Hey Product Management, Strategic Direction is Yours for the Taking. Here’s How!
If you’re waiting for someone to crown your product management team the kings and queens of strategic direction, you better get a nice comfy chair with all the reclining, heating and massaging accoutrements because you’re in for a long wait!
Strategic direction is all about influence, and influence is all about earning the trust and credibility of your colleagues across the organization from top to bottom. Convince them you know the market better than everyone else and you’ll earn your way into the driver’s seat until someone else proves they know it better.
Here’s the thing about product management though. Everyone (OK, most everyone) expects you to be the market experts and lead accordingly. Unfortunately, most product management teams have exponentially more product expertise than market expertise, and that won’t get you anywhere fast.
Here are three hurdles your product management team will have to overcome it it’s going to lead the charge on strategic direction. The Playbook:
VP of Product Management: Your 7-Point Plan for the First 100 Days
Congratulations! You’ve just landed your first VP of Product Management job and expectations are sky high. No pressure!
Here’s a 7-point plan for your first 100 days. The objective of this particular plan is to get you playing offense right out of the gate.
Before we get to the plan, here’s the first thing you’re NOT going to do. The Playbook: […]
Product Positioning vs. Market Positioning: The Key Difference
If you’ve ever asked yourself, What the biggest difference is between product positioning vs. market positioning? In its simplest form, it’s the target audience and the scope of what you’re positioning.
The ideal positioning structure makes your value easy to articulate regardless of whether you’re starting from the top down or bottom up. The Playbook: […]
Evolving to Product-Led Growth in 5 Steps
Starting a new company and building it around a product-led growth model is much different than transforming a mature company that was built for direct sales and evolving it to a product-led growth model.
First of all, you don’t have the baggage of a product portfolio that was built for direct sales. Second, you don’t have to go through the culture change and infrastructure makeover.
It can be done though. The Playbook:
5 Plays Every Sales Playbook Should Have
The whole point of creating a sales playbook is to give your sales team “situational sales tools” that make them highly effective in every part of the sales process. The end game is a shorter sales process where you’re the clear choice.
Here are five staples that should make the shortlist in every sales playbook. The Playbook: […]
Brand Identity: Why Your Product Management Team Needs It
Strong brand identity builds trust and motivates people to buy your products and services. In B2B organizations, the concept of branding your product management and product marketing teams applies for the same reasons.
If you lead a product management or product marketing team, creating a strong brand identity allows you to define your value to the organization and establishes the criteria by which you want to be held accountable. In other words, you can define your own measuring stick that plays to your team’s strengths. Without it, measurement is highly subjective and inconsistent at best. Sound familiar? The Playbook: […]