​The top challenge most product companies face is finding the best market for their product. Some succeed, but most often companies go after too many markets and fail to create a strong foothold in any particular one.

Let’s review a couple of scenarios:

Scenario one - company has an existing product portfolio.
The sales team is providing feedback and advising that the product is missing features preventing them from penetrating market A, and if only they had those features, they could be very successful selling. The same repeats for market B, C and D and before long the product team is inundated with requests that keep changing day in and day out.

Scenario two - startup has a grand idea.
The founders identified a need in the market and delivered a successful first product. Drunk on their success, they (or in many cases the board) feel they could do more, they could turn the product into a plethora of products and reach many new markets.

In both scenarios, companies should not expand too quickly into new markets. Quite simply, you cannot be everything to everyone and you have to be selective. If you have too many markets, you may have lost focus.

In a recent exercise with a product team, I challenged them to list the markets where the company could potentially sell. There were no less than five vastly different markets; each with very unique needs. Next, the team positioned the current products against those needs. It quickly became clear that they were missing many of the features needed to meet the needs of all markets. The team decided to drop three markets where the competition had a leg up and focus on the ones where they offered unique capabilities that were most likely to succeed.

So before putting out your next roadmap, review the markets you are going after and pick the ones where you are most likely to succeed. As you penetrate and achieve market success, add new ones. Just remember to focus. As you build critical mass in fewer markets, you will most likely grow revenue faster than if you spread resources over too many different markets.

One of the challenges of building a great product management team is making sure you have the right combination of skills and experience. How do you make sure your team is the best and has the right set of skills ?

Product teams are comprised of many product managers, all of whom have various levels of knowledge and abilities. One of the challenges product leaders face is having people who transferred internally from support or engineering into product management; they posses a good understanding of the domain and the product, yet they are not quite market-oriented. That raises the question: is it a matter of training, or perhaps not stating needs clearly?

It could be a combination of both: hiring managers seek people with domain expertise, assuming that by knowing a particular market and products, they understand what customers need. Those PMs may be able to improve your existing products, but may not understand where the market is heading in the next year or two.

So, is it a matter of not identifying the right skill set?
To understand your team composition it is useful to run a skill gap analysis which will identify areas where the team could be augmented. When you identify gaps and decide to hire new talent, make sure you, not HR, clearly write the job description and outline the skill set needed.

Assigning roles within the team
It is important to assign the proper responsibilities to your team members. Your less experienced product managers could serve as the product owners, working closely with development, where your more senior people would be those meeting with customers and driving the vision for the company. It is a good idea to establish some MBOs and encourage product managers to meet with customers on a regular basis. For your less experienced PMs, consider setting a mentorship program where you pair an experienced product manager with an upcoming product manager, or encourage them to join a local product management group. You would be amazed at the benefits they can reap from having an unbiased outsider advise them; since the mentor is removed from the company setting, their ideas will not be influenced by precedent in the company. This can be a critical factor in coming up with creative solutions.

Lastly, make sure your team is the voice of your customer. Encourage your product managers to attend a professional event at least once a month. Most product management associations offer great events, and there are other organizations within your area that would benefit your team.


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This blog is in memory of Dave Fulton, a dear colleague and a fellow BPMA member who passed away two years ago from Leukemia. Dave was a product manager whose blog was called “Fulton Ventures”. One of his last blogs discussed the two most important words in product management: Why? and No!


Why?

This is a key question product managers should ask. Product managers should always get to the bottom of every issue and the only way to find out is by asking why.

• Why do you need a particular feature?
  
  

The fact that a customer requested it is not sufficient. Has there been any market research that indicates a need? Are multiple customers asking for it? Will it increase the chances the product will sell?

• Why will this address the problem uncovered in the market?
  
  

Is your product the answer to a problem that you uncovered? Is it a want or a need?

• Why will it take so long to develop this product?
  
  

Are we trying to put too much functionality into one release instead of breaking it into multiple releases?

• Why should we invest money/resources/time in solving this problem?
  
  

Will this benefit the company? Can we justify the financial investment? What are we risking by developing this product instead of investing in another?

• Why is it important?
  
  

No!

This is probably harder to say when you need to stand up to your development team, executives and customers and tell them no.

• No, these features overcomplicate the product.
  
  
• No, this is not part of our roadmap and company vision.
  
  
• No, we are not going to customize the product for every customer.
  
  
• No, we cannot justify the investment due to the low ROI.
  
  
• No, it is time to EOL those products.
  
  

There is one more important question that I would add: How much?

• How much is this product worth to the company?
  
  
• How much is the customer willing to pay to get this done?
  
  

A company I talked with shared with me their painful experience when a large customer needed a particular feature and was charged time and material which amounted to about $4000. They later learned that the particular feature was worth $250,000 to that customer who was willing to pay that much and they left all that money on the table…


So the next time you use any of those words remember that you are the gatekeeper and by asking those questions you are making everyone stop and re-evaluate their decisions.

Most of you are probably familiar with skills & expertise on LinkedIn. Among the many skills to choose from is product management. Being a product management professional, I have posted that on my profile and have been widely endorsed. But I was surprised to see that some of my colleagues who are recruiters, CFOs, VCs, sales people, etc. posted product management as one of their skills. That got me thinking, does one grasp what product management really is?

I strongly believe that Product management is not a skill, but rather a profession and as such is comprised of many skills such as: market research, market segmentation, competitive analysis, product planning, defining requirements and more to name but a few. 
So why do so many other professionals list product management as one of their skills?
In my opinion it stems from not knowing what product management really is and confusing management tasks with product management. 
A recruiter is managing job openings, a CFO manages the company’s finance, a VC manages investments in companies, sales people manage sales accounts, but that is not product management.

A product manager identifies needs in a market and designs* a solution (which can be a service, a product or a combination of both) to address those needs. The need is common among a particular segment of the market and the solution addresses that need.

So to all my contacts, colleagues and friends who claim to have product management skills, take a good look at your professional skills & expertise and ask yourself, does my title include the words product manager? If not, then you probably should not display that as one of your skills.
 

*The word design means coming up with an idea of how to address a need.

Anyone who has come across job postings for product management roles has seen requirements such as these:

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent. MBA or advanced degree  preferred.
• 8+ years of successful product management.
• Minimum 5 years of experience with “insert the domain expertise here” related technologies.

For technology companies it makes sense that a product manager would be somewhat technical; after all, you would be working with engineers, so having some understanding of technology helps. Same goes for MBA/other advanced degree (although you can learn business from being in the workplace). "Experience" I understand as well - you need someone who has done it before and worked as a product manager. 

In aviation there is an acronym called the 5 C’s:
Climb, circle, communicate, confess, comply.  All these are meant to assist a pilot who has lost orientation; they give you an opportunity to look at things from a different view - hence the climb and circle. However, if that isn’t sufficient, you need to admit you are lost and contact flight control where you communicate your situation, confess your mistakes and comply with their instructions.
This has prompted me to create the 3 C’s of product management: Communication, consensus building and collaboration. These three are applicable in various stages of product development.
Concept: when you are embarking on a new product idea communicate with all stakeholders so that everyone is aware of and understands the new road ahead. Build consensus between all parties so that you have a buy in from management, sales, marketing, engineering,and support. Finally, collaborate with all departments to make sure you are on the same track and supporting each others’ efforts.
Development: in this critical stage, communication is key. Address issues early in the process and prevent them from becoming major hurdles later on. Consensus is achieved when you know which features will not be part of your final product and collaboration goes without saying.
Release: your communication is outward facing; customers need to be informed of your product and what is included (as opposed to what was anticipated and may have been scoped out). Build consensus with your sales team as to how best sell the product, and collaborate by training your sales force and customers on how to use your product.
If at any point during the process things go wrong, communicate - make sure everyone knows what is going on, build consensus as how to proceed, and collaborate. With an informed team everything is possible, even turning a product around.

On the  opening night of the Olympics, we decided to make popcorn to enhance our viewing experience. As we’ve done many times before, we placed a colored paper bag in the microwave with kernels, hit the start button and lo and behold-- the bag caught fire. As a person who plans ahead, I had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. I attempted to use it when everything went haywire; I pulled the stopper off and pressed on the lever, and nothing happened. I kept pressing and pressing to no avail until my better half calmly grabbed a wet towel, placed it over the bag and quelled the flames.
Not understanding what went wrong and why I couldn’t get the extinguisher to work, my husband looked closely at it, and showed me  there were two levers you had to push at once, proceeding to dirty my counter with the fine white powder.

What are the lessons learned?

1. Don’t use paper bags that have ink or color on them when you make popcorn in the microwave. Usually we use regular brown bags, but in the absence of one, we thought a colored bag would work as well. Clearly, it didn’t, due to the dyes and chemicals.
2. Keep a fire extinguisher on hand and know how to use it. Review the instructions in a non-emergency situation so you are sure you know how to operate it

But, the product manager in me is upset with the fire extinguisher manufacturer. When it comes to products, my mantra is: Smart, Simple, and Easy to use.  As an emergency device, it should have been trivial for anyone to use under any circumstance (the kitchen was relatively dark when this happened). How come it didn’t?

Probably because no one ever thought about simplicity and ease of use. Sure, with no fire and plenty of light and time to review instructions, everything works as planned. However, one should plan for situations where everything goes wrong. That’s when your product should still be smart, simple, and easy to use. 

As one of the organizers of product camp Boston last month, I was pleased to see so many attendees. We had nearly 40 sessions ranging from marketing to product management to running a start up. 




With so many takes and aspects of product management, it got me thinking: Can product management ever be standardized? 

Those of you familiar with PMI probably heard of the PMP certification. This is an industry wide initiative that certifies project managers and is widely accepted. The PMP is constantly evolving and is updated by the project management community. 

However, when it comes to product management and how it is implemented, no standard applies. Each company has its own definition of what product management is, making it hard to standardize this profession. Several for-profit organizations offer training and certifications for their Body of Knowledge (BOK) and methodologies, yet there is no accepted standard across all industries. 

The question is whether there can be a one size fits all standard. Can a company in Hi-Tech run product management the same way a Bio-Tech company does or a financial institution? Furthermore, are companies willing to revisit how they run product management and invest in training and certifying their product managers?

To achieve a recognized standard there needs to be a clear (and hopefully non-profit) leader in the market that, through working closely with existing for-profit organizations, will come up with one certification that all groups support.