Beyond the basics
For aspiring product managers
I often chat with young PMs who feel stuck in their roles as APMs, Product Owners, or Product Managers. They're looking for ways to level up but aren't sure how. When I ask about their strengths, I hear familiar responses: they're great at writing PRDs, crafting user stories, sketching out wireframes, collaborating with developers, and putting together presentations. Yet, despite these skills, they often feel like their contributions aren't fully appreciated in their organisation. So, what's missing here?
One thing I've noticed is that early in their career, product managers sometimes miss out on two crucial areas: understanding the business and knowing their audience. Sure, hard skills like writing PRDs, creating user stories, and drawing wireframes are important. But being a top-notch PM isn't just about these skills. To really make your mark, you need to dive deep into understanding the business and who it serves. Few questions to get started with :
- Find out how the business makes money - what is the pricing model and why was it chosen instead of the others. Idea it to get to know the rationale behind how you sell
- Understand deeply the sales & operations hierarchy and workflows. Even those which are yet to be digitised
- Understand cost of acquiring customers (CAC) and split between marketing and sales.
- What is our sales pitch to our customers? Talk to sales folks to know what really works when they go out to sell
- Who is our competition and what are they doing different? Become a lead for your competition and compare their sales pitch with your own
- Find out who are the users actually using the product? What location, age groups, income brackets etc they come from
- Spend time with digital marketing team to know their audience targeting on ad campaigns.
Doing the above gives you an edge :
- Problem discovery gets better and you are now much better at articulating the problem statements
- Your assumptions get challenged and reduces your biases .
- You get better at prioritisation - what’s best for both users and business
- Better stakeholder management since you have different perspectives
- Deliver value instead of features
Sadly, most of the online courses limit craft of product management to hard skills or often don’t emphasize enough on these two areas while the true potential of a PM gets unlocked once you have a deep understanding of the business and its audience.
What do you think?