Service Management For Product Managers

Posted on March 7, 2010, 8:00 pm, by David Radzialowski and received 1 Comment ».

In my consulting practice, I have been working a lot lately to define a service line for one of my clients.  It’s a strategic content generation service that we are packaging as a standardized, multi-customer offering. I find that it has a lot of the same high-level needs that a product might have – pricing, packaging, definition, release plan, feature/function, messaging, etc…  Seems similar – and it is, but only at the high level. Since a large portion of the knowledge economy is moving to service-oriented offerings as well as transitioning from traditional software to SaaS, I thought that more and more product managers might find themselves in a similar position.

So what are the key differences between managing a product and managing a service?

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Innovate in 12 Dimensions

Posted on February 12, 2010, 3:10 pm, by Thierry Roullier and received No Comments ».

When it comes to innovation, I have been guilty of thinking only in one dimension. I have mostly focused only on new features and functionality changes in my products that differentiate it from the competition. I know I am not the only product manager with this limitation.

However, not envisioning a new initiative as a whole new business process may result in failure. A good product may target the wrong buyer in the right segment, a marketing message could hit the wrong audience, a sales force may react negatively to your new solution.

So it is worth mentioning when a tool is available to help product managers think more systematically at an early stage of their innovation process. Continue reading this post »

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Unlock Your Product’s Value with Pricing

Posted on February 5, 2010, 2:59 pm, by Joshua Steffan and received No Comments ».

From my experience, value-based pricing is one of the most often used, yet least understood concepts in product management. While deceptively simple on the surface, most product managers have trouble turning it into something concrete. Sure it makes sense that a good product should provide value to the customer, but trying to get a handle on this is like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. Luckily, this task is a bit easier for those of us in the B2B space since we don’t typically have to be overly concerned with the fuzzy intangibles so important in B2C like how our brand will help the consumer achieve their personal goals, laddering up to get closer to the consumer’s core values, and all that noise. But even still, understanding how your product can help a customer improve their business does not automatically translate into a price point.

Economic Value to the Customer (EVC), a concept I mentioned in a previous post, can be of great help in this situation – especially when you’re working on pricing a new product and you don’t have the luxury of existing sales data to calculate a demand curve (not that this is exactly easy either). Once you’ve completed the EVC framework for your product you’ll be able to use it to help diagnose why sales are slow, assist sales force personnel in negotiations and even determine which enhancements will result in the largest gains in customer willingness to pay. Continue reading this post »

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Drive your New Product Management Team to Success

Posted on January 29, 2010, 3:03 pm, by Thierry Roullier and received 3 Comments ».

Congratulations! You now have the opportunity to lead a team of other product managers. Or maybe you want to position yourself as a contender for a leadership position and make a proposal.  What should be your first steps?

You already know about the constraints: your product managers are very busy, so any new team-building effort will have to come at the expense of something else. You are also aware that, when left to their own devices, most product managers will tend to neglect their strategic role and slide towards the tactical, which is not sustainable in the long term.

With this in mind, how can you build a great Product Management team?

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So You Got the Product Manager Position – Should you take it?

Posted on January 26, 2010, 8:53 pm, by David Radzialowski and Joshua Steffan and received 12 Comments ».

In this economy, you spend so much time trying to find and land a Product Management position. So what happens when you get an opportunity?  How should you decide if you are going to take a job or not?  There are a few factors that we consider when we look at a possible position.

Respect: When you join, you will get the benefit of the doubt for a while but you will need to earn the respect of your co-workers and this may take a while. But this may never happen if the product management organization is not respected in your company.

P/L Ownership:  The holy grail of Product Management – everyone wants it, but only the senior guys get it.  If you get P/L ownership, then you know that you will be playing a key role in the product and the company.  But what if, like most of us, you don’t get it?  That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should skip the position. You should, however, question seriously how much influence you are going to have on your product.  Are you going to be the one developing the product budget for executive review?  Are you going to be the one proposing prices and sales incentives?  If so, while you don’t own the P/L, you really have a significant influence on it. Continue reading this post »

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