p roduct management is a well-understood role in virtually every industry except

Product management is a well-understoodrole in virtually every industry excepttechnology. In the last ten years, theproduct management role has expandedits influence in technology companiesyet we continue to hear the question,“Who needs product management?”The role of product management spansmany activities from strategic to tactical—some very technical, others less so. Thestrategic role of product management isto be messenger of the market, deliveringinformation to the departments thatneed market facts to make decisions.This is why it is not surprising that 8% ofproduct managers report directly to theCEO, acting as his or her representativeat the product level.Companies that do not see the valueof product management go througha series of expansions and layoffs.They hire and fire and hire and fire theproduct management group. These samecompanies are the ones that seem to havea similar roller-coaster ride in revenue andprofit. However, over the years we haveseen extensive evidence that productmanagement is a role that can even outthe ups-and-downs and can help push acompany to the next level of performance.

A story...Your founder, a brilliant technician, started thecompany years ago when he quit his day job tomarket his idea full time. He created a productthat he just knew other people needed. And hewas right. Pretty soon he delivered enough of theproduct and hired his best friend from college asVP of Sales. And the company grew.But before long, the VP of Sales complained,“We’re an engineering-led company. Weneed to become customer-driven.” Andthat sounded fine.Except… every new contract seemed torequire custom work. You signed a dozenclients in a dozen market segments and thelatest customer’s voice always dominatedthe product plans. You concluded that“customer-driven” meant “driven by thelatest customer” and that couldn’t be right.

Who Needs Product Management?

When a board member declared, “We’vebecome a sales-led company. We reallyneed to start being marketing-driven,”you hired a brand specialist away from aconsumer product company to be yourDirector of Marketing. As part of a re-brandinginitiative, she designed a new corporatelogo with a new colour scheme for the website, new collateral, and an updated tradeshow booth. Everyone got new companyicons on their clothing. Except… you spentmillions without any change in revenue.Apparently, branding wasn’t the answer!

Soon the CFO whispered to the founder,“Don’t you think it’s time we startedcontrolling costs?” So the company becamecost-driven and started cutting all theluxuries out of the business, like travel,technical support, bonuses, and awarddinners. And Marketing!The CFO asked, “What do those marketingpeople do anyway?” And since no onehad a good answer, the CFO deletedthe marketing budget and fired all themarketing people.At this point, when Finance goes too far,the founder steps back in to focus on hisroots—the technology— and the cyclebegins again. The VP of Development says,“Customers don’t know what they want.”The Director of Sales says, “I can sell anything.”The Director of Marketing says, “We just have toestablish a brand.” The Director of Finance says,“We have to control spending.”The focus goes from technology to revenueto branding to cost-containment, overand over again.


This story is all too familiar to those watching the technology industry. And we’re seeing it in biotech and life sciences, too. What the CEO needs is someone to be in the market, on his behalf, just as he used to be. What’s missing from this cycle is the voice of themarket: your current and potential customers.

The way to break the cycle of dysfunction is tostop listening to each other and start listening tothe market. Listening to the market means firstobserving problems and then solving them. Inother words, a company must be market-driven.I’m convinced that developers, engineers, andexecutives want to be market-driven. They justdon’t want to be driven by marketing departments.There’s a big difference between listening to themarket and listening to the marketing department.After all, marketing people don’t buy our product.Nor do many of them understand the product,causing some marketing people to get the respectthey deserve—which is none.Companies that are not market-driven believethe role of Marketing is to create the need fortheir products. You can see this in their behaviour.Marketing is where t-shirts and coffee mugs comefrom. Marketing is the department that runsadvertising. Marketing is the department thatgenerates leads. Most of all, Marketing supportsthe sales effort. But mature companies realize theaim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.Marketing defines products based on what themarket wants to buy.

Stop listening to each other. Listen to the market.

This is the essence of being market-driven—beingdriven by the needs of the market rather than thecapabilities of the company. Being market-drivenmeans identifying what dishes to serve basedon what patrons want to eat rather than whatfoodstuffs are in the pantry. A market-drivencompany defines itself by the customers itwishes to serve rather than the capabilities itwishes to sell.Because the term “marketing” is so often equatedwith “marketing communications,” let’s refer to thismarket-driven role as product management.Instead of talking about the company andits products, the successful product managertalks about customers and their problems. Aproduct manager is the voice of the marketfull of customers.You need product management if you wantlow-risk, repeatable, market-driven productsand services. It is vastly easier to identifymarket problems and solve them withtechnology than it is to find buyers foryour existing technology.



To those who have seen the impact of strongproduct management on an organization, asking“Who needs product management?” is likeasking “Who needs profit?” A company CEOexplained it this way, “Product Management ismy trick to a turnaround. If I can get ProductManagement focused on identifying marketproblems and representing the customers to thecompany, then the company can be saved.”Product Management identifies a market problem,quantifies the opportunity to make sure it’s bigenough to generate profit, and then articulatesthe problem to the rest of the organization.

Product Management communicates the marketopportunity to the executive team with businessrationale for pursuing the opportunity includingfinancial forecasts and risk assessment. ProductManagement communicates the problem toDevelopment in the form of market requirements.Product Management communicates to MarketingCommunications using positioning documents,one for each type of buyer. Product Managementempowers the sales effort by defining a salesprocess, supported by the requisite salestools so the customer can choose the rightproducts and options.If you don’t want to be market-driven, you don’tneed product management. Some companieswill continue to believe customers don’t knowtheir problems. Some companies believe theyhave a role in furthering the science and buildingthe “next great thing.” These companies don’tneed product management—they need projectmanagement, someone to manage the budgetsand schedules. But these companies also needto re-examine their objectives. Don’t expectshort-term revenues if your company is focusedon long-term research—the “R” in Research andDevelopment. Product management can guide youin the “D” in R&D—the development of technologyinto problem-solving products.

What is Marketing Anyway?

“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”— David Packard

Recently, a Director of Marketingasked me to talk with her management.She told me her executives “just don’tget marketing.” Then she startedreminding me about the importance ofawareness and “buzz” and exposures…and I realized that I agreed withher management: she doesn’t “get”marketing either. She wasn’t talkingabout marketing; she was talkingabout promotion.

“There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling.But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customerso well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.”— Peter Drucker (an Austrian-born American management consultant, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation)

Promotion isn’t Marketing

The real problem facing technology companies(and e-commerce and life sciences, okay, wellalmost everybody) is that they’re not doingmarketing; they’re only doing promotion.I’m not saying that promotion is a waste oftime or money or talent. Indeed, I have workedwith many fine promotional professionals.But, promotion isn’t marketing; promotion ismarketing communications.Peter Drucker makes it clear marketing isn’ta product promotion strategy; it’s a productdefinition strategy, that “marketing” is creatinga product that sells itself, creating a productpeople want to buy; creating an environmentthat encourages people to buy.Over the years however, industries and agenciesand marketing experts have worn away theoriginal meaning of marketing and cheapened it.Marketing now means many things to many peoplebut apparently not what Drucker meant. For mostpeople nowadays, marketing means t-shirts, coffeemugs, trinkets, tradeshow pens.


I attend many marketing conferences and invariablyfind that I’m the only one in attendance whoseems to be talking about creating products;everyone else is talking about promotion. At onesuch marketing conference, an attendee in thefront row asked every single speaker, “How doeswhat you’ve talked about generate awareness andleads?” He didn’t know what to ask me because Ihadn’t once used any of the marketing keywords:awareness, leads, campaigns, programs, spin, orbuzz. Apparently to him I was a product guy andnot a marketing guy. But promotion isn’t marketing.

Sales isn’t Marketing

Many people equate marketing with sales. Andmany salespeople do, too. Some salespeople are soembarrassed by their profession that they’ve takena new title: marketing rep. Look at the numberof business cards that do not reference sales butsome other title instead. Do you get paid acommission on your personal sales of a product?If yes, then you’re a sales rep.Many believe that salespeople are the bestsource for product ideas. After all, they’re talkingto customers all the time! But talking is the keyword. They are talking to the customer aboutthe existing products, not listening for whatproducts they should build next. Yes, salespeopleare a valuable source of product information butnot the only source.


There are only two ways to use salespeople ina company: there’s selling and there’s “not theirjob.” When we ask salespeople for guidance onevents or product features, we’re asking them tostop selling and start focusing on “not their job.”Assessing marketing programs or product featuresets or proposed services or pricing are all “notselling” and therefore “not their job.” We invitesalespeople to help us because they know moreabout the market than the people at corporate.But the Director of Sales does not pay salespeople tobe strategic. She pays them to sell the product. Ifsalespeople want to be involved in these activities,they should transfer to Product Management;I’m sure there’ll be an opening soon.In the classic 4P’s (product, promotion, price, place),salespeople are the last P, not the first. We wantthem to be thinking weeks ahead, not years ahead.We want them selling what is on the price list now,not planning what we ought to have. Selling isn’tmarketing; it’s selling!Instead, we should rely on Product Management tofocus on next year and the year after, to be thinkingmany moves ahead in the roadmap instead of onlyon the current release. Product managers must bethought-leaders in their marketplace.

In the old days, public relations and advertisingwere the biggest parts of a marketing budget. Backthen, these two promotional techniques (buyingyour way in with advertising or begging yourway in through media gatekeepers) were prettymuch the only way to reach customers, so PR andadvertising became synonymous with marketing.But PR and advertising are promotion techniques.They are two ways—and fairly ineffective ones atthat—to communicate the message to the market.John Wanamaker, considered the father of modernadvertising, quipped, “Half the money I spendon advertising is wasted, and the trouble is, Idon’t know which half.” Is marketing the same asadvertising? Marketing directors and ad agenciesapparently think so. So do PR firms. Advertisingand PR are the old way of marketing. They’re stilltrying to get your message into publicationsno one reads.

PR and advertising aren’t MarketingMarketing has come to mean communicatingour message. But who is defining and deliveringthe basis of our message? That is, who is definingthe product? Marketing communications isabout promoting our message; it’s about how tocommunicate. Where is what to communicate?Marketing is knowing what to build and for whomby understanding your buyers and creatinggreat content they want to consume, brandingyour company as the expert—and frankly,the rest is easy.


A typical college graduate usually only remembers a few high level points about each subject that he or she learned at college. For instance,Economics? “Supply and demand.” That’s it. Business is,“you buy something, and you sell it for more.”In our meetings with executives, we ask, “What is marketing?”and we usually get the standard textbook answer: “It’s the4Ps.” But then, the executives can’t remember any of thePs so they start calling out any words that start withthe letter “P.”What we learned about marketing in college doesn’t seemto apply any longer. We learned the 4P’s or the marketingmix. Over the years, people added more and more wordsthat start with the letter P to the marketing mix. Pricing.Positioning. People. Personas. PowerPoint. Prayer.

The marketing mix isn’t Marketing


ProblemThe first and most important consideration for anybusiness is the market problem. It’s the problemthat drives the product decisions, the message forpositioning, and the key elements of selling—theplacement strategy. Having identified the problem,the other Ps of the marketing mix become obvious.ProductThe product we build should address a well understoodmarket problem. What did Druckersay? “The aim of marketing is to know andunderstand the customer so well that the productor service fits him and sells itself.” That is, theproduct should come from a deep understandingof the market of customers.Your company founder understood this, perhapsinadvertently. That is, he created a solution to aproblem he encountered in his daily life. He builta product he felt sure others would value. Andapparently he was right, as your company was asuccess. But the problem was the second productwasn’t quite as good as the first and the thirdwas a complete disaster. What happened to theCEO’s innate understanding of the market?Well, he left the market; he became a CEO.For the last few years, he’s been more focused onhiring and firing and financing and cash flow andcompliance and signage and all the other thingsthat fill a CEO’s day.


What’s missing is the problemBut when was the last time he was in thecustomer’s chair? When did he last write somecode? Balance indexes in a database? Backup afile? What does the CEO know about the realworld anymore? And his new hobby is cropping upat work, too. Now that he’s sailing his boat or flyinghis plane, he wants to include nautical or aviationmetaphors into the products and promotions.Engineers tend to be perennial inventors. They’vealways got a great idea of a new feature, a newproduct, or a new technology. And it’s natural.In an IEEE paper, Albert Ehrenfried declared, “Toomany products are developed to satisfy the desires,urges, and hunches of people within the company,rather than to meet the specific needs of themarket external to the company. Products grow outof the desire to tinker, or because an engineer seesa purely technical challenge.”Sound familiar? Ehrenfried wrote this paper in1955—over fifty years ago. The technology worldhasn’t changed very much after all. Yet one CTOsaid to us, “you just don’t understand innovation.We’re solving problems that people don’teven have.”Umm. How’s that working for you?

The best engineers and developers are problem solvers.If we start the marketing mix with themarket problem, inventors can—and will—focuson solving real problems.With a problem-solving product in hand, thepromotion becomes interesting... and fun. Justgo ask people if they have the problem, explainhow you solve it, and show them you are thebest company to do so. It’s that easy.PromotionA hallmark of great marketing is thoughtleadership. Smart companies communicate withtheir marketplace not by talking incessantly abouthow great their products and services are, butinstead create useful content that shows peoplethey understand the issues and problems facingbuyers. This thought leadership-based contentcan take many offline forms such as speakingengagements, by line articles and appearances onradio and TV. On the web, thought leadership couldbe an e-book (like this one), a well written blogor a YouTube video.Do you remember the introduction of Hotmail?There was a problem in the industry: it was hardto access your personal e-mail account fromwithin the company firewall and besides, companye-mail wasn’t really confidential so you couldn’teasily send your resume to a potential employer

from your current employer’s e-mail account.Hotmail gave you free, private e-mail… and eachmessage you sent to your friends came with yourimplicit endorsement. Nobody had to generate“buzz” for it; Hotmail became an overnight successbecause it solved a problem and had the necessarypromotion built right into each message. Didthey have to create the need? Nope. They didn’tpromote the product at all; they just gave it to afew hundred customers who told two friends whotold two friends, and so on and so on…When Google’s Gmail became available, I wasfairly unimpressed. Ugh, yet another mail program.And I knew I wouldn’t like a mail program thatdidn’t have folders! Or so I thought. Once I hada few hundred messages, I realized folders areirrelevant if you can search quickly. I don’t needfolders in Gmail because Google can actually findmessages—faster than I can file them into folders.The reason we need folders in Microsoft Outlook isthat you can’t find anything using the search toolsprovided by Microsoft (happily, you can use GoogleDesktop Search to find the Outlook messages thatMicrosoft can’t find).Build a product people want to buy, and showyou’re on top of their problems, and they’ll dig it.The new rules of marketing are basically the sameas the old rules of marketing: have something totalk about and people will listen.

Just go ask people if they have the problem...and then show how you solve it. It’s that easy.


Place

Have you ever been in Sales? It’s hard to live withyour house payment on the line every month. It’sparticularly hard when you don’t really believethat your product has value.Incredibly, many salespeople don’t believe thattheir product has any value to the client. Howsad is that?The really sad part is many technology productsdon’t actually have value. They solve problemsthat people don’t have. Or they solve the problemincompletely. So I guess I understand whysalespeople feel they have to sell product futuresand make promises that the product can’t keep.But we can place some of the blame for ourproduct failures on salespeople themselves. Maybeif they didn’t distract the company with “deal ofthe day,” the developers could actually finish 100%of the functionality needed by a specific marketsegment. Yet even if the company has indeedcreated the ideal product set for a well-definedmarket segment, the sales team often sells theproduct into another segment. After all, for some insales, anyone who calls back is a qualified prospect.

I don’t truly blame the sales guys—they do whatthey do. However, I do blame sales management.The Director of Sales (or if not the Director, then the CEO)should reject deals that are not in the segment.The real problem is this: the company engaged asales group before they had clarity on the problemthey were solving, before they had a completeproduct, and before they had the promotions inplace to support a repeatable sales process. Theybuilt an incomplete product and hired salespeopleto push it. They hoped the sales team couldgenerate short-term revenues without interferingwith long-term viability and they lost.Hope is not a strategy!The truth is we shouldn’t engage a sales team untilwe have a repeatable sales process for all the buyerpersonas in a well-defined market segment. Placeis the fourth P, not the first.


Summarizing, product management is a gameof the future. Product managers who know themarket, identify and quantify problems in a marketsegment. They assess the risk and financials so thecompany can run as a business. They communicatethis knowledge to the departments in the companythat need the information, allowing products andservices to be built which solve a known problemand expand the customer base profitability. Andthey show their expertise to the outside world byengaging the market with smart ideas.

Companies fail when employing market withoutmarketing, when worrying more about promotionthan problem, when focusing more on selling thansolving. That is, failure is likely when deliveringproducts without market knowledge.We should rely on product management to focuson next year and the year after. To be thinkingmany moves ahead in the roadmap instead ofonly on the current release.

Companies fail when employing market without marketing,when worrying more about promotion than problem,when focusing more on selling than solving. That is, failure islikely when delivering products without market knowledge.


Many CEOs realize product managementbrings process and business savvy to thecreation and delivery of products. Perhapsthat’s why we’ve seen a shift over theyears of where product managers reportin the organization. Many organizationsput the job within another department.Typically product managers sit as follows:• 36% are in Product Management• 21% are in Marketing• 12% are in Development or Engineering• 6% are in Sales

Traditional consumer product companies havealways considered product management to bea marketing role, which is why it seems to makesense to put product management there. And itdoes make sense—if the marketing departmentis defining and delivering products and not justpromoting them. Alas, as we explored earlier,many technology companies consider the term“marketing” to be synonymous with “marketingcommunications.” So if the Marketing departmentis only about delivering products but not definingthem, product managers should be elsewhere.For technology companies, particularly thosewith enterprise or B2B products, the productmanagement job is very technical. This is whywe see many product managers reporting toDevelopment or Engineering. However, we’ve seena shift away from this in recent years, from 19% in2001 to 12% in 2008. The problem appears to bethat technical product managers spend so muchtime writing requirements that they don’t havetime to visit the market to better understandthe problems their products are designed tosolve. They spend so much time buildingproducts that they’re not equipped to helpdeliver them to the market.

Where Does Product Management Belong in the Organization?

Very few product managers find themselves in aSales (or Sales & Marketing) department. From 10%in 2001, the percentage of product managers inSales has slipped to 6% in 2008. It seems clear thatproduct managers in Sales will spend all of theirtime supporting sales people with demos andpresentations. The product manager becomesthe sales engineer.In effect, subordinating product managementrelegates it to a support role for the primarygoal of the department. Directors anddepartment heads have a natural inclination tosupport their primary department’s role. The Director of Development, primarily responsible for deliveringproducts, tends to use product managers asproject managers and Development gofers. TheDirector of Marketing owns collateral, sales tools, lead generation, and awareness programs. So this Director often uses product managers as content providers to Marketing Communications. And the Director of Sales, focused on new sales revenue, uses product managers to achieve that goal; product managers become “demo boys and demo girls” who support sales people one deal at a time.

In Management Challenges for the 21st Century,Peter Drucker tells us that organization chartsreally don’t fix problems; process and personnelproblems are never solved by a re-org. The truthis, it doesn’t matter where product managementreports. What matters is how the head of theorganization holds product managementaccountable. In other words, what does “success”look like for a product manager?As companies grow larger and become moremature, the company CEO needs someonethinking about the products we ought to beoffering and new markets we could serve. Inother words, the company needs someonethinking about the future of the product.We already have people focused on product,promotion, and place. Who—if anyone—isidentifying market problems for the next roundof products? Who is the Director of Market Problems?And what result does the company CEOwant from Product Management?


Increasingly we see companies creating aDirector of Product Management, a department atthe same level in the company as the othermajor departments. This Director focuses the product management group on the business of theproduct. The product management groupinterviews existing and potential customers,articulates and quantifies market problems in thebusiness case and market requirements, definesstandard procedures for product delivery andlaunch, supports the creation of collateral and salestools by Marketing Communications, and trains thesales teams on the market and product. ProductManagement looks at the needs of the entirebusiness and the entire market.Recognizing that existing and future productsneed different levels of attention, some companiessplit the product management job into smaller bits:one group is responsible for next year’s productswhile another group provides sales and marketingsupport for existing products. These companiesoften add a product marketing component to the

marketing communications effort, supportingthem with market information and productcontent. As we grow ever larger, the productmarketing role expands further: we still need agroup defining our go-to-market strategy andproviding content to Marketing Communications,but now we also need more marketing assistance in the field. So field marketing is born: product marketing people in the sales regions who create specific programs for all of the sales people in a given geographic area.In summary, product management needs tofocus on market problems. Subordinating therole to other departments usually forces productmanagement to support the primary needs ofthat department, to the detriment of spendingtime looking forward beyond the next cycle ofactivity. In a Product Management departmentfocus can remain on market problems andfuture opportunities.

We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what awonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress.—Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.


The Product Management Triad

Some product managers have a natural affinity for working with Development, others for Salesand Marketing Communications, and others prefer to work on business issues. Finding these threeorientations in one person is an almost impossible task. Instead, perhaps we should find three differentpeople with these skills and have them work as a team.

How do you organize product management whenthere are multiple people involved with varyingskill sets? How many product managers do youneed? What are their roles in the company? Isproduct management a support role or a strategicone? How do you use the various productmanagement titles such as product manager,product marketing manager, program manager,or product owner. Titles are poorly understoodand defined differently by many organizations.Many different titles exist for thoseconducting product management activities.An ideal solution for many companies is the“product management triad.”Some product managers have a natural affinity forworking with Development, others for Sales andMarketing, and others prefer to work on businessissues. Finding these three orientations in oneperson is a very difficult task. Instead, perhaps weshould find three different people with these skillsand have them work as a team.The product management triad includes astrategist, a technologist, and a marketer.Start with a business-oriented senior productmanager responsible for product strategy. Makethis person a director of products or product linemanager (PLM). Now add a technology-orientedtechnical product manager (TPM) and a marketing orientedproduct marketing manager (PMM).

One company had nine product managersand nine products, one product manager perproduct. Yet the salespeople hated some of theproduct managers and loved others. The onesthe salespeople loved were hated by developers.Applying the triad, they created three product lineswith a product line manager for each and thenassigned a TPM and PMM to each product line.Now, for each product line there is one personconcentrating on product strategy and thebusiness of the product line, while another workswith Development to build the best product, andanother takes the product message to the channelby working with Marketing Communications andthe sales team.Warning: Some companies attempt to put these threepeople in three different departments. They put thePLM into Sales to do business development; they putthe TPM in Development and the PMM in MarketingCommunications. This always fails. To work as a team,they must actually be a team. Having the TPM and PMMreport to the same person, the PLM, minimizes conflictand overlap, giving the team a common objective. It hasthe added benefit of giving a new director the chance tolearn to be a good manager of two people before gettingfive or ten people to manage.Product management teams provide career pathsfrom entry-level positions to director, all within theproduct line.On the following pages are some job descriptionsto consider.

Defining and organisingproduct management canbe a complicated issue.For many companies, the“product management triad”may be an ideal solution.


Director, Product StrategyThe director of product strategyhas a business-orientation and isresponsible for the development andimplementation of the strategic planfor a specific product family. Theymaintain close relationships with themarket (customers, evaluators, andpotentials) for awareness of marketneeds. This includes identificationof appropriate markets anddevelopment of effective marketingstrategies and tactics for reachingthem. This person is involvedthrough all stages of a productfamily’s lifecycle.

The director of product strategy must:• Discover and validate market problems(both existing and future customers)• Seek new market opportunities by leveragingthe company’s distinctive competence• Define and size market segments• Conduct win/loss analysis• Determine the optimum distribution strategy• Provide oversight of strategy, technical, andmarketing aspects of all products in the portfolio• Analyse product profitability and sales success• Create and maintain the business planincluding pricing• Determine buy/build/partner decisions• Position the product for all markets and allbuyer types• Document the typical buying process• Approve final marketing and go-to-market plans


Technical Product ManagerThe technical product manager isresponsible for defining marketrequirements and packaging thefeatures into product releases. Thisposition involves close interactionwith development leads, productarchitects, and key customers.A strong technical backgroundis required. Job duties includegathering requirements fromexisting and potential customersas well as recent evaluators, writingmarket requirements documentsor Agile product backlogs, andmonitoring the implementation ofeach product project.

The technical product manager must:• Conduct technology assessment• Analyse the competitive landscape• Maintain the product portfolio roadmap• Monitor and incorporating industry innovations• Define user personas for individual products• Write product requirements and use scenarios• Maintain a status dashboard for allportfolio products


Product Marketing ManagerThe product marketing managerprovides product line support forprogram strategy, operational readinessand on-going sales support. Thisposition requires close interaction withMarketing Communications and salesmanagement. Strong communicationskills are a must. Duties includeconverting technical positioning intokey market messages and launching theproducts into market.

The product marketing manager must:• Define buyer personas and determinemarket messages• Create the marketing plan includingmethods for customer acquisition aswell as customer retention• Measure effectiveness of productmarketing programs• Maintain product launch plans• Deliver thought-leading content viaevents, blogs, ebooks, and other outlets• Identify best opportunities for leadgeneration• Create standard presentations anddemo scripts• Identify product references for industryand customer referrals• Align sales tools and the ideal salesprocess to the typical buying process• Facilitate channel training includingcompetitive threats and relatedindustry news


Consider also having a role for your basetechnology or architecture for issues thatspan product lines. The “architecture” can ownacquisitions, third-party partnerships, and commontools needed across all product lines.Take inventory of the skills of each of the productmanagers. Create an organization chart of one triadper product line with no names assigned. Now tryto move the business-oriented staff (usually yoursenior product managers) to the PLM positions,development-oriented product managers to TPMand sales-oriented ones to PMM. The remainingholes in your org chart represent your newhiring profiles.Finally, a note on execution vs. ownership.The three positions are shown with overlappinglines. This is deliberate. Execution of these tasksmust be collaborative to succeed. For example,Win/Loss Analysis is an excellent data source forPositioning and the Buying Process. Your PLM andPMM ought to perform win/loss visits together toensure you gain the most value.But do not confuse execution with ownership.Ownership of a task equates to accountability.As the executive leader of a team structured thisway, it is the PLM who is held accountable forwin/loss analysis.


Product Managers versus Product Marketing Managers

We are frequently asked who owns what in anorganization with Product Management, ProductMarketing and Marketing Communications.Titles really are a mess in this business. What onecompany calls a product manager, another calls aproduct marketing manager. Technology businesseshave generally ignored the standard terms used inother industries.

The graph on the right shows product managers aremore inclined to research the market and writerequirements while product marketers typicallyplan go-to-market strategy and write collateral.

Roles and Titles

Typically the title “product manager” is used to signify peoplewho listen to the market and articulate the market problemsin the form of requirements. And the title “product marketingmanager” is usually assigned to those who take the resultingproduct to the market by defining a product marketing strategy.(I use the product manager title for both of these). Yet clearly, thisdelineation is not consistently applied. Product managers andproduct marketing managers are both equally involved in writingbusiness cases and researching market needs.In Crossing the Chasm, Geoff Moore defines (and recommends)two separate positions:

“A product manager is a member of either the marketingorganization or the development organization who is responsiblefor ensuring that a product gets created, tested, and shipped onschedule and meets specifications. It is a highly internally focusedjob, bridging the marketing and development organizations, andrequiring a high degree of technical competence and projectmanagement experience.”

“A product marketing manager is always a memberof the marketing organization, never of the development group,and is responsible for bringing the product to the marketplaceand to the distribution organization… it is a highly externallyfocused job.”

Moore goes on to say, “Not all organizations separate [the twopositions], but they should... the type of people who are goodat one are rarely good at the other.”and market problems drive both requirements and positioning.Virtually all other product-related activities stem from these two.

A product manager (PM)listens to the market

A product marketing manager (PMM)talks to the market

Roles and Titles

Requirements are written by those who understandthe market. Market Requirements are comprised ofthe problems that are in the market. Notice thelanguage: there are no marketing requirements;only market requirements. The market-drivenproduct manager spends time out of the buildinggathering requirements rather than sitting in acubicle imagining what the market will buy. Bycalling on various segments of the market, ProductManagement can articulate exactly the rightproduct features to create a product that will sell.Market requirements and positioning should bewritten by those who understand the market. Yet ina recent survey, many marketing communicationspeople claimed responsibility for positioning,although none reported having any directcustomer experience. Who best to write thesethan the product managers who have gatheredrequirements? Positioning defines the features interms the buyer will understand, using languagethe buyer would use. Technical buyers need

technical details. User buyers need informationabout how the product will improve their dailylives. Economic buyers want to know how theproduct will improve the bottom-line. Recentlya development executive said to us, “All of ourcollateral should be written as if I was the reader.”But does this executive represent the buyers?Doubtful. Instead, collateral must be written inthe language of the reader (the buyers) not foremployees of your company.Product Management is the messenger of themarket. Product Marketing and MarketingCommunications should be involved in creatingmarket messages but the market-savvy productmanager should have final authority overthe positioning.Market requirements and positioning are ownedby the person who best knows the market. Who isthis in your company?

Product Management is the messenger of the market.

Roles and Titles

Just as new technologies are changing therules for product promotion, so it is for productdevelopment. Agile development methods aresweeping into the vendor world. With emphasison quick iterations and brevity in artifacts, thenew approach to planning is a breath of fresh air.There are some who say that ProductManagement is the enemy of agile; that productmanagers will try to impose structure, thatProduct Management will require detail wherenone is necessary. Fundamentally, some say thatProduct Management stands for everythingthat agile is not. How can Product Managementcontribute to agile?

What is agile?The Agile Manifesto* reads:We are uncovering better ways ofdeveloping software by doing itand helping others do it. Throughthis work we have come to value:• Individuals and interactionsover processes and tools• Working software overcomprehensive documentation• Customer collaboration overcontract negotiation• Responding to change overfollowing a planThat is, while there is value in theitems on the right, we value theitems on the left more.

Product Management in an Agile World

People and results are good; process is merelya means to an end. Definitely! Who coulddisagree with this?And yet.Process and tools are safeguards for individualsand interactions. Comprehensive documentationis necessary to deliver and maintain workingsoftware. Negotiation is often how we codifycustomer expectations. A plan is a technique thatallows us to respond to change.I don’t think agile advocates want the eliminationof process, tools, and discipline. Instead, theseactivities should support individuals, interactions,and the delivery of working software.

Why agile?I fear agile development isn’t so much a newapproach to programming as it is a responseto bad management. In the past, too mucheffort was spent on documenting exactly whatwould be delivered before a line of code wasactually written; too much energy was wastedgetting precision on estimates long before thoseestimates could be considered reliable. Everyonein development knew these methods weren’tworking. But management didn’t know or care.So developers became increasingly frustratedwith the planning process. Management enforceddates no one believed; management requireddetailed documentation and schedules long beforethe details were known. No wonder developerswere frustrated.Long ago the world used to be agile. A customerwould ask for a report and we’d show up with132 character-wide grid paper to design the report.“Company name? Okay, 40 characters plus a spaceis 41. Invoice

Finance people and sales people and marketing people are makingscheduling decisions for development projects they don’t understandwith inadequate information. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.


Then Development became a key part of business.And the head of development wanted to knowhow long you’d be working in Accounting becausethe manufacturing project needed your skillstoo. And customers wanted to know how muchthe report would cost before they committed tocross-department billing. And then HR wanted toknow how many actual hours were spent in eacharea for internal billing of your time. These are alllegitimate requests, aren’t they?Working as a developer in a business involvesworking as a business—which means resourcingand scheduling highly skilled workers.Maybe the big problem agile is trying to addressis not so much that management is bad; it’s thatmanagement is early. They want to know toomuch too soon, long before the developmentteam actually knows. They ask for estimates, getour guesses—and they are guesses—and thenannounce delivery dates for the project.

Management mandates rigor and precision beforethe scope of the work is truly understood. “Howlong would it take you to build something?” Well,depends on what something is, doesn’t it? “Yesbut give me a date anyway.” Management overcommitsdevelopment all the time.Developers often see the product managers assenior management’s police force. And to behonest, this is somewhat legitimate. Haven’t manyproduct managers imposed dates on projects theydon’t truly understand? Haven’t many productmanagers enforced process and documentationbeyond what is necessary?So finance people and sales people and marketingpeople are making scheduling decisions fordevelopment projects they don’t understand withinadequate information. Sounds like a recipe fordisaster. And it is. Thus, agile was born!


Where does product management fit?Product management is fundamentally aboutdelivering successful products to a market ofcustomers. This requires a deep understandingof market requirements. The problem is mostdevelopment methods were designed forone-off projects rather than repeatable products.So where does product management fit in anagile development environment?One of the key aspects of agile programmingis an onsite customer. While this makes sensein a one-off environment when customer anddeveloper are in the same building, it’s unworkablein a vendor model. How do you have an onsitecustomer in a vendor model?Answer: the product manager serves as thecustomer representative in planning andrequirements definition.Building a repeatable product requires feedbackfrom many customers, not just one. So someoneneeds to aggregate the requirements from manysources into a single coherent set of requirements.Answer: the product manager defines therequirements and the product roadmap fora market of customers.

Delivering a product to a market of customersrequires synchronizing the software, hardware,services, documentation, marketing programs,and sales tools to present a complete productto the marketplace.Answer: the product manager must integrateall schedules so we can deliver and support theproduct in the market.In agile programming—and frankly in anyprogramming model—the effective productmanager serves as representative of a marketof customers.Accelerating agile adoptionProduct managers should support the ideals ofagile development. We want some process butnot too much. Smaller iterations give us moreflexibility in adapting to change. Less time spentdocumenting leaves more time for programming.We want to assist development and the rest of theteam in delivering a complete product to a market,creating a product that people want to buy.


Product management is a strategic role. Yet asexperts in the product and the market, productmanagers are often pulled into tactical activities.Developers want product managers to prioritizerequirements; marketing people want productmanagers to write copy; sales people want productmanagers for demo after demo. Product managersare so busy supporting the other departmentsthey have no time remaining for actual productmanagement. But just because the productmanager is an expert in the product doesn’tmean no one else needs product expertise.

Product managers bring a powerful combination ofskills: product and technology expertise combinedwith market and domain knowledge as well asbusiness savvy.Marketing people know how to communicate;product managers know what to communicate.Sales people know what one customer wantsto buy; product managers must determine if thedeal represents a single customer or a marketfull of customers.Developers know what can be built; productmanagers know whether it should be built.Many people are concerned with this release,this model, this deal, this customer. Who in yourorganization is focused on next year and theone after, the next product, the next market?Product management is a strategic role focusedon what products and markets we can servein the years to come.

The Strategic Role of Product Management How a market-driven focus leads companies to build products people want to buy

Final Thoughts . . .

p roduct management is a well-understood role in virtually every industry except

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