I had a couple of telling customer service experiences recently that I wanted to share. There are some lessons that all companies can learn from this experience. I’ve listed them out at the bottom of this post.

Incident 1 – You can backup, you just can’t restore

I use an online service to maintain backups of this blog. For a small monthly fee they automatically back up the blog and provide a flexible mechanism to restore. Thankfully I hadn’t ever needed to restore anything…until about 2 weeks ago.

Something got corrupted in the blog database. I noticed it on a Sunday morning and thought, “OK…Sundays are a bit slow, we get less traffic on Sundays, so it’s a good time to restore the database.”

I logged into my account on the service’s site, selected the appropriate backup from several days earlier, clicked the Restore button and waited, and waited, and waited.

The progress bar sat at 0% for about an hour. I knew something was amiss and thought, “OK, user error, let me try that again.”

I tried once again, and once again the restore process sat at 0% for a long time. After a couple of hours I decided something was definitely wrong and sent an email into the Support Team at the company. The Support team doesn’t work on weekends. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but for something mission critical like addressing problems in a database restore, it was a big problem.

Late Sunday evening, I gave the restore process one last try and let it run overnight. I got up the next morning to check on the restore and it was still at 0%. At that point, I sent several harsh emails to the company expressing my frustration with the process.

Later in the day on Monday, the problem was resolved and the restore happened and the blog was back, minus a few comments that had been posted since that backup had been done.  But why didn’t the restore work in the first place?

Turns out I had encountered a “bug” in the restore process which they’d fixed to allow my restore to work.  I’d really love to know exactly what the “bug” was.

Keep in mind that this service does exactly 2 things — it backs up a database and it restores a database. That’s it. No other extraneous features. It’s simple and that’s why I chose it…assuming it actually worked! What was I paying them for every month?

Incident 2 – Oops, our typo brought down your blog

About a week later, as I checked the blog in the morning, I saw that my blog was down. It wasn’t displaying posts, I couldn’t log into the admin area and the error message pointed at the backup service as the problem. I immediately went to Twitter to see if others were affected. I found 1 or 2 tweets from people indicating a problem with their blogs. No tweets from the company. I also checked the company’s blog to see if they’d posted anything. Nope. The last blog post was from the previous week.

So, I send a couple of urgent emails into their Support team to get help. Several hours later they fixed the problem and my blog was back.

It turns out that overnight the service pushed out a patch to “a small number of customers” — their words –to close some security holes. But, there was a “misspelling of a word in the code that caused a PHP error”– again, their words –  and it brought down the blogs it was sent to.

When I found this out, I was livid. Last week, I couldn’t restore — because of a “bug”. This week a typo in their patch brought  the blog down.

And while they apologized via email and credited 1 month of the subscription, their view that the issue only affected “a small number of customers” and thus no public announcement on Twitter, their blog was required.

4 Ways to improve customer service in critical times

There are many things companies MUST do to provide REAL customer service. Sadly, many companies, while well intention, fail to understand the basics of customer expectations and what they need to do to help customers through rough waters, especially when it’s the company’s fault!

1. When there are problems, OVER communicate

Large or small, when customers are impacted by the service provider’s mistakes, OVER COMMUNICATION is required.

A single email to individual customers impacted is necessary, but it is NOT SUFFICIENT. There’s nothing wrong with admitting to mistakes. As the Support Engineer wrote to me when I reminding him of the restore problem the previous week:

We all make mistakes but our team will always be transparent and correct issues as fast as possible. We can’t guarantee that we won’t ever make a mistake but we always try our best to prevent them.

Transparency is good, but there’s transparency that primarily benefits the company (e.g. sending private emails) and there’s transparency that benefits the customer and the company (e.g. being public and proactive). It’s the latter that is better and more important.

Be public with your errors. I will trust a company MUCH more that is open and up front, and I’ll give them MUCH more leeway if a problem occurs. Why? Because I can clearly see what happened, know why it happened and know they are or will actively work to fix it.

2. A “small number of customers” is BIG, if I’m part of it

Don’t ever say that “it only affected a small number of customers” as a reason for not following rule #1. It’s only a small number of customers if I’m not part of it. If I’m part of that small group, then it’s a BIG number!

Bean counters, lawyers and hack PR people use phrases like that to try to diminish the impact and thus culpability (legal or otherwise). Being part of a “small number of customers” that were impacted makes the problem worse for me, not better. How unlucky was I?  Why did the problem impact me? Why not other people. Trust me, that phrase doesn’t help in the least.

3. If you’re going to compensate, go the extra mile

My blog was impacted for well over a day by incident 1. It was down for an unknown number of hours due to incident 2. Neither of these were the result of anything that I did incorrectly. And these incidents happened within a week of each other. I spent several hours of my time trying to understand what had happened and trying to fix the problem. Crediting me 1 month of subscription service and an email saying mistakes happen is a far cry from a satisfactory resolution.

When addressing these kinds of issues, just like it’s better to over-communicate, it’s better to over-compensate for the customer’s loss or inconvenience. Not only will this stop customer griping, but it would likely turn that potentially disgruntled customer into an evangelist for your company. Imagine the glowing blog post I would have written had the compensation been a bit more generous.

4. Service IS the new Marketing

If companies don’t understand this, they don’t understand the economic and social pathways to success. Service has ALWAYS been important, but now good AND bad service stories will be shared rapidly and repeatedly. I’ve even done that on occasion. Bad customer service is just the nudge most people need to start looking at your competitors. Think about that.

There are many stories of great and not-so-great customer service experiences. It is claimed that the “United Breaks Guitars“ saga had a material impact on the stock price of United’s parent company. Every time a customer faces problems (whether “user error” or not), there is an opportunity to create a POSITIVE memorable experience that that customer will share and broadcast. Given the broad set of options most people have for products and services, it’s shocking that more companies don’t empower their employees to — in the words of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh – deliver happiness.

Saeed

Tweet this: 4 Ways to Improve Customer Service in Critical Times http://wp.me/pXBON-3fb #prodmgmt #custserv #service

Related posts:

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2. FutureShop – A woeful tale of customer (dis)service
3. Unexpected down time
4. 5 Practical Ways to Improve Executive Communications

By Saeed Khan

I can’t believe it’s been over 3 year since I first wrote this piece. It was intended as a counterpoint to all the agilists that were decrying how Product Management wasn’t “agile” (or “Agile”). I found (and still find) the whole argument somewhat baseless, but it still persists amongst agilists (look at this example of what “Product Owner” is turning into), and unfortunately, even within the Product Management community.

Those who talk about “Agile Product Management” as some unique form of Product Management are not doing anyone a service. “Agile Product Management”? As opposed to what? “Sluggish Product Management”?

Just because the technologists have latched onto something that seems to be having benefits for them — and believe me, the bar was set pretty low for many of them — that doesn’t mean Product Management needs to latch onto that as well. Yeah, that’s what we always preach– see something and create a “me-too” solution. Right?

Product management, like business management, is dynamic, open to change, should focus on people etc. Those companies that are static, put process ahead of progress etc. quickly die off.

So, here’s the original piece from October 2008. It was originally titled “Is Product Management Agile?” but I decided the new title was a better fit for the reprise.

————

There’s a lot of talk about Agile Product Management these days, and for obvious reasons. The thinking is that because of Agile development, Product Managers need to change how they function and adapt themselves to a new way of developing software and become “agile”.

But the reality is, Product Managers have always been agile, and finally the software developers are coming around to OUR way of thinking!

Yes, you read that right. Agile is the result of engineers finally understanding what’s really important and making a bold declaration that they now understand. But of course, being engineers, they won’t give credit to Product Management. They’re taking all the credit themselves for this tremendous insight and seachange in their profession.

Don’t believe me? I’ll prove that Product Management has always been “agile” using the Agile Manifesto itself.

The Manifesto has 4 elements. They are:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

OK. Let’s take one at a time and apply them to Product Management.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Most product management teams are understaffed. In fact, in many companies you’ll only find individual product managers working alone with teams of developers. They have no choice but to interact face-to-face. And not just with Development, but with every other group in the company and many parties outside of the company.

“Hub of the wheel”? You know what that translates to in the real world? Meetings, and lots of them, with the primary objective to keep all teams aligned and aware of progress, status and plans. Those cross-team meetings aren’t for the benefit of Product Management!

As for processes and tools…well, most PMs will tell you they do what it takes to get the job done, and the only tools they have are usually email, Excel, PowerPoint and Word, possibly some crappy (free) wiki software and Post-it notes. No fancy (or even basic) requirements management tools for most Product Managers. Individuals and interactions: Yes. Processes and tools: Not much. Score: 1 for 1!

Working software over comprehensive documentation

What PM doesn’t want working software? If only the final product that came out of Dev and QA was guaranteed to always work as expected. PMs want working software so much they perform QA, file bugs, run beta programs and hound the testing teams to ensure all the important use cases actually work.

How many times have we taken a pre-release build and found that it doesn’t install properly, or fails when upgrading from a previous version, or has licensing problems or runs really slowly using real world data sets. Ensuring working software gets out the door is top of mind for every PM, and even though helping QA the product is not technically part of our job, many of us do it anyway to raise the probability of actually delivering working software.

Regarding comprehensive documentation, we don’t tell Dev teams to create 50 page spec documents. They choose to write them and then PMs are forced to sit through endless “spec review” meetings to ensure Dev has taken the requirements and translated them properly into something THEY understand.

As for creating comprehensive documentation, PMs can never be accused of that. What’s the most common complaint from Engineering about Product Management? Answer: “The requirements aren’t detailed enough.” ‘Nuff said. Score: 2 for 2!

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Too easy. Really, do I have to explain this one? OK, I will. “Product Management: Voice of the Customer”. How often have you heard that phrase? Meaningful phrase or not, Product Management focuses extensively on customer insight and collaboration. It’s another core aspect of the job.

But, there are countless true stories of Engineering VPs who exhibited disdain for what customers actually want or need. These people are so smart they know what customers need, with little if any input from the customers themselves. Case in point.

A survey of 500 customers showed clear priorities for a number of big ticket items that needed to be added to a product. Capability <A> was ranked #15 by customers but was a pet project of the VP Eng. Capability <B> was ranked #2 by customers. We only had the resources to do one of those 2 items, along with everything else that was planned.

PM: We’ve laid out the requirements in priority order. < B> is critical for the next release and given the target release date, resources and survey results, we’ve deprioritized <A>.
VP: Hold it a minute. Are you saying that <A> is not important?
PM: Well, it’s not as important as <B> and the other things we’ve prioritized for this release.
VP: I was talking to MegaBankCorp last week, and they really emphasized the need for <A>.
PM: Yes, I spoke to them too. But they’re one of only 3 companies who have indicated they have an urgent need for <A>. I’ve got 50 companies that need <B>. <B> is more important than <A>.
VP: I don’t think you’re talking to the right people. I hear people asking for <A> all the time. Our major competitor has <A>, and we’ve lost deals to them.
PM: We’ve lost 1 deal to them on <A>, The sales team agrees that <B> is much higher priority than <A>, and the 500 hundred customers I surveyed agree as well.
VP: Don’t you realize <A> is strategic? Don’t you even read the industry news? You know what the problem with Product Management is?
PM: I’m sure you’re going to tell me.
VP: You talk to too many customers! You don’t talk to enough people who don’t use our product.
PM: People who don’t use our product also don’t tell us what they want added to the product. But, if you have the resources to do both <A> and <B> in this release, then be my guest. But <B> is top priority if you can’t do both.

Result: VP storms out of the meeting. Sends and email the next day indicating that after analyzing the effort and resources, both are not possible in the coming release so only <B> can be done.

Of course, not all Dev leads and VPs are as stubborn. But when it comes to wanting to work with customers, as opposed to sitting in meetings trying to get Engineering to buy-in on what is needed, Product Managers have always advocated for that. Score: 3 for 3!

Responding to change over following a plan

Next to “The requirements aren’t detailed enough“, the most common complaint that Engineers have of Product Management is that PMs regularly “change their mind“. Most PMs don’t simply change their mind about things, but reprioritize what is important based on new data, new market conditions, new company objectives, or other external changes that take place. That’s core to the role of Product Management. The world is a dynamic place, and when your competitor is bought out by and industry giant, or you find that you’re losing deals because of product gaps, action must be taken.

Yes, there are some flaky PMs who don’t have a clue about things, but that can’t be helped. Most capable PMs are reasonable people who need to focus on the business and leverage the engineering resources to help drive business benefit. It’s hard enough to predict what will happen 3 months from now, let alone 12 months from now.

But if a development cycle will take 12 months to complete, Product Management must be collecting the data to define that release many months in advance. Hey, we’re smart, but we’re not the Oracle of Delphi. We make decisions. Decisions are based on the information we have today. If something material happens after a decision is made that requires a change in product plans, the change must be made. Product Management always understood that. Engineering seems to be finally realizing that. Score: 4 for 4!

Conclusion

So there you have it. QED — quod erat demonstrandum.

Product Managers have been living, breathing and advocating the elements of the Agile Manifesto for years before the Manifesto was even a firing synapse in the brains of any of it’s authors. Developers though were set in their ways, with an “engineering” mindset, pushing back on Product Management for changing priorities, not providing enough detail in requirements etc.

I’m glad, even if they don’t want to admit it publicly, that Engineers are finally seeing the light. Now, if we could only get Management to allocate more headcount to Product Management, life would almost be perfect.

Saeed

Tweet this: Product Management has always been “Agile” – http://wp.me/pXBON-3cA #prodmgmt #agile

Related posts:

1. Is Product Management Agile?
2. Worth Repeating: Rules of the Product Management Jedi
3. Worth Repeating: Devil’s Dictionary for High Tech
4. Agile/Scrum Software Development and Product Management part 2

By Saeed Khan

At ProductCamp Austin, someone, and I apologize, as I don’t remember his name, came up to me and asked me the following.

I really want to become a Product Manager. How can I make that move?

I wrote about this a while back in Open Question: How did you get your first Product Management or Product Marketing job?. Some readers also gave their experiences. But taking a step back, there’s a more fundamental question here.

How do you enter a field, where there is no singular definition of the role, no standard preparatory courses, and few defined hard skills to measure against????

Other fields are not as bad as Product Management.

Sales gets 2 out of 3 (i.e. there is a singular definition of the role, and a very clear measure of success (sales generated), but few if any standard courses).

Marketing get 2 out of 3 (singular definition and standard prep courses – yes, hard skills — not so clear)

Engineering gets 3 out of 3 (clearly defined, standard prep courses, and well understood and measurable hard skills).

I’ve actually never thought about it this way before, but now that I have I can more clearly see the issue for people wanting to move into the field.

For an outsider, it’s really unclear how to make the transition. So here’s my first attempt to put some structure on this task.

What do they mean by “Product Manager”?

One thing to keep in mind is that because there isn’t a commonly understood definition of Product Management, some companies say they want a Product Manager, but really want something else.

e.g. a Project Manager, an “Agile” Product Manager (e.g. you’re sitting with Engineers all day), a Business Strategist  (this is Microsoft’s view), or a superhero who does everything (which is what a lot of startups want).

So first, get a clear understanding of what they actually want when they say they want a Product Manager.

What do YOU mean by “Product Manager”?

Within a mature Product Management organization, you should find a number of different roles. If not, but it’s a large organization,  then it’s not really that mature.  These roles can include Product Manager, Technical Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, Solution Specialist, Analyst etc.

Think about what kind of role in Product Management fits best with your background and skills and pursue that type of role. e.g. If you are a much better communicator than technologist, then Product Marketing may be a better fit.

Qualities of Product Managers

In my Open Question, I did indicate that the following were important skills for Product Managers, though not necessarily in this order:

• Domain experience
• Communication skills
• Decision making ability
• Business understanding

There are other skills that are useful as well, though some are harder to measure than others. Technical knowledge is definitely useful. Empathy is also important. Judgement (related to but not the same as decision making) is another. Negotiation skills and sales skills are two more.

Match your skills with an appropriate role

But the question really is, what does a hiring manager need to see if they decide to hire someone with no formal Product Management (or Product Marketing) experience into that role?

Want to know the answer? Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. What would you look for? And how could you position yourself?

Look at the table below. I’ve listed out a number of different roles who I’ve seen move into Product Management (there are of course many others not listed), and the TYPICAL strengths of people in those roles. (Your mileage will definitely vary).

(click image to enlarge)

Now, see if your skills are similar to those shown, or whether you are stronger (or weaker) in areas. For example, a QA Tester maybe a good fit as a Technical Product Manager, but without stronger domain experience (e.g. market/customer/competitor understanding) and stronger business skills, they may not be a good fit as a Product Manager.

Just to be clear, this table is provided as a high-level reference to give an additional level of clarity to different roles in Product Management departments. It’s not meant to pigeon-hole anyone or any roles. And as mentioned before, there are many other roles people have that could lead them to Product Management. For example, I’ve met former Sales people who became Product Managers.

So, if you are thinking about moving into Product Management, think about your skills and background, but also about what kind of Product Management role is a best fit for you. While this won’t guarantee you a job in Product Management, it may help you narrow down your search and help you leverage your strengths and minimize any gaps that hiring managers may use to disqualify you for a certain role.

Let me know what you think.

Saeed

Tweet this: How to move into Product Management http://wp.me/pXBON-3cj #prodmgmt #career #prodmktg

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By Saeed Khan

One question that came up at ProductCamp Austin, and that comes up often in discussions about Product Management responsibilities, is how to manage (and deliver) on all the demands made on product managers and product marketers.

I have a simple rule that I follow, and have followed for a long time.

If I’m not adding value to a situation or process, then I have no business being a part of that situation or process.

I can observe of course, but I should not be an active participant.

As an example, during my first month at a new job, someone from Engineering came up to me and asked me to get the latest version of HP-UX as Engineering had some work that needed that latest version.

I looked at the person, and said, “Why are you asking me?”

He said, matter of factly, “Oh. The product manager before you used to deal with all this and get us 3rd party software.”

I responded, “OK. That may have been what the previous product manager did, but that’s not my responsibility. You should be able to get that directly from HP without my help.”

The conversation ended and I don’t recall ever being asked for new OS versions again.

While a minor incident, this example is repeated far too often by people who, just wanting to help, or not knowing how to say “No”, acquiesce to tasks where they simply add no value. It’s time wasted that could be spent on more productive work.

Don’t confuse process with progress

On the flip side, there are people who think they are adding value, but in fact more than often than not, are actually impeding progress. These are people who confuse following a process with making progress, or are simply acting as a checklist monkey.

I’ve seen people like this. They send lots of emails, schedule lots of meetings, keep elaborate spreadsheets of activities, and yet, when you look back at the results of all those activities, it’s shocking how little value they’ve added overall.

• What positive change have they made to the product or sales/marketing process?
• Does their net contribution (i.e. minus the emails, meetings, spreadsheets etc.) “move the needle” in any significant way?
• Or are they simply a middle-man (or woman) handing off tasks to others and making excuses when the spotlight shines on them?

Are we adding value yet?

It’s a simple question we should all ask ourselves. Are we adding value? And if so, how much? How could we improve ourselves so that we can add more value in the future.

And we need to be honest, because even the best of us has room for improvement.

• How many customers do you speak with every month? How can you raise that number?
• How many prospects are you in contact with (while working with Sales) every month? Is that sufficient?
• Is your market knowledge, understanding of the buyer and competition better this quarter than it was last quarter? If not, why not?
• How well do you enable other teams to do their jobs better every quarter? Can you do better?
• Are you easy to work with or do you force others to bend to your way of doing things?
• What gripes do your coworkers have about your performance? How could you improve yourself in those areas?

These are all fundamental questions we should ask ourselves. We need to be in a process of continuous improvement, and only by doing that can we continue to add value in our roles.

Saeed

Tweet this: Add value or get out of the way! http://wp.me/pXBON-3bl #prodmgmt #prodmktg #innovation #pcatx

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4. Reorg time: Put PMs and PMMs in the same department!

By Saeed Khan

In January (Jan 10 to be exact), we published a guest post by Ninon Laforce, entitled:

A 90 Day Plan for New Product Managers.

In it, Ninon laid out concrete steps new Product Management hires should take to get up to speed and become productive contributors in their company. She structured it in 30, 60 and 90 day milestones.

That article received a LOT of traffic after it was published. It seems there’s a lot of interest in this topic.

Apparently one reader — David Crozier — took Ninon’s article to heart, applied it and then 40 days after Ninon’s post, published his own blog post about his first 30 days in his new role.

David complete 10 out of 11 of the tasks that Ninon had set out for the first 30 days. It’s great to see people not only reading our posts, but applying the lessons learned and sharing back on the Web.

I look forward to future posts from David as he reaches his 60 and 90 day milestones.

And if anyone else has applied Ninon’s advice, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment on the blog (this post or Ninon’s original) or drop us a line via our Contact Us page.

Saeed

Tweet this: Case Study — First 30 days into a New Role http://wp.me/pXBON-3aS #prodmgmt #prodmktg #career

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By Saeed Khan

This past weekend, I managed to attend Product Camp Austin 8! Thanks to some business I had to attend to earlier in the week in that same city, I was able to stay an extra day and learn from and network with some of Austin’s finest product people.

I saw my good friend and fellow On Product Management blogger, Prabhakar Gopalan. As usual, he was energetic, excited and full of disdain for conventional thinking.

I met Josh Duncan face-to-face for the first time. He had interviewed me last year on his blog and posted the video on his site. My initial thought: he’s much taller than I expected!

Also met with many other people including  Scott Sehlhorst, Tom Evans, Mike Boudreaux and Cindy Solomon. I’ve met Mike and Cindy before, but each just once, and neither time in Austin. As I’ve stated previously on this blog, there’s nothing like face-to-face meeting to really get to know someone or understand what they are about.

Although it’s not a huge city (population is under 1 million), the technology scene in Austin is vibrant. I’m not sure of the official count, but there were at least 250 people in the audience in the opening session. And this was not the largest ProductCamp they’ve had.

Inspiration

Attending the camp and meeting with everyone inspired me to dust off some old personal projects that have been lingering on the back burner for a while. You’ll hear about some of these later this year. But the day also inspired me to get back and blog more regularly. I have at least 3 upcoming posts in the works.

Although I didn’t have a speaking slot on the day (grumble grumble, unpublished deadlines, email snafus), I was directly referenced in various ways in at least 3 sessions that I attended. Two times it was by people who knew me, but one time it was by someone (Dori Gilbert) I had only met that morning and with whom I’d only had a 10 second exchange. I’m not sure what to say, but I was both humbled and, yes, inspired. You don’t find that level of cordiality everywhere.

My lesson and advice — get out of the building more and meet, talk, engage, interact, learn, teach, network, experience, share and deal with people face-to-face as much as you can.  You will only come out better for your efforts.

Improvisation

I want to tell you about Josh Duncan’s talk Own Your Story or Someone Else Will. Yes, you can click the link to see the slides, but I want to tell you about the talk, not the slides.

Josh was presenting at the end of day in the main auditorium. The AT&T Conference Center, where ProductCamp was held, is a nice facility. It’s new, modern, high-tech, with wall-sized projection screens, stadium seating etc. What better venue for Josh to deliver his talk. He’d prepared a top notch, visually interesting slide deck. And he’s a good speaker.

Well, Murphy’s Law struck just as Josh was setting up, the projection screen refused to work. Where his slides should have been, all we had was a floor to ceiling 20ft wide black wall. But the show must go on. So what did Josh do — with a bit of encouragement from the audience? He turned his talk into a fireside chat.

That’s how he gave most of his presentation. And you know what? It worked. Everyone learned something. He owned his story!

Innovation

Earlier in the afternoon, one of the speakers was a no-show. Too bad, as the title — A Slice of Design — sounded intriguing, and there were at least 50 people in the room patiently waiting. I was one of them.  Once it was confirmed the speaker was not around, one of the organizers came in, apologized for the no-show and suggested people go to one of the other sessions that were underway.

While a few people started to get up, someone said “Let’s get another speaker” or something like that. Prabhakar had just entered the auditorium a few seconds earlier and was standing near the front of the room. I pointed at him and said, “I want to hear him speak!”.  It seems like everyone knew Prabhakar there, and soon others joined in, encouraging him to give a talk, completely on the fly.

He accepted the challenge, took a few seconds to compose himself and then gave an impassioned talk on the future of Innovation. Here are a couple of tweets from the audience.

And here’s a picture of him in action. No slides, no prepared notes, but lots of great ideas and  A LOT of audience discussion!

And did I mention that at the end of the day, his talk — impromptu as it was — was voted best of the day? That’s what an “unconference” is about!

I’ll end it there, still inspired as I am, and I hope that I inspired you a bit. Where ever you are, whatever role or job you have, if you’re reading this blog, realize that obstacles in your path are simply there to help you think and find creative solutions to problems.

Get out, meet people, learn from them, teach them and leave each other inspired to do great things.

Saeed

Tweet this: Inspiration, Improvisation and Innovation in Austin http://wp.me/pXBON-3au #prodmgmt #innovation #pcatx

Related posts:

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By Saeed Khan

If I gave you an assignment to hire someone to build a device to get cameras (still and video) into the upper atmosphere (at least 80,000 feet), take pictures and video, have the cameras return to Earth and then recover those cameras and images, who would you hire?

And what budget would you need?

If you said a $500 budget was sufficient, and you’d hire a couple of high school students to do it, you wouldn’t be crazy. You’d be absolutely right. I’ll explain more in a minute, but let me change one thing and see how that affects the answer.

What a difference 20 years makes

If this was 1992 as opposed to 2012, and I gave you the same task, would your answer be the same? Absolutely not. But if you gave the same answer in 1992, I would definitely have thought you were crazy! Back then it would have required some Ph.Ds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to do what what was asked. It’s amazing what a difference a couple of decades can make.

So what am I talking about?  Read this article about how two Toronto high school students, Matthew Ho and Asad Muhammad, did exactly what I described.  They bought second hand cameras, cell phones (for the GPS) and other parts from online sites, used the Web to help them plan their project and the flight path of the craft, so they could retrieve it later.

While this is only one small (but amazing) example, it is illustrative of the environment we live in. We have access to amazing technology  and data that either didn’t exist or was limited to large corporations and research labs only 20 years ago. And the pace of technological improvement is not slowing. It’s not simply about Moore’s Law (exponential increases in computing power), but about improvements in material science, very low cost manufacturing, and broad accessibility FOR THE PUBLIC to technology, products, services and knowledge to help bring ideas to fruition.

Look at the Maker movement, and sites like Instructables and Inventables and even companies like Quirky, for examples of how invention AND innovation are becoming easier for everyday people.

Culture needs to catch up with technology

But to really take advantage of all this, we need to change our thinking to be more like the two high school students. No one told them they had to do what they did. It wasn’t a high school assignment or a 3rd party contest. They did it because they thought it was possible.

While we definitely have access to 21st century technology, when it comes to truly innovative thinking, large parts of our culture and institutions (e.g. schools) are still mired with very old 20th century structures and cultures.

We need to change that so that we can encourage all the other “Matthews and Asads” (as well as the “Marthas and Ayeshas”) to truly think outside the (institutional) boxes they are in. Innovation can better every part of our society, but we have to change how we think if we want to truly benefit in the Age of Innovation.

Saeed

Tweet this: We are entering the Age of Innovation http://wp.me/pXBON-37i #prodmgmt #innovation #legoman

Related posts:

1. Canada’s Innovation Gap (part 1)
2. Product Management lies at the heart of Innovation
3. Canada’s Innovation Gap (part 3)
4. Canada’s Innovation Gap (part 2)

It’s been quite a while since I wrote a What’s the Deal piece.  The last one was called “What’s the Deal with Software Product Management?“. So it’s kind of fitting, that I’m following it up (albeit almost 4 years later) with one on Product Marketing.

Recently, there have been a few posts on other blogs related to the Product Marketing role and the viewpoints caught my eye.

• What’s the difference between Product Marketing and Product Management?
• The End of Product Marketing
• The Rise of the Product Marketer

The “What’s the difference” article attempts to delineate the functions of Product Management and Product Marketing.  You should read the whole article, but here are a couple of snippets of the definitions of the two:

Product management usually “listens” to the market and then works with the internal team to develop products to meet the needs that are articulated.  They do not usually to interact much with the market on a day-to-day basis  in a direct way, but rather listen to feedback obtained by sales and marketing.

…

So if that’s product management in a nutshell, where does product marketing differ?  Well, product marketing is a more externally focused role. The product marketers “talk” to the market more.  They evangelize what the company’s product offers the world, and help the company focus their messaging to the market.

We need to get away from these “complementary opposite” definitions of the roles. i.e. one listens, the other other talks. One is inbound, the other outbound. One focuses on putting products on the shelf, the other focuses on getting products off the shelf etc.

The roles are are definitely complementary, but are definitely not opposites. These kinds of definitions, while short and easy to remember are incorrect and only help to further confuse those who aren’t clear on their relationship.

Now, in The End of Product Marketing, Dave Wolpert (guest posting on A Random Jog) describes a death spiral he sees happening to Product Marketers. Caught between Product Managers, Marketing and Sales, Product Marketers are losing responsibility for any strategic activities and are becoming tactical, siloed content creators.

At many companies, product management has already replaced the inbound function I described earlier. At others, product marketers have evolved into field marketers by focusing mainly on sales tools that are only used internally; development of externally-facing content marketing tools, like technical white papers, are sourced to others.

In what seems to be a bit of a rebuttal of Dave Wolpert’s piece, Josh Duncan (the main blogger on A Random Jog), states the following in the Rise of the Product Marketer.

In most businesses, there is a gap between marketing and product that must be filled. Without an audience, a great product has nowhere to go. Likewise, a great marketing strategy can’t save you from a woeful product. I believe that business success can be found when you match a great product with a great marketing plan and this is where Product Marketing can have the most impact.

So with that preamble, here’s my take on the situation.

1. Product Marketing is not dead, but it’s also not on the rise.

I currently work with some really good product marketing folks. I’m not saying that just to be nice or polite. I’m saying that because it’s true. But it’s not like that in many companies.

Part of the problem is that many companies don’t understand what Product Marketing is. So they define the role incorrectly, or hire the wrong people, or both. And what happens then? You have ineffective Product Marketing and little need to expand on it.

A lot of companies look at the role like this – product MARKETING. i.e. they focus on the second word and thus create conditions like those described by Dave Wolpert. i.e. Product Marketing becomes a tactically focused sales support role.

2. Product Marketing is usually ridiculously understaffed.

I’ve been in Product Management for a LONG time. And while most companies I’ve worked in have small Product Management teams, they have tiny, and sometimes non-existent Product Marketing teams. Ratios of 5:1 (Product Managers to Product Marketers) are not uncommon.  Why? Because companies don’t understand the role so don’t hire properly. Or they feel that the work can simply be done the “the Product Manager”.  Yes, it can be done, with the right people in place, but at what cost? Having individuals splitting time between all the different tasks of both Product Management and Product Marketing is simply a recipe for mediocrity at best, failure at worst.

3. “Marketing” is viewed very differently than it was 20+ years ago

The word “Marketing”,  if you look at the business school definition of it, is very different than how it is understood in most technology companies today.

Marketing used to be viewed as a strategic business function. Remember the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Promotion, Place)? Notice that “marketing” included “product”. Today of course, the term “Marketing” is mostly understood to cover only “Promotion” – i.e. advertising, PR, events, campaigns, awareness, lead generation etc. It has become specialized and focused heavily on demand creation.

Product Management has taken over “Product” and “Price”. “Place” — i.e. sales/distribution channels — has been taken over by Sales and to a lesser extent Product Management. Thus the “Marketing” part of “Product Marketing” is viewed in this context. Not as a strategic business function, but an outwardly focused partner to Sales.

Perhaps we need a new name for Product Marketing to better align with the changes that have happened in Marketing over the last 20 or so years.

So, what does that mean for “Product Marketing”?

In short, I see the clear need for what I would call “strategic marketing”.

This covers the basics like positioning and messaging, but also other areas where market, customer and product knowledge are required. This could include (but not be limited to) the following:

• evangelism
• analyst relations
• sales funnel analysis and optimization
• working on product, market or competitive strategy
• high value content creation

So where does Product Marketing fit within a company? This role does NOT belong in Marketing and definitely not in Sales. Product Marketing should be part of the overall Product Management organization.

OK, Product Marketers, hear me out before you think I’m out to assimilate the role into that of Product Manager. I’m not. In fact, I’m advocating the opposite.

I’ve written and presented on the topic of How to Structure a Product Management Organization as well as The Need for Differentiated Roles in Product Management.

The fact is that both the roles of “Product Manager” and “Product Marketer” are poorly understood and implemented in the industry.  e.g. There’s too much focus on what a “Product Manager” does vs. what “Product Management” does.

Far too many companies have Product Management organizations that are populated solely with people with titles of “Product Manager” at varying levels of seniority. e.g. Technical Product Manager, Product Manager, Sr. Product Manager, Product Management Director, VP Product Management etc. Is there any other department that looks like that? No.

All departments have a spread of roles that have particular complimentary (there’s that word again)  focuses (foci?) and that work together to achieve common goals.  Why should Product Management be different?

There’s little disagreement that Product Managers and Product Marketers should work closely together, yet for some reason, there is pushback (mostly from Product Marketers in my experience) to be functionally within the Product Management organization.

Take a look at the following presentation. I delivered it last year at ProductCamp Boston. In it I present my case for the various roles, the place of Product Marketing within overall Product Management, and the problems this structure solves.

Please take a look and let me know what you think.

Saeed

Tweet this: What’s the deal with Product Marketing? http://wp.me/pXBON-371 #prodmgmt #prodmktg

Related posts:

1. What's the deal with BizDev? pt. 2
2. What's the deal with BizDev?
3. Should Product Management and Product Marketing be parts of the same department?
4. Open Question: How did you get your first Product Management or Product Marketing position?

by Saeed Khan

It’s only the 3rd day of the year, and I already have a great customer experience story that I want to share.

I have to say, that barring any changes in the policies of this particular vendor, they’ve got a customer for life in me.

So what do I want as a customer or purchaser of products? Simple – three things:

1. Products (or services) that work as advertised or expected.
2. Honesty and competence from the vendor’s employees.
3. Post sale service that treats me fairly and efficiently.

Now how hard is this for companies to understand and implement?

Many times, I’ve had the opposite experience of the 3 points above.  I’ve blogged about my horrible experience with Future Shop (a large Canadian retailer) here.  They pretty much violated #2 and #3 above right from the get go.

On the flip side, one of my first posts on this blog — back in 2007 — was about the Dyson vacuum cleaner I had bought.

During the almost 5 years that I’ve had it, it’s continued to work well. We had a problem early on with a small plastic clip that broke. I called up Dyson — via the toll free # very conveniently visible on the front of the unit — and spoke to a customer service rep. He verified the problem over the phone and shipped me a replacement clip free of charge. Nice.

But now I have another problem with the unit. The telescoping hose — a feature I really appreciate in the unit — is wearing out. It tore sometime last year, and we patched it with some duct tape. But, over the holidays, the hose got to the point where tape was no longer a solution.

So this morning I called up Dyson intent on buying a replacement hose. What’s actually very neat about the Dyson machines is that they come apart and snap together very easily, and virtually every part except the electrical bits can be easily removed and replaced by the owner. I could write a whole post on the implications of this, but I’ll save that for later.

So, I called up their toll-free line, waited a few minutes in the queue until a service rep answered the call. He verified which model of vacuum I had, confirmed that I was still at the same address, and  listened to my problem. And before I could ask him how much a replacement hose would be, he said he’d ship a replacement hose to me — NO CHARGE!!!

Yes, 5 years after I bought the unit, replacement parts are shipped FREE– no cost for the part, no cost for shipping. And he added, once I get the part, if I have any problems in replacing the hose, I could simply call them back and someone would step me through it over the phone. Awesome!

As long as Dyson doesn’t change their policies or their level of service, they have a customer for life in me for their vacuums.

When I bought the vacuum several years ago, I did it mainly due to a VERY positive recommendation from a friend of mine. His wife had bought one a year earlier, yet he said he loved using it. Doesn’t get better than that. I wondered if the premium price of the unit — at $500, it was about 2X the price of other competitive models — was worth it.

Well, without a doubt the answer is yes.  So how do you create a customer for life? Let me modify the 3 bullets I started with at the top of this article just a bit:

1. Products (or services) that work as advertised or expected AND do it better than the competition.
2. Honesty and competence from vendor’s employees REGARDLESS of who you speak with.
3. Post sale service that is so far ABOVE THE NORM, I’d be a fool to switch brands.

How does your company rack up against these three traits?

Saeed

Tweet this: How to create a customer for life http://wp.me/pXBON-34M #prodmgmt #custservice #dyson

Related posts:

1. Go to school, get an education, create a job!
2. Guest Post: Awareness, Persuasion and Shelf Life
3. Why customer needs don’t always matter
4. How to Create an Effective Product Management Organization

Hi

This blog has a number of contributors. We tend to all post individually at various frequencies, but for the end of year, we thought it would be a good idea to look at one question and get several reflections on it. Perhaps this is the start of a tradition.

For this post, the question is:

What is something important that you learned this year, and why is it important in our profession?

And of course, we’d love to hear from you. Either comment on what we’ve said, or leave your own answer to the question in the comments.

Jennifer Doctor – Engage in Communities

This year, I learned a lot about the importance of actively engaging in communities, both online and in person. As a result, I have taken the following pledge:  “always be building your network, especially when times are good – when you don’t necessarily need it”. I invite you to join me in this pledge.

I think that networking gets a bad name because many folks only leave their cocoon when they need to take from it. They need a job. They need a reference. They need to sell something. Take, take and even more take. Yet, if you focus on the give side, giving freely at any time, then you will never eat alone in a strange city or be wanting for a job. In one of my all-time favorite movies, Pay it forward with Helen Hunt, her son Trevor applies this lesson to life in general.

It is so very important to our chosen profession, because most of us didn’t actually choose to be Product People – we fell into it. What we didn’t necessarily realize when we took the fall, was that we would be alone in our company. Seldom are there companies with large defined Product Management groups. But, by utilizing social media, Product Camps, classes and local product management communities, I know that I have built my own knowledgebase, expanded friendships and contributed to the collective pool of information available to others who join us as Product Professionals, but didn’t earn the education for it.

Moving forward, this is an integral skill and a necessary element for growing your professional knowledge. It is not as easy as it sounds, and takes a dedicated effort. Like so many other efforts, you only get out of it what you put in to it. So, as you plan to end this year and start the next, the question is “how will you contribute?”

Saeed Khan – The Power of the Individual

Perhaps this is a lesson re-learned as opposed to a lesson learned, but it’s one I think is worth reminding myself over and over again. This year has been a tumultuous year worldwide, from protests and uprisings such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, to natural disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. There were many events that affected each of us in different ways.

The 2011 Nobel Peace prize was awarded to 3 women from Africa who, each in their own way, strove for and achieved remarkable change in their countries.  Tawwakol Karman, one of the recipients, is only 32 — tied for the youngest person to receive this distinction.

And while his name may not be familiar to most, Mohamed Bouazizi, an unassuming vegetable vendor in Tunisia, had an enormous impact on the world in 2011, and his tragic act of protest and frustration on Dec. 19, 2010 in the city of Sidi Bouzid, will be remembered by many as the starting point of the Arab Spring movement.

In a more inspirational story, following the tragedy of the tsunami in Japan earlier this year, the Japanese women’s national soccer team won the Women’s World Cup of Soccer, beating many strong teams such as the United States (in the final), Sweden and Germany.

Japan beat Germany 1-0 in the quarter finals.  The lone (and winning) goal for Japan was scored by a Karina Maruyama, a substitute on the team, who had worked at the now crippled Fukushima nuclear plant until 2009 and was inspired by the Fukushima disaster to win the game.

In all of these cases, and many others this year, previously unheralded individuals made a huge impact with their actions.

Now, nothing we do as product professionals is going to have the impact of what these people did. But it’s also worth noting that the problems they confronted are so much greater than those we confront in our jobs. And so we can learn a real lesson from them — that a single individual (for example you!), through determination and perseverance has the ability to affect real change and inspire others to do the right thing — whether it be in the area of human rights, freedom, sport, or simply driving great products through the barriers set forth by those who don’t believe what you believe or see what you see.

Jim Holland – Simplicity

1. Imagine it
2. Prove it
3. Build it

Prabhakar Gopalan – Experimentation is key

This year I learned the power of figuring out things along the way and to stop strategizing in vacuum.

As unattractive as it sounds for master planners and strategists, the reality is, a lot of things around us do not behave the way they are supposed to. This includes ourselves. Understanding the behavior of people and things, and how that challenges a lot of (supposedly) rational hypothesis is something critical to successful product management.

For example, it is easier to draw and force fit a bell curve distribution for your product adoption, but much harder to figure out the real adoption over time and the variables that affect it.

This blog was started by three people – Saeed, Alan and Ethan.  Over this past year, Jim, Jennifer and I joined as regular contributors. Given the sudden increase in the number of writers, we struggled initially to coordinate and schedule our posts, and decide what topics we should blog about.   I suggested the following experiment – why don’t we assign a specific day of the week for of us, let each writer decide what they would write about, and leave it that way for a few months.  We could track progress and decide how to proceed after that.

It was a simple idea.   When we met three months later, we knew answer – it was working. Our page views and traffic were up significantly. We had been consistent in posting on our own. In short, we were doing just fine, without an overarching strategy or ongoing coordination.

Switch to scene two at a large company where a friend of mine works. Over the summer there was a complex project he was working on.  The project was in an emerging technology space, where neither the market nor the products were developed or mature enough, even for early adoption.   It required a very experimental approach towards problem solving – learning as you go.  But the smartest thinkers and ‘strategists’ in the room put forth their biggest plans.  But by the end of the year, after 6 months of PowerPoints and more PowerPoints the project had barely moved and there was nothing to show except PowerPoints and meeting minutes.  No sales funnel or sales leads.  If only the team had approached the whole problem with humility and taken one small step at a time the results could have been different.

My lessons from 2011 – start with small experiments, learn from their outcomes and continuously improve over time.

Tweet this: Lessons Learned in 2011 – http://wp.me/pXBON-34k #prodmgmt #prodmktg #innovation

Related posts:

1. Open Question: Your worst job-related mistake and lesson learned
2. Lessons from 2 very different social media events
3. 8 lessons we can learn from Infomercials
4. Worth Repeating: 8 Lessons we can learn from Infomercials