The Ultimate Product Manager

I just put down the latest copy of Town & Country, rolled down the divider and said to my chauffeur, “I think I am going to write an article about what makes a world-class product manager” 

(Actually, I am on the bus. Anyhow, I am keen to write this one right now)

What makes a Hall-of-Fame, Suck-My-Wake, Knight-of-the-Realm, Vaporfly-wearing product manager?

Sure there are table stakes. You know: good with people, years of product management experience with multiple companies in multiple industries, great with customers, high emotional intelligence, etc etc. But the best have more.

Here are the traits I look for …..

Able to Teach a Master Class in Active Listening

Customers, salespeople, execs, engineers, services specialists (and many more) all have opinions and ideas about the most important improvements to make in a product, and even what new products should be created. Some of those ideas are spot-on, many of them are poorly articulated, and others are clearly ill-conceived. 

Product managers really need to understand why people hold their opinions, not just what those opinions are. To do that, they need to a) listen, really listen, and b) ask probative and incisive questions. The best practitioners can even change a person’s point of view simply by asking thoughtful questions, thoughtfully

Most stakeholders skew to emotional justifications of their POV. “If you just add this feature we can crush the competition.” So, a recurring theme in those conversations is the product manager’s pursuit of facts and data. “In the last 12 months, how many times have we lost to them? Have we beaten them, and, if so, how?”

Really Good Decliners

Stakeholder input is the source of nutrition for a product manager. As such, product manager’s regularly need calories and they need a balanced diet.

(Product managers: please reread the prior paragraph several times and unpack it.)

Now to the decliners part …. Product managers need to say No a lot and they have to do it with ease. If a product manager keeps “ignoring” feedback from someone, that someone will usually have one of two reactions. Either they stop making suggestions at all (“what’s the point?”), or they will become more forceful, aggressive and mischievous in their quest to be heard. Neither outcome is acceptable.

That’s why it’s so important to communicate (back) the reasons why their suggestions didn’t make the cut. By example, rather than ignore a customer’s request for better analytics, a response like “In the end, we had to place ADA compliance as a higher priority” will help the suggester understand a) that you really did evaluate their input, and b) there are some rational higher priorities.

The fine art of saying “No” is an essential leadership skill, and it’s one that every world class product manager has mastered. That skill combined with active listening guarantees that the product manager will get her own nutrition in abundance.

Economics: a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services

Impact (not Features) is the Focus

Features are tangible. Users talk about them, and even become infatuated with them (as do novice product managers), The best product managers, however, really don’t frame their thinking in features. Features are merely a means to an end. Rock star product managers obsess first and foremost about the “end”. 

The notion of a “useful feature” is replaced with “true impact”. Will it increase the average sales price, will it increase competitive win rates, will it increase customer sat scores and reduce churn? On the negative side, will it cause headaches in support, will it slow down implementation? etc etc.

The focus on impact shifts attention from the “get it released” part of the brain, to the “get it used” part. That means attention is given to whole company readiness, launch, and adoption. Better yet, great PMs obsess on continuing to monitor whether or not the decisions actually had the expected impact over the long haul. Its true of feature adds, pricing changes, and everything else a Product Manager addresses.

MBA Level of Business Acumen

TAM, CAC, LTV, ASP, ARR, OTF, EBITDA, OMG

Except in the rarest of situations, product decisions are based on economics. The elite class of product managers are super comfortable with accounting, applied statistics, modeling, marketing and operations. Going well beyond the fundamentals the elites yearn discussions and strategies that go deep into lifetime value, customer acquisitions costs, total addressable markets and more.  

They are Master Storytellers

Sometimes product managers have to win the hearts of a broad array of stakeholders. Stakeholders that have very different experiences, skills and interests. Masterful storytelling allows an audience of engineers, sales people, customers and suits, to name a few, to all understand the same content. They can, for example, talk about customers in terms of Elephants, Antelopes and Rabbits #SeeWhatIDid !

I just arrived at my bus stop and I gotta go. Before I do, I want to quickly acknowledge there are many many valuable product managers who are a credit to the profession. My goal isn't to make any of them feel inadequate. Not at all. Rather I just wanted to share my personal view on true excellence. Your turn - please tell me what you think defines best-in-class.

Please share this article if it made you think.