don’t be afraid to listen to the market.
by bill whitson
in my 20-plus years in the tax, accounting and finance world, i’ve learned a few things along the way. i’ll share some from the product management lens.
more on radicalism: transitioning to radical: how carl famiglietti did it | going deeper into product management | dean quiambao: ‘if you’re not disrupting, you’re not doing it right’ | josh zweig’s liveca offers new thinking from the ground up | how ‘agile’ applies to cpa firms | our pain points are opportunities
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product managers can be, in many ways, like trusted advisors: they have a strong opinion and an extensive toolkit, and they serve nearly everyone around them.
opinions versus data
the key difference in the statement above is that for a product manager, their opinion is not that important. in fact, it can be their worst enemy. this takes me to my first training recommendation and quote:
“while your opinion may be interesting, it is not important.” – pragmatic marketing
this is something they teach in the highly praised pragmatic marketing program, and it’s a hard pill to swallow for many. a strong opinion is usually accompanied by a high degree of “tribal knowledge,” which can be equally as destructive. while tribal knowledge has its place as a data point, it’s only one data point.
other traits shared by successful advisors and product managers are keen observation and effective listening skills, which go hand in hand in data collection. observation is far more powerful for uncovering needs and finding pain points, but listening seems to be more emphasized – aka the “voice of the customer.”
yes, listening is important but there are a couple of traps to be wary of. first, many times customers tell you what they want you to hear, in a way that might lead you to solve for their agenda. they don’t always represent your target customer or the rest of your customer base. customers also tend to derive perceived solutions and may bias your discovery because it can appear there is an easy answer on how you should proceed. “solutioneering” can also happen during brainstorming sessions led by highly opinionated product managers. secondly, listening to the market is equally important as listening to individuals. the market represents the collective voice of who will buy your product or service, and this voice represents the growth that every business owner is looking for.
on the other hand, observation allows you to get a firsthand account of how your customer consumes or uses your product/solution. you’ll also learn that many times what a customer says contradicts how they actually behave. this is referred to as the “say/do ratio.” having spent 16 years at intuit, it was ingrained in our dna to find ways to observe customers using our solutions in their own habitat. intuit’s founder, scott cook, was the first to pioneer the “follow me home” initiative. google it. and come up with your own version. you’ll find you learn exponentially more from observation.
the toolkit
once you’ve mastered observing and listening (can that ever really happen?), you’ll need some other tools to assist you in turning all that marvelous data into useful information, help you develop a product strategy and work with development teams on your product roadmap. like many trusted advisors, developing an extensive toolkit takes place over time, through trial and error. some things work better than others in some situations (or organizations) and some don’t. experiment and iterate. there’s no one right way.
here are some thoughts on some great approaches to have in your toolkit:
- as previously noted, find ways to improve your observation and listening skills, and flex these muscles often. only then will your opinion become valuable to others, because it will reflect the data behind it.
- also, as previously noted, pragmatic marketing is a great program. after you get certified, you get alumni access to all kinds of resources. this is product management 101 for any aspiring product manager or anyone else taking a product or solution to market.
- safe: understanding the scaled agile framework is important, if you are in software/app development. don’t feel beholden to the agile framework – just take the parts that make the most sense for your organization and develop a process that continuously adds value to your product or service.
- understand the value of ux and user-centered design. check out uxmatters.com.
- the product plan blog is fantastic. like most blogs, there are subtle plugs for their solution (which is great if you can allocate spend on a roadmap tool), but the articles are spot on and full of tips and other goodies.
- find a mentor. have coffee, breakfast, adult beverages. trade ideas and learn from each other.
bill whitson is a product manager at circulus.io.