This weekend, I attended Product Camp Vancouver 2018 alongside hundreds of Vancouver's tech community. I walked away from the event feeling inspired and connected. What a great event and wonderful community!
I attended the event without a clear understanding of what is typically in or out of scope for the Product Management (PM) line of work. My perspective is mostly heavily informed by my firsthand experiences on the delivery and growth sides for high-tech and professional services companies. I learned a bunch that helped connect some missing dots of concepts in my mind - very thankful for this.
Below are some of my notes/takeaways, whether new or old ideas, which I am mulling over. These points are mostly from talks by Chloe Morrow (of Vision Critical), Cory Ayres (of Pendo), and Steven Forth (of Ibbaka), as well as with fellow participants.
- A person can be doing a certain type of work and honing the craft to a point of mastery without ever having the job title that's typically associated with the line of work. When hiring, focus on looking for the underlying characters and competencies rather than job title (which is more of a mental shortcut we take). This yields high returns when done right.
- We need to have trusting relationships all around us in a company to be successful. A roadmap builds the framework for open conversations. It is the document that outlines the shared set of what we're working toward.
- When reviewing roadmap with executives, focus on strategic initiatives and objectives. Do not delve into tactics. The best executives know to hire the right people and get out of the way (while of course keeping them accountable at milestones). They need to trust you (as the PM lead) and your team to conduct proper due diligence and implement the right tactics to deliver on those agreed strategic objectives.
- These are the questions to focus on during executive conversations:
- Are we aligned on strategy?
- Are we investing in the right areas?
- What trade offs can we make?
- In an enterprise SaaS environment, it is in the best interest of the Product team and the company to not share a detailed roadmap with Sales. Instead, high-level conceptual reviews done monthly or quarterly are good. Better is a constant flow of communication between Product, Customer Success, and Sales.
- Sales should sell on a 'Sell what you can see' rather than a 'See what you can sell' basis. The customer, the company, the team, and other key stakeholders are best served in this way. If roadmap conversations need to happen with a prospect, the CEO or Chief Product Officer (CPO) must lead roadmap conversations rather than sales.
- Companies are best served with a Product CEO at the helm rather than a Sales CEO. There is big risk associated with a sales-first approach leadership that doesn't properly consider the long-term product impacts of short-term deviations from plan. This can manifest in an increased volume of support tickets, disproportionate customer success headcount, and product longevity problems associated with rework due to technical debt.
- In the context of an organization led by a Sales CEO, the Product leader needs to be steadfast in standing their ground if being pressured to make unreasonable product demands. See above point about executives and hiring good people.
- Sales needs to view itself as the starting point of the customer's journey with the company (this coming from a many-times sales leader of companies who've successfully scaled). Product needs work with Sales in mind, building out processes that help Sales help themselves when it comes to communicating vision/value to customers. Also, teach Sales how to fight against certain competitors when being compared (i.e. what areas to focus on and which areas to back down on for different scenarios). At the end of the day, it needs to be about what's best for the customer.
- How to move from distrust to openness and honesty, between Product and Sales. Sales leadership needs to be accountable to the organization and put their foot down about their salespeople doing wrong by the company/product/customers.
- Product teams should be responsible and accountable for pricing. Not Marketing. Not Finance. Not Sales. Other groups are stakeholders who influence and contribute to pricing, but not ultimately responsible for it.
- Cost is not a justification for price, but instead it is a factor in determing whether or not you have a business at all.
- The broad categories of cost are Development Costs, Customer Acquisition Costs, Costs of Goods Sold, and Cost to Serve.
- Typical pricing methods are: Cost Plus (use when customer has control), Market Based (use for fungible commodities), and Value Based (use for differentiated offers). The ideal place to be is Value Based.
- What is 'Value'? Think three components: Emotional, Economic, and Always relative to an alternative. Remember: Alternative is not necessarily a competitor.
- The common process for developing product is: Product -> Cost -> Price -> Customer(?) -> Value (??). However, a more sensible and intentional one is: Customer -> Value -> Price -> Cost -> Product
- The higher in Maslow's Hierarchy where the Value you sell falls, the more Pricing Power you have (i.e. the ability to command a price premium).
Thank you to the organizing team, volunteers, session leaders, and fellow participants who made this event everything it is. You are amazing!