How To Be a Good Product Manager?
In 1931, during the times of the Great Depression in the United States, Neil McElroy wrote a 3-page memo for the Procter & Gamble Company. The memo included the principles of modern brand management. This gave the beginning to the product management and, in consequence, led to the creation of the product manager’s position. But who is a product manager and what is his role? Let’s take a look at what he does in the company.
A product manager is a person who deals with such issues as the product planning, development, and marketing. Basically, he has to analyze the market and look for potential problems, competition, and provide a good marketing strategy to the company. He is also responsible for boosting the business’ sales. It’s a demanding role because it often means managing people. And it may cause even more problems if you’re the company’s CEO and have to organize meetings or take care of a large group of people at once.
Being a good Product Manager requires a specific knowledge and awareness of your marketing surroundings.
Five Methods of A Good Product Manager
To be an expert in Product Management, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself to God know’s what things. If you know how to move around the market, you’ll become professional in your area. With these 5 methods, you’ll beat other companies in Product Management.
1. Create a Roadmap
Creating a roadmap is the first step you should take as the Product Manager. Establishing a plan for the product development is the crucial thing. Such a document should comprise of specific elements:
- market segments,
- estimated profit,
- trends on the market and in technology,
- customer needs,
- conditions and technology needed to create products.
With a clear structure of the business, developing your products is much easier. Roadmap allows you to keep track of the records and anything you do. And if anything changes, you can easily update it and share it with your team and customers.
Read also our article about project roadmap.
2. Analyze And Think Strategically
Before you make any decision as a Product Manager, you have to collect enough data for evaluation. Examining the customer’s needs and expectations is important. You have to take into account every possibility and stay open for different variants. Your success depends on gathering this information and applying it to your product’s creation.
3. Follow The Outcomes
If your product was received negatively, don’t stick with your current marketing strategy. Your plan didn’t work out? Don’t worry. Make changes, so that your customer can be satisfied. An American businessman, Michael LeBoeuf, once said: “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” Fulfill your customers’ expectations, not yours.
4. Communicate and Coordinate
When you work with people in other fields than Product Management, it’s good to make sure everybody understands you. A competent coordination of other business’ areas helps to bridge organizational gaps between them. Additionally, when the communication between people is smooth, they feel that you care about them. And motivation is always good for increasing the sales and your company’s position on the market.
5. Integrate With Different Tools
To become a better Product Manager, you have to collaborate. And the best way to do it is to use communication software. There’s plenty of that on the market, and you can use such as Asana, Trello, Google Sheets, and many others. Through them, you can share files, important information, and always stay in touch with your team, especially if your employees or colleagues work remotely in different parts of the world.
Summing up
If you aim at being a certified Product Manager, you can use tools such as Pragmatic Marketing, or General Assembly. But following these five effective methods used by Product Managers will help you become an expert. Just make these methods obligatory in your work as a Product Manager and the success will come. Good luck!