Identity of a Product Manager

What's in the title? - yeah, that's not that easy to let go.

My title is my identity in my organization - well said by someone whom I meet 4 years back in mirror, while combing my hair. I was curious to know if my title truly justified that I do, and equally curious was the guy in mirror to answer me, hmm but then what does Product Manager mean, and is this the title that truly justifies my duties?

May be yes, if just look inward and focus on my product as my core karm-bhumi (area of duty) and consider sales, technology, engineering, customers, market, competition & policies as input points to manage my product. But is this what I and many other product managers do worldwide? Hmmm not sure if that’s the right way to go ahead.

The other approach that I could think at that time was something like this. Any product (let’s limit to commercial products for now) that gets developed is aimed to either address a need or create a habit, and the sole role of that product then is to remain focused towards fulfillment of the reason of its existence – and that is to address the need or create a habit. Wow, that sounds interesting. So now, what should be of paramount importance for a product manager? I guess the very reason that cause the birth of the his product (or solution in some cases), a product manager then in true sense is suppose to manage this reason or opportunity (I learned it long way) using product as tool. Product Manager must be faithful to this opportunity and not just to product that helps tackle him the opportunity.

So what’s the call? – as far as title is concern, I give a damnn, but identity!! You can’t ignore it - think over it and maybe you may like to comeback and read this blog once again.

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.