Inject this habit of digging deep in your character, this will rally round you with ample of opportunities, success and respect.

More traits, as I learn.

Escalation that wasn't

Escalation that wasn't - is a false alarm. Raised by customer and escalated by friend’s next door (customer care) to top executives as business critical bulge. This falls as lighting on engineering, who then keep aside all planned activities to look into this. Although engineering maintains limited buffer for such unplanned activities, and most of the time ensures release on plan but lighting like this leaves certain impact that results in loss of productivity, compromise on quality or if nothing else then at least causes distractions from roadmap. And worst, engineering assessment of escalation is a known limitation or a known issue with version that customer is using, probably an workaround solution is already covered in release documents.

While engineering may struggle to find an answer to such situations, it is up to the Product Manager to minimize such distractions. The mystery of escalations that wasn’t is solved by ensuring proper programs on educating the users (end user, Tier x support, marketing, and customer care) on product usage. So how different it is from regular NPI process. Why and how could this objective be achieved?

Well, the training (as part of NPI or independent process) is largely held either during a product launch, or when a new deal is signed / renewed or on could be on customer request. Most of the times these trainings have contents like videos, audios, large documents etc which probably are never referred again or simply not good enough to highlight Do's and Don'ts or Is, Is Not of the product usage. Emphasis on trivial things gets lost in understanding the solution set.

Educating the users (periodically) has two very important advantages;

1. It reduces pain points for engineering
2. It improves the product image
   

Some of the ways to ensure proper product usage or educating the customer could be;

Insulate Installation:
Make software installation more robust. Let the installer be intelligent enough to check for exact pre-requisites, eg Service Packs, specific driver version etc. and conflicting application, if any.

Product tips on login:
Customer should be advised with tips as and when he/ she logs in to your application. Such tips are optional and can be turned-off by user. So you as a Product Manager need not to worry of customer complaining of annoyance.

Quick reference note / do's and don'ts:
They are available on end user machine and can be popped through your application on a single click. Whenever a user hits an issue / error situation, he gets a pop asking to refer specific section in help file or a release document.

Bench marking:
Eg. The software takes 60 secs to launch when connected to internet and 30 secs when your computer is not attached to a network. Such benchmarking helps setting the right expectation. These are important as they directly impact the user response behavior and product image. They also improve moment of truth for your product / service.

Escalation tools:
Ensure that you have clearly defined escalation path. Escalation is accepted only with some bare minimal information such as OS flavors, Service Packs, logs, registry information etc. Make your tools validate the escalation content first before it goes to top. For eg. Software ver 3.5 is certified only on Windows XP and Mac while software version 4.0 is certified on Windows XP, Vista and Mac. Now if an escalation is raised for 3.5 on Vista the tool manages on its own.

You as product owner can possible think of more and better options to manage such escalations. While whatever may the method be, Product Managers must always remember that your users (customers) can be your best salesman. Educate them and keep them informed on regular updates.

Post Recession: are you ready?

Recession is all set to go. Are you ready to grab the opportunities that may spur the sinking market. The situation is like that in a Formula 1 racing. The safety car comes on after a crash, slows down the pace and now it has switched off the lights. Drivers know that it’s going out at the end of the lap and the drivers are all set to whoosh. That’s what happens in Formula 1 racing, but in business world, the drivers are business leaders who should take position and decide on strategy when the race resumes. So are you really ready to do a Whoosh-Whoosh when market comes up. So how is your organization placed, are your products ready to hit the recovering market or you still hoping to piggy pack on someone else’s growth.

Some of the essentials of resuming from slow down are covered in this article. While you as business leader are best placed to decide strategy for your business, points mentioned below are pillars of success for today.

1. Refresh the brand button
Your presence and a message that you have indeed survived a hurricane must truly be felt and acknowledged by market. It’s important that your brand and product are part of discussions and are being evaluated by buyers. If you are sure that the industry you are in has bottomed out then this is the moment to press refresh button. Remember it’s important that every buyer of who intends to purchase a product / service you offer, evaluate you and realizes that you are still in the game.

2. Price moderate
This is the opportunity to get on your mark and not sprint. Keeping prices very low are generally viewed as stock clearance sale of old fashioned goods or could also be attributed to sale of goods with manufacturing defects or if you are in some kind of service industry then quality of service offered is doubted. Also, you might me heading for an head on collision if you see this as an opportunity to recover your losses in slow down. Remember markets are showing up signs of improvement (bottomed out) and are not in growth stage.While you choose a price for your product / service, market has already decided a price band they are ready to look in for.

3. Ping old friends
Establishing a new trust relation in present market situation is tough. Customers are more than wise to choose an unknown angel. Moreover since the situation is little better than skeptical, people would like to have safe game. The last thing a buyer would like to do today is change their established relation, service or choice of brand. Existing customers and relations are best place for newer opportunities.

4. Focus on complementing rather than competing
Collaboration is the best way to go forward. You can expect more business to come in when your start focusing on complementing. In Stephen Coveys language, you start thinking win-win. Not just the result but think win-win or when you start thinking for collaborating, you start experiencing positive energy and an create a friendly, preferred and trustworthy image of your brand. By doing this you don’t surrender or pull out of completion, but take yourself to a different level of competition.

5. Retain talent
Last but not least. When you start getting orders you need people to fulfill these commitments. You have very little scope of error and this is the time when you must rely on your best and long serving talent to help you complete the task successfully. Value people who have been with you and who knows your business. Have your talent motivated to take this feeble opportunities and convert them in to big wins.

Key economies in ASIA have already started showing the signs of improvement. Japan, South Korea, China, India, Hong Kong, and Singapore have already expressed positive signs. In Europe Germany and France are recovering quick. All eyes are now on US market and rest of the key economies in other regions. The sprint is about to begin, be on your mark and be ready to do a whoosh-whoosh.

Success Managers

What do Product Managers manage, Product, LOB or an Opportunity? Product Managers profile is most commonly misunderstood as someone who manages the product roadmap, requirements for a release and owns a delivery. While these definitely are some of the key tasks performed by product managers, but these are not all, product management is lot more than these KRAs.

Successful product managers are those who have well understood the difference between managing a product and managing opportunities. While most just end up managing a product, others go a little ahead by managing a need or demand (they are good at collecting, consolidating and prioritizing requirements) and few lead ahead when they start focusing on opportunity, thought process and market, in this process they create demand. They don’t manage product but use product to manage these opportunities. I call them success managers as they not only bring the success but also ensure that it remains with them, with customers they serve and with organization they live.

Some of the key distinguishing factors;