So You Got the Product Manager Position – Should you take it?
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.
One other factor to consider for the P/L: Many companies may not have the data available or accounting processes in place to deliver on the promise of P/L control. Be sure you understand how they track costs and revenue before you accept a promise of P/L control.
Process: Does this company use any type of process in their Product Management discipline? This is going to tell you two things: First, how mature their Product Management organization is. If they have been around for a while or have some experienced people, they are going to have a process of some sort. Second, how seriously executive management takes PM. Process creation and execution is expensive and only pays for itself in the long run. The only way that you can get a solid process in place is with executive sponsorship.
Risk Profile: You may assume that companies with a well-defined process make product decisions quickly and efficiently, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Each company has a different level of comfort with risk which usually plays out in the speed of their product investment decisions. If the executive team is risk averse and uncomfortable pulling the trigger, you may find yourself in a never ending cycle of information gathering and approval meetings.
Marketing: What type of marketing department does this organization have? Are they the “entertain customers and drink martinis” type of marketers or are they the “number crunching, graph making, ROI generating” type of marketers? If they are the former, you are going to be guessing a lot about your product direction, which is going to be a miserable experience. If they are the latter, then you can bet that a partnership for success is underway.
Chain of Command: Who do you report to – the head of Marketing or the head of Product Development? Reporting to the head of marketing tells you that you are going to have a customer focused experience while reporting to the head of Product Development tells you that you are going to have a technical/engineering focus to your position. Either one is fine, but you want to be sure that you have a solid understanding of which one plays to your strengths. You may also want to consider which parts of the organization hold the most power. Did the CEO rise up through the technical ranks or was he a sales guy? Obtaining some perspective on the corporate power structure will provide you with some insight on whether you will be operating from a position of power or as an underdog.
Idea Generation: Where do the ideas come from in the company? Are they generated from the Executive Suite? Do they come out of Product Management? Or do you get the standard answer of “Ideas can come from anywhere…” which directly translates to “I have no clue where our ideas come from, they just kind of show up…” That isn’t to say that innovation is limited only to the geniuses in Product Management, but that is the whole reason that product management exists – to generate and implement product ideas. If the company’s ideas aren’t mainly coming out of product management, they either (a) aren’t listening to them or (b) hired lousy product managers.
Customer Profile: Does the company have a wide range of customers from a diverse set of markets and industries or is a large percentage of revenue dependent upon one market? One customer? This has a huge impact on the sort of product manager you’ll be able to be. One of the differences between being a consulting organization and a product organization is the ability to produce products that appeal to a large number of customers – not just one particular customer. When a company is dependent upon a handful of customers for its livelihood, it is difficult if not impossible to say no to their enhancement requests. This is proves to be a vicious cycle since the more attention you pay to your key customers, the fewer resources you have available to build a market solution.
Solid Product Suite: Would you buy the products the company sells? If not, are they good products that are poorly marketed? Are they built with quality, but they don’t meet the needs of the end user? Or are they just bad products? I wouldn’t necessarily turn down a company with bad products – that is a fantastic opportunity to help a company turn itself around. However, you really need to understand why the products are failing so that you can properly assess if you can fix the problems and right the ship.
So what if the products are very successful – then you take the job, right? Not necessarily. They might be looking for a caretaker product manager to ensure that nothing goes wrong as their product suite matures and sunsets. That might not present the growth opportunities and challenges that you need.
Culture and Ethics: This is a difficult attribute to consider, but you’ll be doing yourself a favor by doing a little soul-searching to make sure your personality and beliefs are aligned with the company you’re going to join. This may be an obvious for some industries like alcohol and gaming, but some business plans and practices fall into a grey area. Every company and industry has different set of norms that you must be comfortable with in order to be successful.
These are a few things that we consider when evaluating a possible product manager position. We would love to hear your take on the subject – what do you use evaluate possible positions and more importantly, what do you wish you used to evaluate a position in hindsight.
Barry Paquet (3)
mark (3)
David Locke (2)
Greg Strosaker (2)
kk (2)
Thank you, a very good read. Never really thought about formalizing the job acceptance process.
At the end we tend to trust our intuition as I experienced that the info gathering process within a potential employer has limits if you’re on the outside. So we’ll start our job with what we do best: Taking an optimal decision in an uncertain situation.
I’ve never seen a ProdMan who wasn’t a caretaker. And I’d always prefer a successful product suite. I like high standards. Maintaining and nurturing it isn’t that intense but helpful while being able to focus on laying out the next gen or a diversification.
Oh, and one thing I always check before accepting is possible ties to the religious cult which name implies to have scientific roots.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Some great thoughts in this post. In regards to the chain of command, one warning sign I watch out for is if product management or marketing reports into sales. I believe that sales and marketing / product management should be separate organizations to avoid the pressure on marketing to focus on strictly short-term gains.
Also, a lot of these thoughts apply regardless of the type of position you are hired for (respect, culture & ethics). Nice job!
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
this is a very good comment. I may be able to help.
it is much easier “to drive” out of “engineering” than out of “marketing”. there is deep information you get by being in the engineering food chain that you don’t get in marketing.
it is also easier to be good product manager with an engineering background and then to become a excellent “product marketing agent” – than the reverse (i.e. there is no substitute for experience and education).
an mba is great… but its not everything. people gravitate to people just like them personally and professionally. so if you work with engineers you need to talk like an engineer.
on the complementary side, you allow your mba to speak for itself when you improve the flow and the messaging of your marcom and product line activities so things go smoothly for direct sales, telesales and the channel.
- it won’t take long for people to see you are minding the fort.
____________
the best “product jobs” I ever had were working with the CTO and/or VP of Engineering. then you are in firmly in position as “company evangelist” and by taking ownership (with or without direct line management authority) you have detailed access into the development pipeline, the customer service pipeline and the sales pipeline together.
you are providing a “service” internally that engineering can’t do on it’s own. engineers want to build cool things and sell product. if they didn’t… they wouldn’t be engineers. you help the product become successful.. if the product line isn’t successful there are a lot of unhappy campers out there. and these are all good people who are willing to burn the midnight oil.
- with that said it is very difficult to ferret out where the bottlenecks and “open highway” is during an interview. believe me I know :O)
it may take 1-3 months or just 2-3 weeks in a very volatile organization to separate the formal versus informal chain of command.
___________
I have also worked quite a few times in Marketing. there is a lot to be said for driving home strategy, messaging and product line success. it makes you feel good.
when you drive through “marketing”… you do have access to the corporate roadmap, the executive road show briefings and usually very confidential data on how the exec team and board are planning to take the company forward. normally only the engineering VP sees this stuff.
many times sales is left out. they have a revenue target to focus on and they just need the tools in place to make them successful. marketing needs a budget… but more so it needs “leverage”, leverage inside the company, with customers, with sales and the channel.
______
to be a great product manager, keep your engineering skills and common sense to the forefront and people will come to you in this very matrixed environment for guidance… and especially with a a lot of problems :O)
hope this perspective helps you get through the “glass ceiling”.
its a very pivotal role and you are on the front lines which is exactly where you want to be.
- so the net of my comment is driving out of engineering and/or marketing then doing both. figuring out a way during the interview to find out what the lay of the land is, but more so understanding some of the dynamics withing the engineering and executive team that can make you successful.
Like or Dislike:
0 
1
Great article. One thought along the Solid Product Suite lines and that is: how strategic is the product, suite, or line of which you are/will be the Prod Mgr? Of course, the more strategic the product, the easier it will be to get better and more resources dedicated to its development. Thanks!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I agree with Greg – you could ask a lot of these questions in a variety of positions; the difference in the PM role is the underlying assumption that you will take responsibility for improving any of these that aren’t ideal.
This is a good article reminding you to take a hard look at what you’re jumping into; another perspective on the topic is the “Product Manager Wanted: HR’s Mission Impossible?” post.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
good point about strategic relevance in a product suite.
one of the most important issues is “mindshare” within the company. you have as much “mindshare” with the executive team as the amount of revenue you bring in. that can be in product, support, maintenance, and professional services combined.
so if you make $20M in revenue… you have $20M of “mindshare”. the strategic part becomes evident in a different manner. something strategic to the company may not make much revenue until it ramps.
then comes the internal/external bargaining with the executive team, the CFO, the CTO and your partners.
_____
will tell you though… your first customer is the “sales team”. they need to be incentivised to sell your product suite in their comp plan. with or without $20M mindshare you can still get that to happen.
then you do an outreach program to country managers one at a time and make them successful. as you help each one – they will move serious amounts of product (you are championing your product, you are making them look good, and you are making everyone money :O)
hope this helps… good thread!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Thanks to everyone for these great comments. I always learn more about a topic after I post it then before.
Luca – Great point about the “caretaker” product manager. All PM’s are caretakers to some degree, but as your product ages, the innovator to caretaker ratio changes. Only you know which ratio is best for you.
Greg – Good thought on the separation between Marketing and Product Development. Marketing never wants to spend money on anything but new features, so if they control the budget, care and feeding work will suffer.
Shawn – We should have included a separate point about how your product fits into the strategy. Thanks for bringing that up.
Syed – I agree. Everyone should read “Product Manager Wanted: HR’s Mission Impossible?” It’s one of B2BPM’s best posts. Its actually slated to become an article for Pragmatic Marketing’s magazine!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
P/L “is a holy grail of product management”. it’s how you move up in the organization. many business unit VPs are happy to have a great product guy “making things happen”.
but there is a difference in being in control of P/L than actually doing something useful with it. if you are good – then you are essentially the business unit manager for the product suite and in a larger corporation that can place you at Division level.
that’s where a lot of neat things happen.
________
I can also say I would not mind working for a good SVP of Sales and Marketing. the SVP of Sales and Marketing is a “showman” – you have a great role as the #2 guy.
you are the matrix guy…
you are already locked into the engineering and marketing streams, you have a lot of good things to say to the executive team, and by the nature of your job you gain leadership inertia either formally or informally.
if by chance you are able to generate revenue routinely, you are always on time and within budget, as well as creating a great product line at the same time, who is going to complain?
the sales guys will love you for it and the SVP will be proud to call you a friend… and the neat part for you is that you get to do engineering marketing. not a bad combination.
SVP’s of sales and marketing are critical positions. they have a rollodex, are excellent showmen and tag team with the CEO who is all into growing a successful company with great things to say and great numbers on the books.
but an SVP of sales marketing is also an order of magnitude better than one or the other. that’s where there sometime a leadership dichotomy between “sales”…and then “marketing”. they are also an order of magnitude more expensive but what they can do for a company is instant industry awareness.
- it is a pleasure to work for someone that can “dual-role”. as for the thread about working for sales. in a way you already do.. as I said they are your first customer (think infrastructure marketing).
- you don’t have to make them happy… you just have to make them successful. your inside product knowledge as to what is coming down the pipeline is always held at arms length.
- if you bring a great “marketing” and “product line” perspective to the job. they are all going to love you for it. so who you work for… in marketing or engineering won’t matter.
________
it is easier to drive thru engineering… but there is so much fun to provide leadership and pull through through marketing. besides you like to win in the market and make customers happpy.
just a few thoughts… I won’t post for awhile. let you mull this over.
thanks for letting me into the group!
Like or Dislike:
0 
1
Great post. I added to this list on my blog: http://marketada.com/before-you-say-yes
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Excellent – thanks for contributing Nathan!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Great article! I’ll agree that’s it’s easier to drive thru engineering, it’s just as easy to get caught in the weeds and lose customer focus. Overall I’d rather be with marketing or optimally in an independent Product Management organization.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Very useful and informative read. Thank you David. The more special case of this article is that if you have some little experience in this, but predominantly doing rather BA roles, how the considerations would change? Overall loved the read and hope it helps many people decide after all the hard work of interview and follow up is done and offer was made, what do you do, having several (or multiple – wishing you) on the table
Thank you.
Stan Shapiro
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Telesales is actually good for promoting your affiliate products both online and offline situations.,”-
Like or Dislike:
0 
0