About Our Product Management Blog
High Octane is a Product Management Blog from Proficientz that offers “how to” tips for improving strategy, planning and execution in trenches of product management, product marketing and sales enablement. Our best practices focus on using your portfolio to make customers more successful with cross-functional solutions that have more strategic value than individual products. We publish several entries each month. Click here to subscribe and get them delivered directly to your inbox.
B2B Product Manager April 2021
B2B Product Manager April 2021 Issue
This month we show a little love to those in senior product management roles with a focus on strategy, title inflation, and newbies to the VP role.
Of course, we can’t ignore the connection between sales and product management. Whatever happens in product management is usually reflected somewhere in the sales process!
Enjoy our April issue.
Sales Demos: Selling Outcomes vs. Features
Business outcomes vs product features: how do your sales demos stack up?
In many cases, the product silos that exist within product management become transparent to buyers during the sales cycle, creating the perception you’ve got a bunch of fragmented products instead of integrated solutions. Longer and more difficult sales cycles lie ahead if this is the case.
Here’s your 3-step plan for selling business outcomes versus […]
If Your Product Strategy Doesn’t Piss Somebody Off, It’s Probably Not Very Good!
Don’t get me wrong. The goal of your product strategy isn’t to piss people off.
It’s to demonstrate that your product direction is aligned with the goals and priorities of your target customers, current customers included.
It’s to demonstrate that you have a vision beyond the next release or two for how you’re going to make customers better at mission-critical processes that are strategic to their business.
It’s […]
B2B Product Manager March 2021
The performance of product management and the ripple effect (positive and negative) on engineering, marketing, sales and customer success is front and center this month.
It’s one of those things that gets talked about here and there, but the magnitude of that ripple effect may not be fully understood across the company.
We offer a few insights.
As Product Management Goes, So Goes the Rest of the Organization
William Shakespeare once said, “The Eyes are the window to your soul.” Think of product management as the window to your organization’s soul. Everything about how your organization builds, markets, sells and onboards customers starts and ends with your products. As product management goes, so goes the rest of the organization.
Here’s a stab at what many would consider the ideal product management discipline (B2B). Granted, it’s […]
SWOT Analysis | How to Give Your Product Portfolio a Good SWOT
SWOT analysis is far from a new concept, especially for individual products. In B2B though, assessing your product portfolio’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats should be an annual ritual. Why? It offers a macro view of your portfolio’s performance and provides valuable insights that drive your go-to-market strategy and ultimately your product, marketing and sales investment priorities. […]