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Pragmatic Marketing Update
A monthly newsletter for technology product managers and marketers
July 2008
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The Tuned In Product Manager
Creating great products is not factory work. It's not a question of putting tab A into slot B or displaying this OK button on that dialog. Instead building a great product is more like working with a sports team. There's offense and defense; there's strategy and tactics. The good coach knows the strengths and weaknesses of his team as well as the other teams in the league. The coach works with the players, other coaches, and also the owners. Sounds like product management. Like a good coach, a good product manager is tuned in to executives, colleagues, customers, and the competition.
Tuned In Leadership
Leading is all about communication, but Tuned In leaders focus on getting the formula right. They listen more than talk, and they seek an edge by working hard to create opportunities to listen. They focus on establishing authentic connections with the people around them, and these connections foster a deeper commitment to the organization for everyone involved.
Don't Just Listen, Grok Your Buyer Personas
Grok (rhymes with "rock") is a verb that captures the essence of what we strive to achieve through buyer persona profiling. A marketer who groks a buyer persona is capable of experiencing "the literal capabilities and frame of reference of the subject." Thus grokking a buyer isn't just about listening and acting directly on what is heard, this word challenges us to understand so deeply that we can anticipate needs that people cannot even articulate.
Archives
June 2008
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Chasing Outcomes
Of
all the causes of tuned out behavior, the most common we've observed is
the logical (but incorrect) assumption that, because you're an expert
in a market or industry, you therefore know more than your buyers about
how your product can solve their problems. It's natural, for instance,
for 20-year auto industry veterans to assume they know more than 100
mothers do about how to drive preschool-age children around town each
day.
Let's Talk About the Backlog...
Product
managers everywhere are debating how Agile affects their profession as
a whole, and more specifically their own role. Here are a few lessons
learned from someone who has lived through a transition to Agile.
Develop More and Better Ideas: Your Vivid Mind
The
picture on my friend's HD TV was so "Vivid" I could feel the leather
grain of the football. Poetry and song lyrics evoke "Vivid," imagery. A
scent I took in at a flea market was so "Vivid" it took me back more
than forty years to my grandmother's kitchen. Vivid is the most potent
component of what I have named, Ideative.
May 2008
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The Apple iPhone: Successes and Challenges for the Mobile Industry
The
Apple iPhone is easily the most publicized new mobile device in recent
memory. But despite all the discussion about the product, there's
relatively little hard information available to the public on its
impact. How is it being used? What effect is it having on customers and
on the technology industry?
Lessons from the Eye of the Storm: Agile Product Management in Practice
Product
managers everywhere are debating how Agile affects their profession as
a whole, and more specifically their own role. Here are a few lessons
learned from someone who has lived through a transition to Agile.
6 Steps to Successful Case Studies (and Tips on How to Get the Most Out of Them)
Customer
case studies can go a long way toward convincing prospects of the value
of your company, solution, or service. Here are six sure-fire steps for
effectively producing hard-hitting case studies.
April 2008
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Why Didn't We Think of That?
Hit
products and services like the iPod, Starbucks and FedEx were seemingly
embraced by the market overnight. But it wasn't luck, creativity or
marketing that led to their success. Anyone can create hits that
resonate if they stop guessing what people need and start building deep
connections to what their buyers value most.
Slip Happens!
Why
is slip so common in the software world? Are we simply poor estimators,
incapable of adequately expressing all the work that needs to be
accomplished to meet a deadline? Are aggressive deadlines a
psychological coping mechanism? Or do we simply fall prey to the
fallacy of optimism, convinced that this time, nothing will go wrong?
Idea Generation for Product Managers
Are
you creative? Most people, even highly experienced, successful product
managers often respond "No!". Yet ideas are your future, your building
blocks for new products, services, process improvements, and the
presentations you make to sell those products, services, and processes.
March 2008
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Tuned In Strategies for 2008
With
the end of the first quarter just a few weeks away, now is a good time
to assess whether your strategic plan for 2008 is on track. But how do
you measure it? One of the interesting things we found when doing
research for the upcoming Tuned In book was only three measurements
really mattered.
SaaS Product Management
You're
a product manager. You have segued from managing on-premise software to
on-demand. Everything has changed. Or has it? On-demand software (also
known as Software-as-a-Service or SaaS) is not new! It goes back to the
earliest days of commercial software in the 1960's and 1970's. It was
called time-sharing or service bureau.
Career Management Lessons from Product Management
One
of the favorite roles in my career as a marketing professional was the
time I spent as a product manager for a software company. The sense of
order to the process of creating good software really appeals to me. I
was thinking recently about career management and found it interesting
to view this through the eyes of the product manager.
February 2008
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Evaluating Career Opportunities: It's Not Just About the Numbers
There
are few decisions in life that have a bigger impact on your future
potential than selecting a new job. But when making a career move, you
need to use your head and do your research. Creating a framework for
evaluating opportunities before you start looking will help you say yes
to the right opportunity and walk away from everything else.
The Politics of Agile
In
the world of agile software development, it seems like Marketing and
Development are in a race for control of "the product." Who will win?
When product managers weren't looking, the developers went agile.
Droves of consultants descended upon development organizations and
coached the teams on how to build software in a modern world.
Don't Confuse Sales Support with Marketing
According
to Pragmatic Marketing's product management survey, technology
marketers spend nearly half of their time on sales support, a statistic
that reflects an alarming state of confusion about the role of
marketing in our industry. Yet the functions of Sales and Marketing are
easily distinguished; Marketing focuses on a market full of
opportunities, while Sales focuses on individual opportunities. So why
are marketers so focused on sales?
January 2008
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More Results from
the Product
Management and
Marketing Survey
The annual product
management and
marketing survey is
always one of the
most visited areas
of the Pragmatic
Marketing web site.
Since the results
were published last
month, additional
analysis has been
conducted including
a look at how
compensation varies
based on regional
factors, reporting
organization,
industry and company
structure.
Scaling Agile
Processes: Five
Levels of Planning
Experience gathered
during large-scale
implementations of
agile concepts in
software development
projects teaches us
that agile methods,
like Scrum, do not
scale to program,
product and
organization levels
without change.
However, various
planning frameworks
have, in fact, been
used successfully in
large-scale agile
projects, which can
broadly be defined
as projects that
involve over 50
people and take
months or years to
complete.
Branding
is for Cattle
As a marketing term
branding is a
misunderstood and
over emphasized
concept in
technology
businesses. I have
been speaking with
many technology
company CEOs
recently who tell me
that the way
marketing tends to
happen in technology
companies is
ineffective and
marketers are
focused on the wrong
things.
December 2007
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Results from the 2007 Product Management and Marketing Survey
The
average Product Manager is 37 years old and responsible for 3 products.
28% are female, 72% are male, with 93% completing college and 41%
completing a masters program. For the first time, average annual salary
is over $100,000.
Viral Marketing: Let The World Tell Your Story for Free
For
marketers, one of the coolest things about the web is that when an idea
takes off, it can propel a brand or company to fame and fortune. For
free. Whatever you call it-viral, buzz, word-of-mouse, or word-of-blog
marketing-having other people tell your story drives action.
What's it like to work for a boss who resists new ideas and new ways of doing things? Well, for starters, it can be pretty demoralizing and frustrating. Especially when you know it's the right thing to do but you just can't budge him or her.
November 2007
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Does Agile Have To Be Acrimonious?
Last
week, my flight was delayed and just by chance, I ended up chatting
with an engineer. He asked what I do for a living, and I explained how
Pragmatic helps train Product Management and Product Marketing
professionals. From his comment ("you mean they're trainable?"), I
could tell he was more than a little frustrated with his Product
Management staff. Now, I've always been one who can't resist beating
the buzzing hive... so I dove right in, and asked about his situation.
How Data Can Turn You Into the Big Dog
The
problem with marketing and sales is that they are the functions inside
companies most likely to be driven more by emotions and anecdotal
"evidence" than they are by facts. The result is never as profitable as
it could be.
The benefits of a rigorous strategy program to an organization are like the benefits of a good exercise program to your body. You might sweat and groan a bit, but if you stick with it, your health and vitality improve tremendously. Unfortunately, like fitness initiatives in January, most organizations have good intentions about strategy, but as soon as the budgeting is done, the interest fades.
October 2007
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What Do I Do With All These Facts?
You
understand that Nothing Important Happens In The Office. For the past
six months, you've been vigilant about finding time and the funding to
get out. The good news is the answers are there. The bad news? Somehow,
you need to figure out how to divine the truth from the avalanche of
market evidence you're surrounded with.
Stop Selling and Listen!
"We've
been focusing on selling and just shooting ourselves in the foot."
That's an exact quote from my phone meeting with Dave this morning. He
and I have been working on a project to identify the most receptive
market segments and buyer personas for his product.
Like the best Steinway can get out of tune, we humans can get slightly off kilter in small ways. The many decisions that lead to "right or wrong" are often more like shades of grey or unclear forks in the road. Ethics are fundamentally about a set of gradual and subtle decisions that lead to a larger impact.
September 2007
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One Voice of Priority
How
often does this happen? A development team, busily working on a set of
features, is interrupted with new priorities. Kevin, the world's worst
sales person, needs a new feature to close a deal. The VP of Marketing
says that we need to change the splash screen to incorporate our new
logo and color schema. The president says, "God spoke to me in a
dream." Each feels that their idea is most important. But look at it
from the development team's point of view: What do you want me to work
on? Which has the highest priority?
There's a Reason No One Is Listening
Every
salesperson loves leads. And marketing people spend lots of effort
providing them. But too often, there's an artificial demarcation
between the role of sales and that of marketing. This is especially
true in B2B marketing where sales leads often go into a sales bucket
never to be marketed to again (what a loss).
2 Parts Enlightenment, 1 Part Truth, and a Smidge of Creation
A
colleague is preparing a competitive defense strategy, and we talked
recently about what to do to prepare in terms of process steps: the
need to build a common data set, do some role playing that will break
traditional roles people already serve in the organization, and then
ways to architect new solutions that could leverage the full company
arsenal (vs. product business units). Yet, I was left not saying one
thing that I think is central to what he's going to need to manage in
terms of process.
August 2007
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Missed Delivery Dates
You
just missed your target release date and the vice president of sales is
on the phone with your boss right now, expressing his displeasure at
your tardy delivery. To make matters worse, your development team is
subtly refusing to provide an updated delivery target by saying "things
are just too mushy yet to give a date." But, the product was due for
general release yesterday! How can it possibly be that mushy?
Sales Leads Are Too Important For Just Sales People
Every
salesperson loves leads. And marketing people spend lots of effort
providing them. But too often, there's an artificial demarcation
between the role of sales and that of marketing. This is especially
true in B2B marketing where sales leads often go into a sales bucket
never to be marketed to again (what a loss).
July 2007
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End of Life: Retiring a Product
One
aspect of product management that people talk about in theory but
rarely practice is the product life cycle. That is, we can birth and
grow a product but we rarely retire one. Every year there is a new
release with new features and new platform support. A software product
is like Frankenstein's monster: we launch it and now... it's alive!
Meet Chris, a Product Marketing Manager Persona
Here's
a buyer persona I'm developing for Chris a product marketing manager in
a technology company. I'm hoping you'll let me know if I've grokked
him.
June 2007
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The Difference Is Outside
Why do some products fail while
others succeed? That question keeps many CEOs, venture capitalists,
employees, and shareholders up at night. Customers want to know too,
because after all, they are spending their money on these products.
We've reviewed the results of our annual surveys and recently sat down
for one-on-one discussions with 30 CEOs to dig deeper into what they
think it takes to be successful. Drawing from our research and these
discussions with CEOs, we looked at culture, organization, and process
for building products; strategies for optimizing go-to-market plans;
and measurement of best practices.
Customer Focused is not Market-Driven
I polled my audience during a recent webinar, asking the attendees to choose the statement that best describes their company:
- We are sales driven
- We are development/engineering driven
- We are working towards being market-driven
- We are market-driven
Surprisingly, 24% said that they work in market-driven companies.
May 2007
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Why Demo at Trade Shows?
As I stroll though the exhibitor
hall at trade shows, I see one booth after another demonstrating their
products. One person told me recently about his excitement about the
trade show; he was new to the job, and was planning to show his
pre-beta, Java-based product using a broadband modem connection from
the trade show floor. Isn't he just asking for an embarrassing public
failure? Realistically, what product information does a customer retain
afterwards?
The New Rules for Reaching the Media (Hint: Broadcast Media Pitches are Spam)
As
the web has made communicating with reporters and editors extremely
easy, breaking through using the online methods everyone else uses has
become increasingly difficult. These days, you can find the e-mail
addresses of reporters in seconds, either through commercial services
that sell subscriptions to their databases of thousands of journalists
or simply by using a search engine. Unfortunately, way too many PR
people are spamming journalists with unsolicited and unrelenting
commercial messages in the form of news releases and untargeted
broadcast pitches.
April 2007
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Persona Experts Have Focus, That's All
I once believed
that great marketers were gifted with rare creative genius and
intelligence. Then I got to know some of these “experts.” True, they
are smart enough, but I meet a lot of equally talented people who are
on a path that will never gain much recognition for them, their
products or their companies.
Time for Product Management
Are you pulled from one issue
to another? Do you feel pressured into helping development, marketing
communications, and the sales channel? Would you like some time to do
product management?
March 2007
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Where Does Product Management Belong?
The role of product management spans many activities from strategic to tactical. Some very technical, others less so. The strategic role of product management is to be "messenger of the market," delivering market and product information to the departments that need facts to make decisions. That is why it is not surprising that 33% of product managers report directly to the CEO, acting as his or her representative at the product level.
Don't Just Listen, Grok Buyer Personas
Grok (rhymes with "rock') is a verb that captures the essence of what we strive to achieve through buyer persona profiling. A marketer who groks a buyer persona is capable of experiencing "the literal capabilities and frame of reference of the subject." Thus grokking a buyer isn't just about listening and acting directly on what is heard, this word challenges us to understand so deeply that we can anticipate needs that people cannot even articulate.
February 2007
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Creating the Right Product Roadmap
In most companies, Product Management is responsible for building, maintaining, and presenting the product roadmap inside and outside of the company. However, one of the biggest problems is they build, and build, and build, and finally re-build their roadmaps! They feel like they can't ever get them right, or that constant change in the plans keep making their roadmaps obsolete. And, most would agree that it is very unnerving to go back to customers time after time with the same basic roadmap, but on different timelines. How do we get out of this infinite loop?
Web Content Sells
An effective content strategy, artfully executed, drives action. Organizations that use online content have a clearly defined goal--to sell products, generate leads, secure contributions, or get people to join and deploy a content strategy that directly contributes to reaching that goal. Content takes many forms including an effective content-centric Web site, blogs, podcasts, and e-books.
January 2007
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The Gobbledygook Manifesto
Oh jeez, not another flexible, scalable, groundbreaking, industry-standard, cutting-edge product from a market-leading, well positioned company! Ugh. I think I'm gonna puke! Just like with a teenager's use of annoying catch phrases, I notice the same words cropping up again and again in Web sites and news releases--so much so that the gobbledygook grates against my nerves and many other people's, too. Well, duh. Like, companies just totally don't communicate very well, you know?
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