I am interested in what Product Leaders think makes a good Product Manager? And what is your way of identifying a good Product Manager?

I am constantly asked what makes a great Product Manager and what do I look for. I am a great believer that a strong Product Manager is the CEO of their solution. They need to get involved in all aspects, from inception to launch, and then in-life management.  It’s for this reason that I am a strong believer in ‘You hire for attitude, train for skill’. If someone has the right behaviours then you can teach them the skills to be a great product manager. I have learnt over many years that a title doesn’t make the person good at their role.

My approach to interviewing is that the first interview is to understand the candidate’s personality. So I tend to ask myself:

• Can they fit into the team dynamic? (If you want to disrupt the ‘status quo’ to strengthen then that is OK too)
• What does their personality bring to the team that is currently missing?
• Do I think they can work within a team, yet be focused enough to work on their own and drive the solutions that they will be managing?
• Are they tenacious and can they prove this?
• Have they got the right social skills to be able to work with a number of disciplines around the company? They will need to be able to communicate and influence different types of people.
• Are they someone that thrives on ownership and responsibility?

Using this approach means they get to know mine and the company’s expectations. And at the same time, this 1-2-1 personal approach to the first interview allows the candidate to understand if the company is the right fit for them.

Question:            When do you start to launch your solution?

Answer:                 As soon as you can.

Remember you are delivering a solution not just software.  A lot of companies make the mistake that they are purely building software and as soon as the software is ready, then they can release.

But the solution is greater than just the software, it is making sure your business and wrap around services are ready as well. This includes:

• Training materials
• Consultants prepared
• Ordering process tried and tested
• Marketing campaigns understood and ready to action. Advocates ready to help with communication, organise your PR
• Sales enablement complete and sales teams trained
• Support Desk trained and the SLA’s (Service Level agreements) and OLA’s (Operational Level Agreements) are in place
• Software ready. Are you going to trial/pilot?
• Solution feedback mechanisms are in place
• All teams are trained and ready to answer customer queries and evangelise about the solution, using the right value proposition

As soon as you have had the approval for the project to go ahead, and you have secured the budget for development, next step is bringing together your stakeholder group from around the company.  They will help you launch internally and to their peers.

Build a checklist of all the activities and add owners from the stakeholder group.  Have the stakeholders keep you updated with the current progress of their actions, you are not to deliver on their behalf!! The success of the solution will depend on the support of the business, so make sure you have it!

As EdTech companies grow and the nature of technology evolves into the world of SaaS and apps, there’s often confusion around where Product Management should sit in the organisation.

Traditional consumer organisations have had a tendency to consider Product Management in the same arena as Marketing.  However, the danger here is when Marketing is actually ‘Marketing Communications’ (sadly often the case in EdTech) – it means that no-one is involved in defining and delivering the products.

In a lot of Tech companies, the Product Management function tends to be viewed in the technical arena, lumped in with the Development Directorate.  The problem here is that the Product Managers can get tied up in functionality and requirements. They can spend so much time building products that there is no-one engaging the customers to understand their problems; no-one looking ahead and strategising as to what the business needs to do in the future to continue to be successful

To drive the maximum success from a Product Management team, you need to understand exactly what their role is.

A successful Product Management Directorate looks at the needs of the entire business and the entire market.  It’s broadly comprised of three main focuses:

• Product strategy
• Product marketing
• Technical product management

The Product Management Directorate will focus the product management team on the business of building solutions for needs now and into the future.  The team will:

• engage and communicate with existing and potential customers
• articulate and quantify market problems
• create business cases and market requirements documents
• define standard procedures for product delivery and launch
• support the creation of collateral and sales enablement tools
• train the sales teams on the product

Within the EdTech market the truth is: if you want better products in the future, and for the product management team to be held accountable at organisational level, then it must be represented at Board level in its own right.

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Jurassic Park, 1993

Sound business advice there. Just because you can build it, it doesn’t mean you should.

So why do so many tech companies go all Jurassic Park on us and stuff their solutions with things their users really don’t want or need?

I see it happen a lot in my industry – the Edtech sector – ultimately to the detriment of the company and their clients. If you want to avoid this pitfall keep these 3 things in mind with everything you develop:

1. Keep it simple to begin with and create a product which deals with a specific Big Problem
2. Keep focus but keep iterating, all the while solving bigger, related problems
3. Constantly refer back to the vision of the Big Problem that will be solved. If it doesn’t help don’t do it!

Your product is better than that other company’s product. Fact.

You know that to be true because, when you measure your product against whatever metric you’ve made up, your product comes out better.

But if customers aren’t moving to you in droves, your opinion that your product is ‘better’ is simply wrong.

You’re using the wrong metric.

You have to take the time to understand what it is your customers actually want – that’s how you create a product that’s better.

Your thing might be great in your eyes but it’s customer opinion that ultimately matters.

If, like me, you believe your greatest marketing and sales tool is through advocacy and referral (i.e. having others talk about your product and getting them selling the virtues of how your solution will benefit likeminded customers with the same need) then you will believe this approach will drive the strongest growth and, if you get it right, a strong bond between you and your customer base going forward.

I have never over the years found a greater marketing and sales machine than ‘bought into customers’, where the client through developing a great relationship with you then progresses to buying into the brand and solutions you deliver. They become your unofficial ambassadors.

The first and the greatest voice of these customers you want onboard, are the customers that everyone is looking towards to guide the market, these are your innovators. If you are entering into an existing market with a new product, and you have a prior relationship with any of this influential group then gather them together to give them a close up look at your product.  Get them excited and engaged so they will talk about and promote your product.

If it is a new market, you are going to have to do some work on segmentation of the market and start building personas as to what an innovator looks like in this new market. Then start to build relationships with these innovators either on a 1-2-1 basis or via group consultation.

In a new market, once the innovators have bought into your culture and vision, you need to show how working with you will help change the market.  When they are excited with the vision, now get them engaged with the product you are going to launch, you can do this in a number of ways but some ideas are:   Offer them an incentive to take a look at your new product before anyone else; get them on the pilot providing feedback; offer them a years free subscription.

Ultimately whatever tool you are using to bring the innovators onboard, if you can get the innovators to understand and start talking to the market about the value of the product you are launching, you will move from the innovator to early adopter phase of the maturity model much quicker than through direct mailing or other marketing techniques.

Remember, innovators generally are happy to take a risk on a new solution if they feel it gives them a competitive advantage.

HIPPO is an acronym for the Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion . . . and they’re bad for business.

Hippo’s tell you their opinion and, because it’s easy to agree or too scary to challenge it, people nod along. Highly-skilled and experienced team members’ ideas are instantly devalued purely because they’re paid less than the Hippo.

It throttles innovation and it needs to stop.

But what to do instead?

Take the Google approach and test everything. Every idea deserves to be tried or challenged, and when you can back it up with data from testing you’ve got a really good chance of being heard over the roar of the hippo.

One of the key responsibilities of a Product Manager is communication.  Not only being the voice of the customer within the business but helping shape the overall solution from the product to the wrap around services.  Product Managers also need to be able to communicate to the market on behalf of the company as to the direction the Product is travelling in.

One tool for doing this is the Product Roadmap; traditionally this has been a high level visual representation outlining all the features that you want to deliver and by when. Your confidence levels were dependent on how close in time the release was, which meant any features due in 1-2 years time did not inspire the same confidence.

Here are a couple of suggested ways to build your Roadmap and give you and your customers more confidence:

1. Focus on objectives – An alternative way of communicating a roadmap is rather than focusing on features, set out the objective of what the features you are delivering are going to meet, along with how you are going to measure these objectives. This is a good way to communicate to your customers what your goal for each release is, yet at the same time giving you the flexibility to change the best way to meet the objective. One of the positives of working in an agile environment is that you can learn as you go along and change direction quickly, with little impact on the overall delivery of the solution needed by customers. It doesn’t make sense to promise a feature 1-2 years in advance market needs may change but the objective should stay consistent, whatever the solution is. If you are confident of some of the features you are developing you can use these in your roadmap to offer examples of how you are going to meet the objective.
2. Product Strategy and Vision – Before building the Roadmap, make sure you can describe your Product Strategy and that this meets the overall Product/Business vision.  Another reason to use objectives is it should be easier to describe goals from the strategy, rather than just communicating features. When communicating the Roadmap, each individual strategy should be a coherent story, each objective should be building on the previous objective and so on until it fulfils the overall vision. Otherwise ask yourself why you are developing an objective if it doesn’t meet the overall Product Vision for a solution?
3. Keep it simple – It will be easier for your customers to understand if you keep it simple and focus on objectives rather than a long list of features plus also it is easier to update in response to market demands or changes in the overall business vision.  If you have low confidence on the timeframes, then express this in your roadmap, you do not want to be known for not delivering on time.

Do not forget the roadmap is an opportunity to excite your customers, so be imaginative on the design.

Your greatest marketing and sales tool is customer advocacy. Having others talk about your product is important. And getting them selling the virtues of how your solution will benefit like-minded customers with the same need as themselves is everything!

This approach will drive the strongest growth. If you get it right, you’ll also create a strong bond between you and your customer base going forward. I have never found a greater marketing and sales machine than ‘bought into’ customers: where you have a great relationship and they love the brand and solutions you deliver.

The first and the greatest voice of those customers you want on board are the customers that everyone is looking towards to guide the market. These are your innovators.

If you are entering into an existing market with a new product, gather those innovators together that you know already.

If it is a new market, you are going to have to do some work on segmentation. Start building personas as to what an innovator looks like in this new market, and then start to build relationships. You could offer them an incentive to take a look at your new product before anyone else, get them on the pilot providing feedback, or offer them a years free subscription.

Ultimately if you can get the innovators to understand and start talking about the value of the product you are launching into a market, you will move from the innovator to early adopter phase of the maturity model very quickly. Remember, innovators are generally happy to take a risk on a new solution if they feel it gives them a competitive advantage.