The Accidental Product Manager

Product Manager Choices: The Right Way Or The Wrong Way?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:01:32 +0000

Which Way Will You Pick To Go?

Into every product manager’s life will arrive opportunities to make decisions, really, really important decisions. When this time comes, will you chose to take your product the right way or the wrong way? Perhaps more importantly, will you allow your customer to make the wrong decision with your product?

A Tale Of Two Airlines

If you were running an airline today, there would be a few applications that in this 21st Century you just couldn’t do without. One would be the program that schedules what flights you’ll fly and when you’ll fly them. Another would be the one that schedules which crew members will be working which flight. Oh yeah, then there’s that one that handles all of your reservations – you know, the one that makes all of your money.

Since Mr. Murphy (of Murphy’s law fame) is alive and well and doing just fine thanks for asking, you’d want to tamper with your reservation program as little as possible – the possibility of making bad things happening would be just too great.

However, Susan Cary reports that tamper is just exactly what two airlines, WestJet and JetBlue (where do they get these names?) decided to do when they both realized that they had outgrown their original homebrew systems. They decided to switch to the reservation system that everyone else in the industry uses: the one from Sabre Holdings.

How NOT To Change Over To A New Product

The folks at WestJet were the first to make the change to the new Sabre reservation system. As with all such big projects, they did a lot of the right things: they waited until they were on their winter schedule so that they were flying fewer plans and carrying fewer customers.

The biggest challenge to doing the big switch is that WestJet had to transition 840,000 customer transaction files from their old system to the new system overnight. Surprise, surprise – this didn’t go very well. The way that the files had to be converted was slow and required a number of complex steps.

In the end WestJet ended up having to apologize to their customers and even provide some free trips because of the delays and confusion that the upgrade caused. WestJet estimates that it took them anywhere from 3-6 months to recover from the hit that their customer loyalty took from the upgrade.

How TO Change Over To A New Product

Meanwhile the folks over at JetBlue were watching and learning. Learning from what they saw happen, they chose to make their big switch on a Friday night because traditionally their Saturday traffic is the lowest of the week. They then went one step further and reduced the number of flights that they would be flying that day to minimize their exposure even more.

Web sites always seem to go down when you do this type of big change so Jet Blue created a backup web site that they ended up using two times for a total of a couple of hours during the switchover process.

The big difference between the two airlines was that JetBlue brought in 500 temporary call center workers to handle reservation calls while their 900,000 transaction files were moved over to the new system. JetBlue’s core reservation workers were then freed up to work to resolve just the sticky issues. JetBlue ended up keeping the additional 500 agents onboard for two months just to give them time to get things running smoothly.

What All Of This Means For You

So why did I take the time to share this story with you – I mean, you’re a product manager, not a project manager, right? The point might have been hidden, but observant Product Managers will realize that the Product Managers at Sabre need to change the way they are offering their product.

A new airline probably doesn’t switch to the Sabre system everyday, but when it happens you’d hope that the Sabre Product Managers would have done their homework and make sure that that the switchover went smoothly. In this case not only was JetBlue watching what happened at WestJet, but other airlines that might have been considering a switch were also watching. Even if your product is dominant, you can still lose deals if customers decide to not make any changes.

As product managers our job is not just to make great products. We also have to make products that are so ridiculously easy to use that our customers won’t have to think twice about saying “yes, let’s do it..”

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills™

Question For You: Just exactly what do you think Sabre should do to make the switchover to their product easy to do?

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So what does your product stand for? When your potential customers see your product, what do you want to have flash in their minds? Do you think that this is happening today or has your brand become old and tired? Maybe it’s time for a bit of rebranding…!

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Can Product Managers Know Too Much About Their Customers?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:01:13 +0000

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There Have Got To Be Some Limits On How Much We Know About Customers

It’s sorta the Holy Grail of product management – to become so intimate with our customers that we can almost read their minds. Now while that may sound like a great idea, have any of us taken the time to consider what our customers might be thinking about us doing this?

Information Blending: Good Thing Or Bad Thing?

This whole question about having lots and lots of information on our customers has only really started to surface in the past few years as computers have gotten faster and the Internet has made sharing information almost ridiculously easy. However, just because something is easy to do, doesn’t necessarily mean that we should be doing it.
Emily Steel reports that a company called EXelate Media is in the process of creating an alliance with a company that we all know: Nielsen – you know, the company that keeps track of who watches what on TV. The reason that this announcement is generating so much interest among product managers is because really for the first time, EXelate’s captured information on 150 million web surfers will be able to be combined with Nielson’s captured behavior information on 115 million American households.
What this means for your customers is that when they go online, now there is the possibility that they may be seeing very, very targeted ads. Just think about for a moment: if you know a web surfer’s age, race, gender, profession, and marital status and you knew where they had been surfing in the last month or even year, what would your product’s ad look like?
The way that EXelate has collected their information on your customer’s web surfing habits is not really rocket science. What they’ve done is to strike deals with lots and lots of web sites and then they’ve scanned all of the registration data that you and I entered when we registered to use those web sites.
They next created web “cookies” that are placed on a user’s hard drive when they visit one of the sites that they’ve registered to use. This cookie allows surfers to be identified to other sites that have subscribed to EXelate’s service – when you drop by, they can look up a lot of information about you.

The Down Side To Too Much Information

As you may have already guessed, this explosion of personal data being made available to marketers is starting to cause some concerns. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has started to hold meetings to talk about this very issue.
Just because I like the color purple and I eat lots and lots of lime Jolly Ranchers doesn’t mean that I’m going to appreciate seeing ads starting to pop up on my browser for your blue widget product telling me that “4 out of 5″ purple loving, line Jolly Rancher eating people have bought your blue widget. In fact, when consumers start to realize that data is being combined from multiple sources, they may flat out rebel.
For right now, marketing firms are saying that they understand the issue and that they handle consumer’s personal data very carefully. They say that no individual can be identified by the data that they have because they’ve stripped out any identifying info.

What All Of This Means For You

Yes, knowing more about your potential customers is always a good thing for product managers to do. However, in this modern age it may be possible to know too much about them.
The arrival of firms that track consumer’s online surfing habits and their alliances with traditional consumer behavior tracking firms has created a super tracker hybrid firm. All of a sudden, a great deal of information may be known about any customer that visits a web site.
If consumers believe that you know too much about them, they will push back. Product manager realize that as with all powerful tools, they are going to have to go slow and make sure that they don’t spook their customers by knowing too much…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Help™

Question For You: If you had the opportunity to know what your customer’s web surfing habits were, would you use that info to reach them?

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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4 Marketing Trends That Well Dressed Products Need To Know

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 04:01:19 +0000

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What Will Your Product Marketing Be Wearing This Season?

Every year the global fashion industry rolls out new lines of fashions from famous designers. The world gathers at trendy fashion shows to gasp in amazement as they discover which designers have outdone themselves this year and which ones have gone off into the weeds.

Maybe it’s time for you to take a look at how you are telling the world about your product – are you keeping up with the latest trends or is your product looking like last year’s fashion failures?

Four Trends In Marketing

Just like everything else in this mad, mad world, marketing never stands still. Every company is facing the same set of challenges: everything seems to cost more to do this year, the environment and the role that our product plays in it (for good or for bad) is becoming more important, etc.

The key thing that any time-strapped product manager needs to be able to do is to find the hot areas of marketing that will help their products both grow in sales and be viewed by potential customers as being an innovative product. Here are four marketing areas that both you and your product are going to have to be on top of:

Targeting

All customers are not created equal and so product managers need to stop treating them that way. It turns out that by now we actually have a fair amount of information on our customers: we know what they do for a living, where they live, and what they’ve bought from us in the past.

Given that we know all of this about the people that we want to buy our products, then why do we still have generic product brochures? Why do we send out mass mailings (email and postal) that start out “Dear recipient”?

It’s time that we put all of this information to work. This is the year that we need to take the time to create highly personalized communication with our potential customers.

Measurement & Analysis

As product marketing budgets get tighter and tighter, every product manager is going to be under the gun to show that a marketing campaign is able to boost profits. This means that we’re going to have to start doing a better job of measuring our marketing programs.

It’s all too easy to do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation and say “this is what the ROI (return on investment) will be”, but that’s not going to cut it any more. Instead product managers are going to have to take the time and figure out how much each step of your product’s marketing effort is going to cost. Then you’re going to have to come up with a way to determine which customers took action based on coming into contract with your marketing message.

Integration

Sure you use email to reach potential customers. You might even use postal mail, videos, and brochures that you hand out at meetings and trade show. But how well do these different channels work together?

With funds for marketing programs being in such short supply, it is now more critical than ever that each of the ways that you get in contact with your customer need to complement your other channels.

This goes farther than just having your company’s web address in small letters at the end of your product’s brochure. Instead, use the brochure to tell customers where they can find videos of your product in action. Use the web site to tell customers how they can order brochures. Make sure that you are telling the world one unified story about why they need your product.

Prospecting

Where will your next batch of customers be coming from? As the demographics of the people who buy our products start to change, we need to make sure that our product’s marketing messages change with them.

The baby boomers are starting to retire and their shoes will be filled by a mix of Gen-X and Gen-Y customers. Will the story that you’ve been telling about your product still resonate with them? Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board and create a new story that will work for them.

What All Of This Means For You

It’s all too easy for product managers to create some form of product marketing and then move on to other more pressing things without giving it another thought. The reality is that marketing messages, like fashion, go out of style and need to be refreshed.

When you go to refresh your product’s marketing message, you need to be aware of the four marketing trends that are currently happening: targeting, measurement and analysis, integration, and prospecting.

Product managers who are able to craft a marketing campaign that leverages these four areas and does a good job of telling their product’s story will be the ones who are hailed as the most fashionable product managers out there.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Help

Question For You: What do you think the best way to measure a product’s marketing ROI is?

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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Happy Independence Day — Take The Week Off!

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 04:01:38 +0000

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Take A Week To Celebrate Your Independence

Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming week is a great week for you — I’m taking it off! Blogging will resume next week…

For my readers in the U.S., you know that this week is all about family, fireworks and general celebrating. The cause for all of this celebration is the signing of the U.S. deceleration of Independence. Now if only the work that we do could have the same type of impact 234 years later on!

For my international readers, pretty much all of the United States will be taking time off this week to celebrate the decision of our founding fathers to make their own decisions. For better or for worse, it’s what has gotten us to where we are today and we think that that’s a good thing.

Have a happy and safe week no matter where you are and we’ll talk next week.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills™

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

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Is Your Product Manager Resume Blackberry Ready?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:01:59 +0000

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How Will Your Resume Look When Viewed On A Blackberry?

When you go hunting for your next Product Manager job (and it may be sooner than later), will your resume be up to the job? Come to think of it, when was the last time you dusted off and updated your resume? Do you still have that quaint “objective statement” or “career goal” hanging out at the top? If so, you may be in for a shock – that’s not going to be the best use of resume real estate when it’s being reviewed on the hiring manager’s Blackberry…

The Need For A New Resume

Parting is such sweet sorrow… or so the classic line goes. Look, when did you first create your product manager resume? Awhile ago? Even if it was only a couple of years ago, the world has changed dramatically since then and it’s time that you (and your resume) kept up with it. It’s time to say goodbye to your old style resume.

About that “objective statement” up at the top – ditch it. The next company that will be hiring you really doesn’t care about what you are looking for. Instead, they are facing pain right now and they are looking for someone whom they can hire to come in and make that pain go away. That’s what really matters.

This means that we’re going to have to make some changes to your current resume. Prepare to get out the sharp knife.

Length

How long is too long? How long is too short? This rule of thumb has not changed even in the 21st Century – a resume should be two pages max. In fact, it’s really only the first 25% that you can count on a hiring manager reading so that’s where you’ve got to really shine.

If you’ve had some amazing product management experiences that you think would really help your case, then feel free to include them – as an addendum. This extra stuff can be anywhere from 4-12 pages long; however, remember that there is no guarantee that anyone is going to read it.

Skills

Are you the world’s best Cobol / Fortran / Java programmer? Drop it. Look, you’re going for a product management job and it’s really your leadership and project management skills that are going to get you the job – not your programming chops. Use your limited resume real estate to explain how your product management skills have made your past products successful.

Skip The History Lesson

A resume is designed to tell your next employer about how you’ll perform in the workplace. This means that pretty much anything that does not have to do with the workplace should be dropped. This list will include civic accomplishments, professional associations that you belong to, charity work, etc. Use the freed up space to provide more details about your most recent job and how it relates to the job that you are applying for.

Say No To Descriptions, Yes To Accomplishments

I must confess that this has been a mistake that I’ve made in the past and I found it hard to stop doing it. Instead of providing your work biography by listing every single job you’ve ever had, use the space instead to list your accomplishments. Ultimately this is what your future employer really cares about. Don’t worry about all of those “title only” promotions that you’ve gotten over the years, instead just focus on the products that you’ve managed and the challenges that you’ve mastered.

What All Of This Means For You

Everyone has a resume. However, not everyone has a resume that will work for them. In this day and age of everyone having too much to do and too little time to do it in, you’re going to need to shape your resume to be scanned quickly on your future boss’ Blackberry as he/she dashes off to their next meeting.

What this means is that you’re going to have to cut to the bone and get rid of everything that doesn’t pertain to how you would do in your next position. Detailing what you’ve accomplished in your most recent product management positions is what that Blackberry scanning hiring manager is going to be looking for.

Take the time to craft a new resume that is tailored to read quickly in digital form and you’ll be one step ahead of everyone else who is applying for the same job. If you make it easy for them to see why you are the perfect fit for the job, then you’ve just shown them why you’re the product manager that they need to hire…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Help

Question For You: If a hiring manager is only going to scan the first half of the first page of your resume, what do you think that you need to put there in order to land the job?

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

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Product Manager Resume Creation: Back To The Future?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:01:09 +0000

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Your Resume Should Do More Looking Forward Then Looking Backwards…

It is the time of year that a product manager’s thoughts turn to … searching for a new job? During the global recession, things were so bad for so long that most product managers were just trying to hold on to the jobs that they already had. Now that things appear to be slowly getting better, the calls from the recruiters are starting to ring once again. Will you be ready when you get a call?

It’s All About Your Resume

Sure, sure – we live in the all-digital 21st Century where the old ways of getting your next job are long gone and now candidates are automatically selected by computers that spend their days trolling Facebook and LinkedIn. Well, not quite.

It turns out that how you present your product manager experience in a resume still matters because eventually once you get past the robots, real live humans read the things. How you go about structuring your resume can have a significant impact on how well it works for you (or doesn’t).

Perhaps we should spend a moment or two talking about how to create a resume that will do the job for you.

Which Way Should Your Resume Be Looking?

Phyllis Korkki over at the New York Times has done some digging into just what makes a resume work and she’s come up with some interesting findings. The first thing that all product managers should realize is that a resume is first and foremost a way to market yourself – it’s your very own personal product brochure.

That being said, what your resume should really be doing is telling the reader what you are capable of doing in the future – not focusing on what you’ve done in the past. This means that you should take the time to figure out what kind of job you want to have in the future, and then make sure that your resume focuses on those jobs & skills that have prepared you for the future job that you want.

Here’s an important point: your resume is not designed to be your personal work autobiography. What this means is that you really don’t have to list every job that you’ve ever had. In fact, anything that is over 15 years old should get very little space or perhaps should be dropped all together…

It’s your most recent jobs that will count the most when you are searching for your next job. This means that you are going to want to quantify what you’ve been able to accomplish in those jobs as much as possible – this is a good way to use your precious resume real estate.

Make It Easy To Hire You

I’m always amazed at how often I see product manager’s resumes that make me work to find the answers to my questions. When you are submitting a resume for a specific job, be sure to customize it so that it contains key words that have to do with that job as well as inserting some terms from the job description that were used to define the job. This makes it easier for the reader to understand how your experience relates to the job that they are trying to fill.

What All Of This Means For You

In order to land your next job, there are a lot of things that have to go just right. You need to discover that someone has a product manager opening, you’ve got to look good to them both on paper and in person, and they need to end up picking you. Can this happen – yes. However, your resume can be a key tool for making it happen quicker than later.

You’ve got to make sure that your product manager resume is saying the right things: focus on telling the story about how your past jobs have prepared you for the job that you are now looking for. Although we are often proud of all of the jobs that we’ve had, it’s not necessary to list them all on your resume, especially if they happened a long time ago.

Resumes still do count even in this day and age. Product managers who take the time to create a resume that does a good job of marketing what they have to offer will be able to find their next job faster than everyone else.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Help

Question For You: Do you think that making your resume fit on just one page is still necessary or can you go to 2 or even 3 pages?

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you go hunting for your next Product Manager job (and it may be sooner than later), will your resume be up to the job?

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Product Manager Job Hunt: Do You Have The Cover Letter Covered?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:01:10 +0000

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It Turns Out That A Cover Letter DOES Count When You Are Applying For A Job

When it comes time for you to go looking for your next Product Management job you’ll be facing a major decision. I’m not talking about if you should use online resume services or go with a headhunter. I’m not even talking about if creating a more technical or a more business-focused resume is going to land you that next job. I’m talking about something even bigger – the question of whether or not you should create a cover letter when you send someone your resume.

The Purpose Of A Cover Letter For A Product Manager

The product managers that I’ve been talking with seem to be split down the middle on this issue. Many of them have decided that since their resumes are just going to get scanned in and then checked for keywords, why bother with the cover letter? Others realize that by including a cover letter they have a better chance of setting themselves apart from everyone else who may be applying for the job and that’s got to be a good thing.

All cover letters are not created equal. Product managers who are applying for multiple jobs need to realize that a cover letter can help them stand out from the crowd. Each letter needs to be both brief (keep it short!) and custom tailored to both the job that is being applied to as well as the employer who will be doing the hiring.

Rarely do any of us grow up hoping to become a product manager. We often just happen into this profession. This is something that may need to be explained in your cover letter.

How A Product Manager Can Customize A Cover Letter

In order to make your cover letter read like it was written for the person who is reading it (and not like you copied it out of some book), you’re going to have to customize it. It turns out that this really is not all that hard to do.

An easy way to customize a cover letter is to make a reference to the employer’s products or services. Another way is to make a reference to some information that they have on their web site such as their latest press release. If neither of these seem appropriate, then you can do some research and make a reference to something that is going on in their industry.

Your ultimate goal here is to take the time to customize your cover letter to support the position that you are applying for. This means that in the limited space provided you should take the time to show how the work that you’ve done in the past has prepared you for this position better than anyone else out there.

The real power of a cover letter is that it allows you to put all of your work experience into context for the person who is reading it – you get to explain why you are the best candidate for the job.

What A Product Manager Should NOT Put Into A Cover Letter

Right off the bat I hope that we can agree that any obvious errors such as misspellings or grammatical mistakes in your cover letter will count against you. These simple-to-avoid errors show sloppiness and lack of attention to detail on your part. This is why you always want to get someone else to read over your cover letter before you send it off.

Form cover letters are also a big no-no. What product managers seem to forget is that the people who will be reading our cover letters do this for a living. That means that they’ve probably seen just about every form cover letter out there. Take the time to write a custom cover letter!

Once you’ve got one cover letter written, you might be tempted to reuse it. Don’t! Since much of the job application process has been digitized these days, using the same cover letter to apply for more than one position will be found out quickly and you’ll be out of the running.

One final thought, although much has been written about the power of a hand-written letter that is delivered by the postal service, it turns out that recruiters just like the rest of us live and die by email. If your cover letter can’t be forwarded to the hiring manager by the recruiter, then it loses much of its power.

What All Of This Means For You.

Applying for a new product management job can be a nerve racking experience. In order to boost your odds of success, take the time to create a cover letter to send along with your resume.

Make sure that you create a custom cover letter that matches the position that you are applying for. Spelling errors or trying to use a form cover letter will end up counting against you.

Getting your next job is often a numbers game: you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time. If a well-done cover letter can help your chances of getting the job, then I say go for it…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Help

Question: Just how long do you think a cover letter should be: half of a page or a full page?

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

How To Really Screw Up Your Next Product Manager Job Search Product managers may be very good at managing a product...
To Get Your Next Job, You Need To Know How Firms Hire Product Managers So what’s your job status? You either currently have a...
Let’s Go Job Shopping: What A Product Manager Needs To Have On Their Resume As the global recession starts to fade away, product managers...

Free Training For Product Managers In Chicago: ProductCamp Chicago

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:01:24 +0000

ProductCamp Chicago Will Be Held In Chicago On June 19, 2010

David Radzialowski, one of the organizers of ProductCamp Chicago reached out to me the other day and said “Hey, if you think that you’re such hot stuff, why don’t you come and speak at the ProductCamp that we’re putting in in Chicago?” I’m always a sucker for taking on a challenge and so I said “You’re on!”

You’re invited to join us for some (free!) product management training that’s going to be happening in Chicago. Here are the details…

The History Of Product Camp

So if you’ve ever been to a technical conference or some sort of product management training in the past, this event is nothing like those events. To understand how this all got started, you need to go back to BarCamp.

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences: open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first one of these was held on August 19-21, 2005 – so you can see that its not really been around for all that long.

ProductCamp is a specific type of BarCamp – this type of conference focuses on Product Management topics.

How Does All Of This Work?

This might seem just a bit chaotic when I describe it to you, but I’ve attended these things and I swear that it works. If you’ve ever been to a big formal conference, then you know that you are handed a pre-printed agenda at the door and you know exactly what’s going to be discussed where and when. ProductCamp works just a bit differently.

The first difference is that everyone who attends ProductCamp is asked to participate either by presenting or facilitating a session – no dozing in the back of the room here. Additionally, the conference doesn’t start with a pre-planned agenda.

Instead, the sessions are proposed and scheduled each day by attendees. You start to get a feel for how dynamic this is. If you’ll trust me that this actually works, you can see that hot topics and issues of great concern to all bubble up to the top. Likewise, there really are no boring sessions – they get voted away.

What’s Going To Happen At ProductCamp Chicago?

First off, the reason for going would be to learn about and discuss the most current topics facing product managers and product marketers today. This is going to be (hey, it’s in Chicago – what do you expect?) an intense ad hoc gathering of product folks to share, present, network, learn, laugh, and discuss.

As we’ve discussed, there is no agenda. Instead, everyone who is interested in leading a session provides a brief (that’s about a minute) pitch in the morning before things start. Attendees then vote and those sessions receiving the highest votes are put on the schedule and groups form for intense learning. This will ensure that the participants get the most out of their experience.

What’s interesting to me is that this is not the first time that this has been done. ProductCamp has been successfully hosted in San Francisco (twice!), Austin, and Boston, NYC and a bunch of other places.

If you’re the kind of person who is swayed by reviews, here are some of the feedback that came out of these previous ProductCamps:

“This was a great event. I took back more useful ideas than I have gotten at large industry events. The interactive format … made it very valuable.”
“What a great experience to get together with a (large) group of passionate product managers and have lively discussions about how we can improve.”
“There was a lot of collective talent assembled all striving for the same goal … let’s make product management the best career opportunity in the next few years.”

I’m Interested, Now What Do I Do?

I can’t remember – did I mention that this is all free (as in beer)? If you are going to be in Chicago on Saturday, June 18th (or if you can get there), then here are the details that you need to know:

ProductCamp Chicago
Saturday, July 19, 2010 9am – 5pm
llinois Technology Association (ITA) – TechNexus
200 S Wacker Dr | 15th Floor | Chicago, IL 60606

Of course, even though it’s free, they’d like you to register. You can get all of the details on this event by visiting their web site at:
http://www.pcampchicago.org/

Final Thoughts

Hey – it’s free, just how much thinking does this take? If you are even half way considering going – DO IT. The info that you get will be great, but the contacts that you can make will be even better.

Have a great time!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills™

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P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

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Up In Smoke: How Do Cigarette Product Managers Do It?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:01:55 +0000

Image Credit

Altria Product Managers Have A Difficult Job To Do…

How times have changed! As little as 10 years ago, cigarette smoking was no big deal – lots of people did it. Since then a lot has changed and a lot of people have very strongly held views on the topic. No matter which side of the fence you fall on, it’s important to realize that just like every other product out there, there are product managers for cigarettes (remember: there are also product managers for things like bullets). The interesting question for us is how do you go about managing a product that creates such strong for / against emotions in your potential customers…?

A New Direction

Pity the poor cigarette product manager. They’ve basically got their hands tied. They can’t target new groups of customers (underage smokers), they’ve got huge health warnings stamped all over the front of their products, and “stop smoking” ads are being run everywhere. What’s a product manager to do?

Over at Altria, one of the biggest manufactures of cigarettes (can anyone say “Marlboro”?), the product managers are trying a different approach.

Altia is in the process of doing some test marketing of a new type of tobacco product: Snus. This is basically a smokeless form of tobacco which will allow their customers to still use tobacco in situations in which they can’t light a cigarette.

As with all things having to do with cigarettes, this marketing approach has caused a great deal of controversy. A number of people have spoken up and said that the product managers are just rolling out this new type of product in order to cause the FDA to focus on it and stop their efforts to restrict traditional cigarette smoking.

Just How Do You Go About Getting People To Smoke More?

Altria is the biggest producer of tobacco products out there. It turns out that they already own about 50% of the cigarette market and about 55% of the smokeless market.

Even as the Altria product managers work to roll out new products, the brand managers have to face a harsh reality: cigarettes are where the money is. Last year they brought in $14.4B (yes, that’s Billion) in revenue while the smokeless products only brought in $1.2B.

No matter what you think about smoking or tobacco companies, deep down in your product management heart just like the rest of us you secretly wish that your customers just couldn’t get enough of your product. Well, cigarette product managers have had this wish come true: 40% of smokers try to quit every year, but only 2.5% succeed.

Past cigarette product manager attempts to roll out new products have had mixed success. The so-called “light” cigarettes have captured about 90% of the U.S. market; however, studies have shown that customers tend to inhale these cigarettes more deeply.

How Can You Make Smokeless Tobacco A Successful Product?

Let’s play a game and pretend that you were the product manager for a new smokeless tobacco product? What would you do to make it a success. Remember that there have been precious few new tobacco products introduced over the past few decades that have been a success.

One thing that might work for you is to look for a way to differentiate your product. One way to do this is to add flavors to them. Over at Altria the product managers are doing this very thing. It’s been quite successful: flavored versions of the Snus product now make up about 56% of their sales.

This approach comes with some problems. If you are too successful, critics are going to point out that you may be trying to attract the wrong audience: kids.

What All Of This Means For You

Being a product manager is a difficult job. Being a product manager at a cigarette company is especially difficult. The selling of cigarettes is becoming more and more difficult and so product managers are looking for new tobacco products to sell.

Just like product managers everywhere, cigarette product managers are looking for new products to introduce to their customers. Smokeless products appear to be one way to do this. Adding flavors to these products boost their popularity; however, they may start to make them attractive to the wrong types of customers.

If you were offered the job of being a cigarette product manager would you take it? If times were tight enough, yes you probably would. Would you be able to successfully introduce a new smokeless product? Only time will tell…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Help

Question For You: If using different flavorings for smokeless products gets banned, what do you think the product manager’s next step should be?

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P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When it comes time for you to go looking for your next Product Management job you’ll be facing a major decision. I’m not talking about if you should use online resume services or go with a headhunter. I’m talking about something even bigger – the question of whether or not you should create a cover letter when you send someone your resume.

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Oh, Oh – What To Do When You Don’t Get That Promotion

Dr. Jim Anderson — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:01:57 +0000

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What Should You Do If You Fall Off The Career Ladder?

Things are tough all over. If you were counting on getting a promotion this year, you might want to scale your hopes back just a bit. A lot of product managers are discovering that their career plans are having to be put on hold. Maybe we should spend some time talking about what you should do now…

The Root Of The Problem

Have you noticed just how far down the U.S. stock market has dropped over the last couple of years? Since most of the baby boomer generation that is currently working has their retirement funds tied up in stocks, they’ve seen their dreams of a well funded retirement take a hit. What this means is that they won’t be retiring any time soon.

What this means for product managers is that the normal process of staff retiring each year and opening up senior management positions that are then filled by junior staff won’t be happening this year. Dang!

The folks over at Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. have done a survey of more than 2,200 U.S. employees and they’ve found that 44% of workers who are over 50 plan on postponing their retirement. Just to make things even worse, about half of these folks are now planning on working at least three years longer than they had originally planned on.

The Promotion Problem

So let’s talk frankly here: no matter what level your product management career is currently at, you are going to be blocked. Just to make things even worse, the experts are telling us that we shouldn’t expect promotions to come back any time soon.

So what should you do? Quit? In this economy? I don’t think so. Instead we should take a look and see if we can come up with a different solution.

As always, if you are expecting a promotion and you don’t get it, you need to take a look at the underlying reasons for you not getting the promotion. If you determine that your promotion was postponed because of either the company’s economic situation is poor or because there is a human logjam before you, then you still have hope.

Now you’ve got to plot your next step.

Solutions

The easiest way to solve this problem is if you are willing to accept an alternative to a promotion – like money. This is sometimes called a “retention reward” and it’s a bonus that is paid to employees when they deserve a promotion but one is not currently possible.

Once you realize that your deserved promotion may be delayed, you need to start to take steps to boost your value to the company. What you really want to do is to make it very easy for the company to slide you into the promotion once it becomes available. This means having a talk with your boss in order to find out if there are ways to get some of the experience that goes along with the promotion position even if you can’t get the title right now.

As with all requests like this, you do need to be careful. You don’t want the company to get too comfortable with you doing the work of the higher level position while being paid at your current lower rate.

What All Of This Means For You

The world is working against you – just when you are expecting a promotion, everything gets flipped upside down and you find your way up the career latter blocked. These things happen and you need to find ways to deal with it.

Quitting is always an option; however, unless you have another job already lined up it’s probably not the way to go right now. Instead, ask if you can get a bonus to replace the promotion that you won’t be getting right now. At the same time see if there is any way that you can gain more experience doing the type of work that you will be doing when the promotions free up once again.

Promotions will eventually return. As a top-notch product manager you need to use this delay to build the skills that will ensure that you will be one of the first to get promoted once things start moving again. Take these actions now and you’ll be ready for the big day whenever it finally comes…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Help

If your next promotion gets delayed, what steps would you take?

Click here to get automatic updates when

The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

How times have changed! As little as 10 years ago, cigarette smoking was no big deal – lots of people did it. No matter which side of the fence you fall on, it’s important to realize that just like every other product out there, there are product managers for cigarettes (remember: there are also product managers for things like bullets). The interesting question for us is how do you go about managing a product that creates such strong for / against emotions in your potential customers…?

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