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.
Proficientz is Giving Back
Proficientz is giving back to the product management and product marketing community that has given us incredible support for the past 18 years.
If your career growth goals or corporate strategic initiatives involved training and skills development, there’s no reason to put them on hold during these unprecedented times.
We’re offering the opportunity to learn a unique “solutions” approach to product management and product marketing that’s practically […]
Is It Easier to Position Products You Haven’t Built Yet?
I noticed a strange trend early in my product management career. People in marketing, sales and even on our product teams could position products we hadn’t built yet and do it with remarkable clarity. We weren’t nearly as good positioning products we already had. I still see it with many of our clients today. What’s going on?
Situational Competitive Battle Cards: Why Sales Loves Them!
The one thing salespeople hate (other than losing) is situations where they’re unprepared to react to a competitive missile that comes out of nowhere. Situational competitive battle cards reduce the odds of that happening by helping salespeople keep the discussion focused on business outcomes versus products.
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B2B Product Manager Magazine February 2020
The B2B Product Manager Magazine February 2020.
This month we turn the spotlight on techniques for identifying higher value targets using personas and market segments, and the role of the solutions manager.
Also, we’ve been publishing a lot of short articles on portfolio product management and marketing. This month, we’ve combined those practices into a comprehensive guide that gives you the full picture on portfolio product management […]
The Ultimate Guide to Portfolio Product Management & Marketing
This guide to portfolio product management and marketing answers common questions about what it is, how it’s different and why you should consider adopting it. It’s specific to B2B and B2B2C products and services.
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How to Use Customer Outcomes to Keep Your Product Backlog to 12-ish Items
The longer your product is in the market, the longer you should expect your product backlog to be. That’s just the nature of the beast. Don’t let it stress you. When people are passionate about your product, they want to make it better. It’s well worth embracing, albeit with the right mindset.
It is, however, awfully difficult to embrace a list of feature requests that grows […]