Product Managers Need To Learn Faster Ways To Reach New Customers

Just in case you have been living at your desk for the past couple of years and hadn’t noticed, Toyota launched a new line of cars a few years ago called Scion. Now we all know the Toyota brand - in fact many of you probably own a Camry because it’s the most popular car in the world. However, it’s a bit on the boring side.

So what’s a major world class car company to do when they want to reach out and capture the hearts and minds of the Generation Y drivers who were not currently sitting behind the wheel of a Toyota? Simple: do the unexpected.

As product managers we are often proud of all of the customers that have selected our product. However, deep in our dark hearts we yearn to be selected by all those other buyers who have not yet picked us to go to the dance with them. We often find ourselves in the same situation that Toyota did: trying to make our product appeal to a whole new segment of customers.

Rob Walker has written a book called Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are in which he did a lot of studying of just what makes us buy things and he’s made some amazing discoveries. One of the things that he learned is that Toyota figured out that in order to market their new car to their Generation Y target audience, the brand’s “meaning” was more important than the product’s functionality. Can anyone say “iPhone”?

In this highly connected age we’ve started to believe that our customers have become immune to just about any type of communication that we can come up with. What Toyota’s product marketing team discovered was that this was not true. In fact, the pitch-free guerrilla marketing that Toyota engaged in to promote the Scion line actually seemed to be welcomed by their potential customers. Toyota advertised the Scion in small artsy magazines and stayed away from the mainstream ones. They hosted dance parties and gave out Scion CDs and magazines.

What Walker has found out is that the 21st Century “new consumer” is basically all made up. Oh, and this is really starting to screw up product managers. However we do live in changing times and you are going to have to be changing the ways in which you appeal to your customers.

No matter what product you are responsible for, you are going to have to start to emphasize the meaning of the product first and the functionality second (sorry about that feature lovers). Today’s buyers want to feel as though they are part of something bigger than themselves (”I’m a Mac”).

This goes hand-in-hand with Walker’s other finding which shows that successful brands often build their eventual mass audience by cobbling together much smaller ones.

There is a great deal for product mangers to learn here even if you are not selling to Generation Y consumers. You need to realize that the world has changed and it’s now time to think differently about your customers. They never were nameless, shapeless blobs who mindlessly did or did not select your product. They have always been thinking, caring people for whom your product solved a specific problem. Now you’ve got to understand how THEY want to be reached…

Have you ever used any guerrilla marketing to promote your product? Did it work as well as you were hoping? Will you ever use this technique again? How did your management feel about you doing this? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking…

Technorati Tags: brand management, customer, customers, guerrilla marketing, new products, product, product management, product manager, product marketing, Scion, Toyota

Product Mangers Need To Understand The 3 Fundamental Features Of Job Steps

Last time we talked about “job mapping” how a customer “hires” your product to perform some task. If you can do this well, then you will be able to create an understanding of what aspects of your product the customer likes and is using as well as which ones he/she does not like and is not making use of. All of this understanding can go a long way in helping you to understand what features you need to add to your product in its next release.

The researchers who have come up with the idea of mapping how a customer uses your product spent over 10 years mapping lots of different types of products. As a result of this work, they discovered that there are three principles that all jobs have in common:

All Jobs Can Be Thought Of As A Process: This is actually an important insight - there is no job that can not be broken down into a set of steps. In order for a product manager to start to get some insights into innovative features that could be added to his / her product, the first step is to look at the product through the customer’s eyes and then map out how the product would be used by the customer to complete a specific job.

Once you have a clear understanding of the individual steps that your product is used by your customer for, then you can start to investigate how adding new features would allow you to improve how a given step is performed, or get rid of the need for a given input or output, or just cut out the step altogether.

One area that most products can be improved in is the area of step re-sequencing. If there is a step that occurs towards the end of the process in order to check that something has occurred, then adding a feature that will allow this step to be moved to the front of the process can make your product even more useful to your customer.

There Is A Universal Structure To All Jobs: No matter what product you manage, nor what types of customers use your product, all customers use your product to perform a job that has the following universal structure:

1. Defining what resources the job needs.
2. Getting any inputs that are needed by the job.
3. Getting the inputs ready.
4. Confirming that everything is ready to perform the job.
5. Executing the steps that make up the job.
6. Monitoring the results of executing the job steps.
7. Making modifications to what you’ve done and re-doing steps.
8. Concluding the job steps.

It’s important to keep in mind that for each product, some steps will be more important than others. This being said, keep in mind that each step is required in order to successfully complete the customer’s job. The product manager needs to realize that opportunities for new product features lurk within each job step.

Jobs Are NOT Solutions: Just because you love your product, does not mean that your customers do. You customers probably solve the problem that they use your product for in a number of different ways (not all of which involve the use of your product). When looking at the job steps that a customer is doing, the product manger needs to think in broader terms than just his / her product. It is entirely possible that the need for a new product may present itself.

These three guiding principles provide product managers with a foundation that they can use when they begin the search for what new features can be added to their products in order to increase the value of their product to their customers.

Next time we’ll dive into just how a product manager can go about creating a job map for his / her product…

Have you ever tried to break down how your customer uses your product into job steps? What parts of the universal job structure are most important to your product? Have you ever discovered the need for a different product as you studied how customers used your product? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: brand management, job, marketing management, marketing research, new features, product design, product features, product manager, requirements management

Product Mangers Have A Secret Weapon That Can Make Them More Successful

Being  a Product Manager is hard work, being a successful product manager is even harder. Wouldn’t we all like to have a secret weapon that would allow us to cut through all of the roadblocks that others seem to be constantly throwing up all around us?

Just imagine if there was some way to get everyone to actually do what they have promised that they would do. Wouldn’t that at least be a step in the right direction? We’ve talked in the past about other powerful tools that all product managers have at their disposal, but I’ve been saving the best for now.

It is a simple and perhaps sad fact of modern business life that nobody (including you) has enough time to get everything done anymore. What this means is that actions that people agreed to do during meetings, requests that you’ve made, and pleas that you’ve sent via email will probably mostly get ignored.

Yes, there is a possibility that people aren’t doing what you need them to do because they don’t like you. However, to not like someone takes energy so it’s more likely that people are probably blowing you off because they’ve got too much other higher priority work that needs to be done. Sorry, you lose.

This should be a big deal to you. The modern product manager really does not create anything - instead we work with and through others to get things done. Our dirty little secret is that nobody works for us and so we really don’t have any authority to demand that things get done. Instead, we can only ask. That phrase “all the responsibility, none of the authority” was really created for us.

It’s almost enough to make a hard working product manger throw his/her hands up in the air and give up. But wait - before you do that, I’ve got good news for you - there is a secret weapon that you can use to make your life better.

This secret weapon is called “the follow-up”. No, wait - don’t stop reading now! Trust me on this one, the follow-up has the ability to change your life (I know this because it changed my life). The reason that I like to call this a secret weapon is because amazingly enough it really does seem to be a secret - almost nobody else is using it!

Here’s a typical scenario that this secret weapon can come into play in: you attend a meeting, a discussion occurs, actions are created and assigned, the meeting is over and everyone leaves. All too often, that’s it - nobody ever follows up on those actions. This means that the same topics will be revisited in another meeting, more actions will be assigned, and those actions won’t be followed-up on either. And so on, and so on.

As a product manager with your new follow-up secret weapon, you can take charge of the actions that you care about. Make sure that each of them has a clear owner before the meeting breaks up. Also make sure that each action has an associated due date. Once this is done,  you need to make yourself a “follow-up checklist”.

This checklist will tell you who you need to hound in order to make sure that they complete their actions on time. This list will grow once you start including outstanding emails on it. How many times have you sent an email with a question to someone and then forgotten about it (and they have too!)? Not any more, now when you send that email w/ a question, add it to your follow-up checklist.

What’s going to happen is very quickly you are going to take on the demeanor of a bulldog in your work environment. People are going to start to realize that when you are promised information, you are not going to let up until you get it. This means that the people who owe you info will move it up their priority list.

Yes, I know that this sounds like a very simple secret weapon; however, it’s power is not to be underestimated. Give it a try and I think that you’ll be pleased with the results.

Do you have trouble getting coworkers to provide you with the information and answers that you need? Do actions that get assigned during meetings get answered or do they get forgotten? Have you ever asked a question in an email that didn’t get answered and that you then forgot about? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: action items, brand management, follow up, meetings, product management, product manager

Bad Press Can Kill A Product If A Product Manager Does Not React Quickly

There is a saying that goes “Any publicity is good publicity”. It turns out that this is wrong. In fact, after having given birth to or adopting a product, a Product Manger can see the good name of their product  vanish almost overnight if they aren’t careful.

A good example of this, on a very large scale, is what happened to United Airlines back in September. Way back in 2002 United’s parent company, UAL, had been forced to file bankruptcy. They had worked their way out of this and it was old news. Until an old article talking about the bankruptcy filing showed up on Google’s news service as apparently new news.

What had happened is that Google’s information gathering technology which cruises the web each evening found a new link on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper’s web site. The article didn’t carry a date but it had been originally published by the Chicago Tribune back in December of 2002. The article had not been there the last time Google’s crawler had visited the Sun-Sentinel’s site and so it was flagged this time as new news.

How this old story had appeared on the Sun-Sentinel’s business news section was originally unclear. However, it is now believed that because of bad weather in south Florida, people had been checking the news about travel delays and enough of them may have stumbled onto the old UAL story by mistake to cause it to be promoted to a high position on the Sun-Sentinel’s list of news stories.

As you can well imagine there are a lot of people who subscribe to services that automatically alert them to any news about UAL. When this new/old story hit Google’s wire, lots of people got an email that told them that UAL had just filed for bankruptcy (remember, there had been no date associated with the original story). Next, stock market research firms picked up the story and finally it hit the Bloomberg financial news service whose stories are treated as gospel. In 15 minutes UAL shares dropped down to $3/share.  Poof - there went UAL’s product.

What does all of this mean to a product manger? In the bold new world of the 21st Century your product’s reputation can be lost litterly overnight if you are not careful. Rightly or wrongly the Internet and the army of automated news collectors and automatic stock trading programs can work together to pummel your product and your firm quicker than you can catch your breath. This is the time for all of us to become good Boy Scouts and “Be Prepared”.

Realizing that an event like this can happen to your product is the first step in preparing a reaction plan. The next step is to assume the worst has happened: bad press about your product has hit the wire. What would you do? The correct response is probably to create a press release, post something prominately on your firm’s web site, and make senior executives available for interviews with the press in order to provide the company’s view on whatever event is being reported.

Instead of running around like a chicken with your head cut off when a bad press event like this happens, why not prepare right now? How much of that press release could you write today? Who would have to review and approve it before it could be released? Do you have their contact info? If you needed to have your web site updated in a hurry, who would do that and would they be available no matter what time of day the update was needed? What members of the press could you get your senior executives in contact with quickly? What have you already done to make them friendly (or at least neutral) towards your company?

All of these are activities that can save your skin and your product in the event of bad press poisoning the well of potential customers that you hope to drink from. Do some work now and you just might save your job later…!

Have you ever had an incorrect story circulate about your product? How did this story start? What did you do to correct the wrong information? Were you able to clear things up? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: bankruptcy, brand management, product management, product managing, product manger, UAL, United

Product Managers Need To Take Advantage Of The Current Recession

Psst - don’t look now, but it sorta looks like all of the economies in the world are all tanking at the same time. If you are a product manager, this sure does not look good for your career. I view a product manager as being the CEO of your product and so at the end of the day no matter what the economy is doing you are responsible for making sure that your  product is a success. Hmm, if only someone had 7 suggestions for what a product manager should be doing RIGHT NOW…!

Good news - I do. As the CEO of your product you are going to have stand up and take charge even as everyone else in your company may be ducking in order to avoid attracting attention and getting laid off. At this time you can’t afford to be quiet - if your product fails, you’ll be gone so you may as well go out swinging. If you are willing to work to make your product a success no matter what, then this list of 7 things that you should be doing is just what the economic doctor ordered:

1. Get Offensive: No, I’m not talking about working (more) four-letter words into your everyday vocabulary. Rather, I’m suggesting that you realize that during a recession other product mangers are going to be playing defense. They are going to be trying to hang on to the customers that they have because they fear losing them and they’re going to not be spending enough time pursuing new customer opportunities. That means that that this recession is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to build market share for your product. Work with your sales team and make sure that they are leaving no rock unturned right now in order to find new potential customers.
2. Incent Your Customers: Once again, no - don’t get them angry; instead, get them motivated to try/buy your product. If ever there was a time to roll out a marketing program that is designed to get those customers who might be sitting on the fence eager to use your product, then this is the time to do it.
3. Don’t Travel: Within your company, the bean counters are going to be keeping their beady little eyes posted in order to find ways to reduce costs. If you are hopping on a plane every week to go “gather requirements” from customers, all of a sudden you are going to find yourself wearing a nice bright set of concentric circles on you back when it comes time to reduce staff. Instead, use the full power of the 21st Century to reach out and contact both existing customers and new ones that your sales team has found. Although we are often tempted to use email for everything, don’t forget to pick up the phone and start calling!
4. Get Creative: … with your marketing. One of my favorite quotes from the master marketeer, P.T. Barnum is “Without promotion, something terrible happens … NOTHING!” We’re not talking about a big iPhone launch ad campaign here, but rather a whole series of small marketing efforts that can have a big combined effect. Things like free trials of your product, special discounts, or even using the web to set up a customer portal to provide access to special information and support. Doing an online survey can be a great way to collect valuable customer information while reminding your customers that you are still here.
5. Talk To Me Baby: How many times have you been told that an existing customer is 5x cheaper to sell to than getting a new customer? Well, now is the time to put that knowledge into action. Use your existing customers to help drive your product’s innovation direction. Collecting this type of information from customers who have already selected your product will allow you to make the product even better which will help capture more market share during the recession.
6. Retrain Sales: We product managers know our products inside and out. How well does your sales team know your product? Probably not as well as you do. Use the recession to take the time to bring your sales teams up to speed on what they need to know: new features, planned features, competative info, etc. Once you’ve got them pumped up, there will be no stopping them from selling more of your product.
7. Work Smarter: When times are good, we all have a tendency to focus on ourselves and try to meet our own objectives. During hard times, we need to instead look at our customers and try to figure out what we need to do to better met their objectives. This may be as simple as adjusting the hours that you work in order to better match your customer and to ensure that you’ll be there if they need to call you directly. Little things like this can make all the difference in ensuring that your product is a success even during a recession.

How is your product doing during this recession? Do you feel that your sales teams are out working hard enough to sell it? Have you done anything creative to help the company sell more of your products? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: brand management, discount, marketing, marketing management, product manager, product marketing, promotion, recession, Sales

The Apple iPhone 3G had a power adapter problem: recall or not?

Ah, to be a product manager at Apple - working for a company with very good mojo, cool products that everyone wants, and probably a really good bonus program! What more could any of us want? If, for just a moment, we could push the product hype, the speculations about Steve Jobs’ health, etc. off to the side and focus on some of the normal day-to-day stuff that we all deal with - but see how Apple product managers handle it.

It always helps if we have a good case study, and what do you know we do: Apple’s iPhone 3G power adaptor. The iPhone ships with a ultra-compact USB adapter that is shipped with all iPhones sold in the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico and several other Latin American countries (it looks like pretty much everyone who uses 110V household current). It turns out that its prongs can break off in power outlets and cause a risk of electrical shock to iPhone users. Oh, oh - what’s a product manager to do?

The challenge here is that apparently the problem was showing up in “… a very small percentage of the adapters sold…” as reported by Apple. Additional, no injuries have been reported to date. Hmm, this is always one of those big product manager moral problems: it looks like it is a possible problem; however, it has really turned into a problem yet. Just to make things a little bit more interesting, there is a work-around. It turns out that the iPhone 3G can be charged by connecting it to a computer via a USB cable, using a car charger adapter, or even by using a different model of the USB power adapter.

Hmm, which road should a product manager take? This is not like the big Tylenol scare, or even the Intel Pentium math error issue. Instead, it is a possible product issue that has the possibility to either quietly go away or blow up in a product manager’s face. W.W.A.D? (What Would Apple Do?)

You’ve probably already guessed the answer, the Apple product manager(s) have decided to exchange the power adapters for new ones without the prong-breaking-off-issue. Here’s what their press release said:

Customer safety is always Apple’s top priority, so it has voluntarily decided to exchange every ultra-compact power adapter for a new, redesigned adapter, free of charge.

Now how’s that for making lemonade out of lemons? Once again, perhaps there is something about taking the high road that we can learn from the product managers at Apple…

Has a product that you were managing ever had to have a recall? Was the issue a serious issue or a probably-really-doesn’t-impact-the-user issue? What did your company decide to do about it? Who lead the decision making process - was it the product manager, legal, sales, or somebody else? Leave a comment and let me know what you’re thinking.

Technorati Tags: brand management, Intel, product design, product manager, product planning, Tylenol scare