Comments on: Paul’s 2nd Postulate of Product Management

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:07:20 +0000

Awesome comments! My strategy, and the direction I give to my team at the beginning of every quarter, is that I want Product Management to talk to more customers than any other part of the company – including Sales and Tech Support. That’s a great stretch goal that we don’t always hit, but it gives us plenty of ammo if/when sales pushes back that we don’t understand the market, I can say with confidence that we do, since we spend days and weeks interviewing, prodding, and otherwise getting in customers’ heads!

By: bob corrigan

bob corrigan — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:01:34 +0000

A few thoughts on “sales”:

1. They are coin-operated – which is good.
2. We love them dearly – without them, we’re dead.
3. They will do anything to achieve #1 by leveraging #2.

Don’t forget – sales can kill the career of any PM by complaining about the PM’s responsiveness (specifically their lack thereof), their lack of customer-facing skills, their inability to “deliver what the customer wants” and most dangerously, by suggesting “their understanding of the market isn’t correct”.

In the absence of a plan that everyone up and down the organization agrees to – a shared strategic vision for what markets you’re targeting and which ones you’re not and a shared view of what will come out when and for whom – you’re at the mercy of sales.

And they know it.

By: Stewart Rogers

Stewart Rogers — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:53:51 +0000

Generally this is accomplished through win/loss analysis, rather than capturing individual opinions. This way, to prioritize the next feature – you can use simple metrics. “We lost more deals because of this feature – so this one is in the next release”. Fact based decisioning, rather than incorporating more opinions. As you said – Sales is deal focused.