ProductMarketing.com

Q&A for product management

2010-03-15T10:05:01-04:00

Red Canary's Shop Talk offers several perspectives on product management from some top minds in the Toronto area. Read the post at http://www.redcanary.ca/?p=648

The questions:
1. Tell us about the best product you’ve ever encountered? Why do you like it?
2. How do you know a great product manager when you meet one?
3. What’s your favorite interview question?
4. When is the best time for a start-up to hire a product manager?
5. What has been the defining moment in your career?
6. Mistakes. What was your biggest?

My answers:
1. Best product: I like all of Apple's products and I love my Kindle but the best? Right now I'd have to say my Kensington presenter's remote. It has five features—next slide, last slide, turn off the slides, laser pointer plus a memory stick to hold your presentations. It must've been a nightmare getting the developers to NOT add additional features.
2. Great product manager: A great product manager sees patterns. We're not looking for one request, one story, one mistake, one data point; great product managers see the patterns in the aggregate. Like watching the game film on Monday morning, you can see what really happened from an overall perspective.
3. Interview question: What's your favorite Microsoft Office program? Your answer tells me how you organize your thoughts and where you fit in the product management triad. (And no one has yet said Microsoft Project). Learn more about the product management triad.
4. When to hire?: Just before your first failure. A founder has a great idea for a product. He quits his day job and starts a company. Success! (Of course, we don't often think about the 99 others who didn't have success). But then, what's the next product? And the one after that? That's when you need a product manager, to bring market facts and patterns from the world as it is now, not how the founder saw it a decade ago, not how the developers imagine it to be, and not what the sales people can sell once to a deal they're working.
5. Defining moment: I had the joy of working at a really well-run company as my first vendor job. It took me years to realize that they were the anomaly. The book I'll write some day is titled "Everything I thought everybody already knew about running a software company."
6. Mistake: Letting my people teach me to micro-manage them. I promised myself I wouldn't yet they were so used to being second-guessed, they tried to get me to continue my predecessor's bad behavior. It took me a few weeks to figure out that they took my opinion as a mandate. Once I understood, I assured them that I wouldn’t question their decisions if they were grounded in company strategy and market facts.

How would you answer?

What's a pCamp?

2010-03-14T09:16:00-04:00

This is what makes productCamp great.

Come to a pCamp and before you know it, you're a volunteer or a speaker. pCamps are about people connecting with people, about sharing your experience, not selling a product.

Lots of pCamps coming up--hope to see you at one soon. Go to http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/about/industry-events to see a list of the ones we know about.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

ProductCamp Austin Spring 2010

2010-03-14T08:43:30-04:00

Pragmatic Marketing is pleased to sponsor another productCamp, Austin's 4th session, on March 27.

Read Paul Young's blog post at http://www.productbeautiful.com/2010/03/11/productcamp-austin-spring-2010/

More info at http://www.barcamp.org/ProductCampAustinSpring2010

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Friday fun: getting the names right

2010-03-12T08:15:00-05:00

This reads, "Do you have any money? Let's talk about how much we want your money."

But it could read, "Dear James, this is the information that we have on file for you. Click here to update your info." I'd be glad to update my info but I'm not gonna engage with a sales guy who doesn't even know my name.

This is bad, no matter whether it was initiated by an individual sales guy or by the marketing dept. Given the poor grammar, I have a guess which it was.

(By the way, no one in my family is named James).

Read this rant by David for more on annoying email marketing.

pCamp Chicago now online

2010-03-09T16:53:18-05:00

http://www.pcampchicago.org/

Another great pCamp opportunity is online.

Chicago pCamp. (no date set yet)

Welcome to Chicago’s very first ProductCamp! ProductCamps have been a hit in Silicon Valley, Austin, Toronto, Boston, Raleigh, Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York, Seattle and Amsterdam, so we thought it was high time we had one in Chicago. Let’s show those folks how it’s done in the Windy City and put our own stamp on what will sure to be an annual must attend event here!

Pragmatic Marketing will be there. Will you? Register today!

(By the way, beautiful execution of the web site! But did I miss something? Where is the event date shown?)

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

ICON and distribution strategy

2010-03-09T16:21:40-05:00

In the past, discussions about distribution strategy always focused on channel. That is, how to get the product from the factory through the channel to the customer. But nowadays distribution means that we need to explore also the best way to deliver, maintain, and use the product.

Should we sell direct, through multi-tier, via the web, over the phone? And how should we deliver? Hosted, SaaS, on-premise? How will we deliver patches and upgrades? Nowadays the choices seem limitless.

Virginia recently passed a law forbidding use of handheld devices while driving. (That's called an Opportunity in SWOT analysis) I do have a bluetooth capability in my Toyota but the hands-free lacks noise canceling and it just doesn't satisfy. I find myself shouting into the phone and am exhausted after a short phone call. So, as a result, I was in the market for a new bluetooth headset.

What next? I could go to Amazon and do some comparisons. I could also go to the vendors' web sites and see what they have to say. I could go to the phone store and see what they have. Three different ways to buy. After looking at a few different sites and blogs, I decided on the Jawbone ICON from Aliph.

http://us.jawbone.com/productsPageIcon.aspx

Now I have to think about delivery. If I buy from the phone store, I can see the product and take it home immediately--but alas, my store only carries The Thinker (black on black, a safe choice) With Amazon, I can choose from two different models but I'll have to wait a couple of days. With the vendor site, I can choose from all six models but have to wait a week or more. In my case (and maybe yours), I'll do anything to stay away from a retail store and Amazon didn't have the model I wanted so I was stuck with the vendor site. Sigh, hard to wait a week (a week!) when you're used to next-day service from Amazon.

Here's where it gets really interesting. You can change the usage over the web. Plug the headset into a USB port, go to the web site, and the website shows you how you can configure the headset. You can choose among six voices ("You have two hours of talk time remaining") and three or four applications including voice dial and memo capabilities. Logically, they could someday download a firmware update, add A2DP capability (please!) or offer other features.

So the distribution questions you ask yourself on a new product introduction is not just what channel any more but what is the best way to deliver, maintain, and use the product. I find it annoying lately when products don't automatically update themselves with bug fixes and new features. Operating systems have done it for years; virus programs do it too.

The more you understand your buyer and user personas, the more you'll know how to answer distribution questions.

Have you thought about distribution in these terms?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Friday fun: getting the names right

2010-03-05T07:44:00-05:00

It warms your heart to receive a nicely customized email... like this:

Unk and his wife Mrs Unk are likely to question this "personal" approach used by the WSJ.

Change This - Is Your Product Launch Doomed?: 10 Ways to Identify an Impending Launch Disaster

2010-03-03T17:59:50-05:00

The process of introducing a product to market is a serious undertaking. Unfortunately for many companies it’s merely an afterthought; a set of deliverables created from a checklist at the end of product development. When the level of effort and resources applied to the creation of the product dwarfs that of the launch, it’s no wonder product launches fail to achieve the sales velocity anticipated.

via changethis.com

David Daniels is the launch expert. His ebook "Is Your Product Launch Doomed?" is now featured on ChangeThis. If you're responsible for product marketing, you'll find the ebook a great resource.

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

product marketing to your audience

2010-03-03T13:14:33-05:00

Ok Go, known for filming the mesmerizing music video treadmill choreography, are back with their latest clip, "This Too Shall Pass."

This is a fine example of product marketing to your audience. YouTube may not be appropriate for a B2B ERP system but it's ideal for reaching the music consumer. The challenge of any product--CD, video, book, software, hardware, services--isn't innovation as much as obscurity. Non-traditional forms of marketing help us get our message through the noise to our buyers.

Alas, marketers often have to work around their corporate policies. In an Op-ed piece, band member Damian Kulash Jr. laments EMI's attempt to video distribution as a revenue generator rather than a lead generator. He writes,

To the band, “Here It Goes Again” was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement.YouTube and EMI have actually made it harder to share our videos.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/opinion/20kulash.html

That's why today's marketers need to understand the buyer persona and the buying process. Do you?

(Thanks to David M Scott and two other friends who shared this video with me. Looks like it'll go viral.)

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Would you give this much information?

2010-03-03T12:47:27-05:00

Someone recommended a product from this company. I went to the web site to see if they did anything for product managers and not just product owners. And they took me here:

Sorry. Not gonna give any vendor that much information on the first date. I can see how they might ask for an email address but nothing more. So I'll neither check them out nor recommend them.
My friend Adele (Happy birthday, Adele!) compares marketing to dating. Would you give this much information to a blind date?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management