I am a young engineer trying to plan out my career. I want to know what is the typical career progression (director, VP) of a product manager and how do the job responsibilities change along the way. Is product management a feeder career for CEO since it is entrepreneurial in nature?

Answer from Adam Bullied of Write That Down: This is a great question — one that I’ve personally spent a lot of time thinking about, and helping others I’ve managed think through as well.

Quite honestly, there isn’t a very “fixed” path to get to the CEO role. But, rising through the ranks of product management is pretty well understood and defined. I’ll walk through each stage of this progression, but keep in mind, this isn’t the only way to advance in a career, in product management, or to the CEO role.

But to kick this off, I will say that yes, product management is very good path to CEO. Especially within start-ups. Why? Well, because in a start-up you really need to know how to define, build, and ship products. And build the best team possible to help you. Being exposed to all different functions and disciplines early in your career (and regularly within product management) is a sure bet to be the type of individual VCs and start-ups covet.

With an engineering background, you are well-suited to be working in organizations that ship technical products. I’ve found folks with marketing backgrounds or sales backgrounds don’t usually excel in product management within companies that have highly technical products being released to market.

However, a common pitfall is spending too much time within engineering trying to solve their problems. Many individuals starting out in the role tend to want to dictate *how* something should be built, when really a product manager’s job is all about *what* should be built and *why*.

OK, so with that being said…on to the roles.

Junior Product Manager / Product Analyst / Associate Product Manager

This is really where it all starts – at least in my mind. You need to get your feet wet within the role doing small projects. This may be owning features within a release and managing them through, or doing bits and pieces here and there.

I’ve started folks out here before that I felt were very well suited to the PdM role and they are now exceeding – it’s all about making sure they have the skill set and the foundation to take that next step.

The bottom line: get some solid wins under your belt, and try to find a spot within a company that has a great product management organization. The best way to learn the role is to work for someone that really understands it.

Product Manager

So, after you gained some knowledge and had some solid wins within a more junior role, you are prepared to take over a complete product. You need to be comfortable with setting direction, developing strategy, executing, and delivering.

You should be pretty familiar with all stages of the product lifecycle and have successfully taken a product from inception through to market. It’s key you also know and understand how to gather and analyze market research (user/customer feedback and competitive intelligence, etc…).

The bottom line: ship a product. Understand, conceptually, how all cross-functions work together and use the knowledge gained from the time spent in a more junior role as a foundation to expand.

Senior Product Manager / Product Director

OK, at this point you are managing 1 large product or maybe 2-3 smaller / mid-size products so you are probably responsible for a product team, or looking to build one. Since you’ve seen this done in the past (and been a part of successful product teams before) you know how this is done.

Really, the crux here is quite similar to the product manager role. However, you will need to apply more glue. For example, if you are managing a line (as opposed to an individual product) you will need to ensure everything stays consistent and standardized.

Your team may include junior product managers, maybe a business analyst, other product managers, designers, writers, etc… It really is up for you to determine and fight for, based on what you have seen work in the past and what you require in order to ship products successfully.

The bottom line: While similar to the product management role, you really are more accountable for putting a successful product team in place and managing that team – and making sure (if you are managing multiple products or a line) that your products stick together and are cohesive and standardized.

Director, Product Management

Just like how a senior product manager is similar to a product manager, the director of the team is very similar to the role that proceeds it. You probably are managing even more products. As such, the level of detail you can handle is limited — you will require either additional product managers to take care of individual product detail or senior PMs to manage PMs, etc… This is entirely based on the size and scope of your organization.

This level really requires you to ensure there is strong cohesion and performance amongst the products you manage. Maybe you are still managing a product yourself. And really, that your PM is measured and performing accordingly.

You should be feeding your team market data as as much as you can, and working with other management-level peers within your organization to deliver things in a consistently strong fashion and always on-time and perform well in the marketplace.

The bottom line: More team management, product performance, and working with management to absorb some of the internal overhead so your team doesn’t have to. You may still be managing a product yourself depending on the size of your organization, but you are responsible for your team executing and delivering so you need a very strong knowledge of product management and how to manage those individuals.

VP, Product Management

I would say at this point, you are no longer managing a product yourself. Again, depending on the size / scope of the company you find yourself a part of. For example, in GE this is probably the case, but in a start-up – not so much.

Really, your focus is here is making sure there is strong cohesion and product standardization, product planning a delivery processes are working, and everyone is being held accountable.

Additional effort is expended absorbing internal politics and overhead to ensure your team can execute effectively, and you make yourself available for assistance wherever they need it – whether that’s a customer visit, or helping shape requirements, etc… Remember – you are still there to coach and grow other PdMs.

At this point, you should probably also be thinking, “What’s my next step?” As I managed at the outset, maybe it’s an operations role – maybe it’s CEO – maybe it’s CTO, who knows? It really does depend on what you want to do. If you’ve made it to this point, it’s probably quiet clear you are prepared and poised to continue to really excel.

The bottom line: Management, management, management. Of course, staying of top of the market you are delivering to is a constant, and making sure there is a strong cohesion amongst all products is required. Of course, be expected to be held accountable at the senior management level, and be called upon to present to investors and the board of directors from time to time.

Other

There are several other roles you can explore, and may find yourself drawn to as a next step. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about operations. I suppose a title here would be VP, Operations or COO. These are very, very good spring boards to becoming a CEO – I could say with confidence that if you get to this point and are really executing well, it’s only a matter of time before you get the tap to take the reins.

I have less experience in the industry / domain than most of the people with whom I work. How do you convince an audience that has spent more time working in the domain than you, that you have something that they should listen to? How have you managed to say that ‘persuasively’?

Answer from Adam Bullied of Write That Down: I’m going to strip this question down a little bit in order to address what I believe is being asked. Essentially, how can a product manager easily change industries?

This can easily be perceived as something that’s more challenging than it is. Especially if you are joining up with an organization that has founders (or a management team) with extensive experience in the industry the company is in.

It’s daunting. How can you possibly execute effectively and ramp up in time to add any value when others already have years upon years over you in knowledge about users, competitors, what works and what doesn’t, and many other factors.

To me, the answer is all about having the right fundamentals and knowing what being a product manager means.

I’m now on my third industry as a PM (enterprise e-commerce, then digital music, and now online travel) and each time I do dive in to something new, it has been much easier than the last. There are a couple of reasons why this is the case. And funny enough, it’s very similar to sales.

I’m sure everyone has heard the expression, “he could sell ice to an Eskimo!” Usually, it’s used to refer to someone who has an extremely firm, death-like grasp on what it means to sell something. Anything, really. Some widgets.

They can pick out who to push something on, and then once they start talking to that person (or those people) really pinpoint how and what to say to them to get them excited about the prospect of completing the order. And then they actually complete the order and get the money.

In all reality, this example refers to someone that doesn’t need to be an ice expert in order to close an order. All they have to know is the science (and the art) of selling.

Product management is extremely similar. I think there are just some more layers to it. To me, it boils down to one thing — you just need to know how to ship a product.

You need to know there are users that have a problem. They need a solution to it. You envision that solution (with the help of your peers) and then construct a multi-step plan (your roadmap) to deliver on that solution. Then those users you are trying to solve the problem for will tell you if you are right or not, or even if you are relevant or not.

I will always respect and try to leverage the knowledge of those with deep and broad industry experience. They have some great wisdom that can help you avoid potential landmines, or tell you what they have already tried, whether it failed or not (and hopefully) why it failed — or, why it was wildly successful.

For example, I’ve stepped into organizations that belong to an industry with which I literally have zero familiarity. I’ve created a product definition and complete roadmap (that only changed based on date for a six month time span) and pushed hard to execute and get that product out the door.

You really have to put yourself in the shoes of your user. Did it really matter if I experienced all they would experience or had all the knowledge the others in the business might? Not a chance.

The reason for this is very easy — and at the risk of repeating myself, I think the message is crucial enough to re-state. If you identify the problem, who you are solving it for, and then the stages by which it will be solved, you have already done more than those with all of the “industry knowledge and experience” have done – otherwise, you wouldn’t be in the organization at all to begin with.

If you take a step back and see this for what it is, it really is a career choice for you personally. Do you want to be a professional “industry veteran” that knows everything there is to know about the entire market and process of making and delivering a single type of widget?

Or, do you want to be a professional product manager who is outstanding at shipping product? My choice is the latter — I would rather be very good at shipping great products than I would be very good at shipping only one kind of product within only one industry.

Don’t let industry experience fool you for actual smarts and know-how. That’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, because you will start to put too much stock into what those experts have to say instead of listening to your instinct, and in fact, listening to your aggregated user data and statistics.

And that’s what being a professional product manager is all about.

I understand that direct feedback from customers is important when developing a new product and managing existing products. In my case, I’m one of the Product Managers that isn’t able to work with customers directly and must rely on other parties within the company to pass information along. This, of course, means that the people I rely on have priorities outside of getting me the information I need. I’ve found in many cases that I receive bad information because getting feedback for me just wasn’t a high enough priority. What’s the best way to ensure that the people I rely on for information are giving me real feedback that will actually benefit the growth and development of my product?

Answer from Adam Bullied of Write That Down: Gathering market data, specifically customer and/or user data, is key to developing and ultimately shipping a product that successfully solves problems within a defined market. However, not all product managers have the luxury of calling on customers directly or reading user e-mails, support forum posts, and other channels.

When you rely on others to gather this data, how can you expect to consistently release market-driven products?

The first issue to work through is why the product manager doesn’t have direct contact with the users. Sales, Marketing, Executive (and others) should be more than fine with regularly scheduled contact with both actual customers and prospects. It’s critical the PM follows-up to ensure that right questions are in fact being asked, and the answers are being interpreted and recorded properly.

If you are a PM and absolutely cannot talk to customers, you should be asking “why not?” And, if you have to rely on other cross-functional parties to retrieve data for you, there are some things you can put in place by working with the cross-functional team leads (for example, the VP, Director, etc…):

• Sales: Win / Loss, Opportunity Pipeline, Customer Visits, CRM
• Marketing: Analytics / ROI Tracking, Campaign Metrics, CRM, Surveys, General Analytics
• Support: Wiki, Knowledgebase, Customer E-mails, CRM
• Other: Analyst Reports, Web Research (Wikipedia, Compete.com, Hitwise.com, etc…), Industry Trades, LinkedIn Q & A

This list runs a pretty wide gamut. There are different scenarios to keep in mind if you are a PM releasing B2B products or if you are PM releasing B2C products. For example, consumer products typically won’t have extensive win / loss reporting or CRM systems. That being said, this should give you some idea of both putting the systems in place to gather the data cross-functionally, as well as trying to validate what you have discovered with industry metrics.

Let’s look at a specific examples in each department. I’ll take a more Enterprise / B2B approach, simply because it’s ridiculous that if you are a PM in a consumer company and you don’t have access to any user data. We’ll break this example down by department.

Remember, if the functional team lead isn’t willing to help you get these things in place at all, you have other problems on your hands (like major politics) that need resolving. It’s very difficult being a PM at all — never mind when there are folks just not capable of understanding what you need to do your job, and that any of these things can help them too once they are in place. This is a challenging balancing act (believe me, I’ve been there multiple times). And while you can scavenge for data throughout your organization, you may find that unless you have explicit top-down support behind you, nothing is getting done – and that can really knock the wind out of your sales quickly.

Sales

You may like working with Sales or hate it. There are PMs in both camps. I don’t mind it, so long as they are willing to help and can look-up regularly from their next three deals to give me some insight about what’s going on in the Market. You simply cannot ignore they are out there, pounding the pavement and talking to the people you want buying your product.

Win / loss reports are the first big thing. Yes, this requires top-down assistance from the Sales Manager in order to implement. However, here are some points:

Pros

• Easily implemented within the flow of an existing CRM system
• If structured properly, you can trend the win / loss data and start to see patterns emerge about why you are losing deals (features, poor roadmap, pricing issues, etc…)
• It’s quick — getting this implemented should take about a week, depending on the red-tape and size of your Sales organization
• This gives you a strong sense of if you should follow-up with customers directly or if you to try to work with the rep to get more data to help you with your decision making process

Cons

• Sales people hate filling out reports
• A rep will typically not want to give anyone reasons for why they lost a deal — it makes them look bad
• A Sales Manager will not want reps taking huge amounts of time filling out detailed reports
• Unless properly structured, the data coming back in will be awful and not robust enough
• It’s grandfathered in — there’s no way reps are going to want to go back through all of their previously closed deals (either won or lost) to fill this report out

A win / loss is very standard – especially in B2B organizations. In theory, you should be able to call up any prospect that was “lost” and talk to them for more detailed data. You may also ask the rep to tag along on customer visits, regardless of whether they are a current client or a prospect. They should be glad to bring along the expert. Plus, you get to spy on them to see if they are making promises off of your roadmap you don’t like.

Opportunity pipelines do tie directly into win / loss reports a great deal; however, they should be used to predict what products are getting some good traction in the market. This is especially helpful when managing a multi-product portfolio. The pipeline should flag you to critical problems that will eventually make their way into your product P&Ls. For example, why isn’t a product selling as well as forecasted? This is a good discussion point for face-to-face communication with your Sales Manager and/or reps. Why are deals taking so long to close? This may call for some changes to the purchasing process or pricing. Or maybe the roadmap isn’t what the market is expecting?

But again, these are great questions to have answered, but they don’t go all the way. Either your win / loss reports will fill in the gaps left by your pipelines, but you’re going to continue to encounter the situation of needing to get on the phone with the client, or simply visit them with the Sales rep to see what they are all about.

Marketing

Marketing plays a crucial role in understanding how your customers are actually engaging with your product. Remember, product managers listen to a market, and marketers speak to it. If you aren’t getting solid traction with campaigns, or in the case of a Web-based product — it’s not getting solid numbers (as displayed by your analytics package in place), it’s time to research what to do. The positioning could be off, the feature set may not be very engaging. Maybe your product is really hard to use?

Again, these are solid indicators of issues or successes – but more research is typically required to sort through the data. It’s great to know your Web product isn’t very sticky / engaging, but what are you going to do about it? Maybe you are missing some key commoditized features. For example, a blog platform (think, WordPress) that is released and doesn’t offer a way to provide readers with RSS feeds for each blog on the platform probably is going to be overlooked by a large percentage of your targeted segments.

Making those decisions requires acknowledgment of a) you know your industry b) you know your market and c) you know there is an issue.

Support

While support reps are an internal resource, like Sales they are on the front lines. They know better than anyone who is having problems doing what with your product. Make regular trips to your call center. Make sure the reps are getting proper ongoing product training. The more your relationship is developed with this functional group, the more data you are going to get that starts to help solidify your decisions as problems become exposed with the Sales and Marketing data points outlined above.

You may have an internal wiki or knowledgebase in place, or maybe everything is filtering through your CRM system. In the case of the latter, you will have the benefit of running win / loss, pipeline, marketing, and support reports all from the same place. You should then be able to start cross-referencing details about things like, “18% of our customers have requested we put feature A in place. Sales has lost 2% of deals over the last 90 days due to not having Feature A, and our site analytics indicate our bounce rates are increasing after users check our feature list.” This example paints a pretty clear picture that Feature A needs to be put in place.

Other

Just get out there and start retaining all of the information about your industry you can. By wary of analyst reports, since they aren’t very good of predicting the future at all. But they are good for more historical trending and short-term roadmap items. Competitive analysis is also crucial – you can always get some solid ideas about what’s working the market place by identifying and analyzing some of your key competitors. Sites like compete.com and Hitwise.com can also help you to trend out how competitor sites are performing in the market to help you set some baseline objectives.

At the end of the day, all of these things are great to do and they can really help you out. But, they may require some active lobbying from the PM to have them put in place. Typically in start-ups, if you have a great CEO, they want to hear about all the issues. If you are reporting to a Director / VP of product management and they don’t see the value in implementing these things and of actually getting out the office and talking to customers, you may want to think about having a chat with your CEO.

There are a myriad of outstanding reasons why PMs need to be involved at all stages of a deal (in the case of B2B) and in most cases (for B2C) directly responsible for acquiring and handling all user data. That all being said, it is possible using the methods I cover here to make some educated decisions with only minimal engagement from others in the organization since they may already be doing much of this anyways, or willing to put it in because it does benefit them as well.

Happy researching!