Last month, I completed seven years at Lenovo & was reflecting on my learning. In this post, I have captured the three most important lessons I have learned in the last three years as a Product Manager. If any of these resonate with you, please drop in a comment to share your thoughts!
- Planning / Strategic Thinking!
Product managers(PMs) are the subject-matter-experts. They are considered technical evangelists & they are also the custodians of the products they manage. They get early information access to upcoming technology changes or expected supply shortages in the industry. Hence PMs should do the planning of demand/supply and pre-announce product transitions/upgrades. It helps minimize the turnaround time for customers & helps them in planning their product upgrades/refreshes in a planned way. I learned that a PM should also think strategically about what the company may need to grow to the next stage and drive the team forward. It could be suggesting a new product idea or promotion of a product for market share gain. It could be building partnerships to generate new revenue sources or doing cost optimizations by making products locally / achieving premiumization by introducing high ticket size products to grow profits.
2. Build a compelling product pitch!
I learned this with practice to keep the sales pitch simple (without jargon), minimal & focused on benefits than features. It also helps the sales team to grasp customer’s attention. The pitch should have a compelling story; as to why the customer should buy your product? It could be because of a product’s long history, innovation, rigorous testing standards, quality assurance, industry awards, etc. Lastly, all product collaterals should have a coherent message & should communicate the product benefits.
3. Gather feedback & customer insights!
In any organization, while product development teams would conduct user interviews/market research before the launch, what I have realized & is equally if not more important is gathering customer feedback post-launch. It is done in two ways: providing early samples for customer evaluations & gathering post-purchase feedback.
I recall a conversation with an enterprise customer who didn’t give me good feedback on a newly launched product; we later added the desired feature(which would extend the blue tooth range/coverage of that product by a few meters) in the next version of the product.
PMs should keep gathering feedback from multiple sources – customers / internal users of the product ( dogfooding ), surveys, and 3rd party research. It allows to build further enhancements & also to re-assess the market post the launch.
Thoughts on Product Management 