I’m a product manager in a services organization. As a “product manager,” should I be responsible for just the elements which go into the “product” which we’re selling, or do I need to worry about all of the other pieces which are part of the customer experience?

Answer from Derek Britton, Independent Product Management consultant: If a restaurant were to open, with no expense spared, with a lavish gala and a visit from the Mayor, with free cocktails greeting the hundreds of guests, hand-picked because of their influence, you’d think “great planning.” If they then didn’t have any chefs working that night, you’d think, “Oh dear, bad planning”.

And yet how many high tech organizations today see their “product” as merely the technology they are selling?

If you were to ask any of the customers, you’d expect them to describe their view of the “product” they are investing in as a combination of the technology, the services that go with it, the after-care hot-desk, the ongoing service to provide updates or fixes, the regular news and information from the vendor’s newsletters, regular visits from the vendor account team, and all points in between. Just the technology piece, while it is by one measure (fees) vital, is really nothing without the rest of it, which brings it to life and makes it work for that customer — wahich means they will come back.

So, as product managers, do we spend anywhere near the right amount of time thinking about and planning for improving the way the “other stuff” is provided to our clients? For example, for each of your products, do you KNOW what the value-add services should and could be provided by your services people or 3rd party partners? Do you know what’s mandatory in service terms to make that product “work” onsite? Do you know what else will then “up-sell” service opportunities and how to go and spot that in a post-implementation customer-care situation? Do you know what tangible customer product usage conditions would prompt your account managers or service leaders to instigate a new service initiative to tackle a particular pre-identified customer challenge and promote a new set of service offerings? Do your customer support people ask any questions about the product usage environment and “new projects” underway? Does your account team include the delivery services people or are they merely brought in to “deliver the service” and nothing more? Is your services delivery team carrying any incentive at all to spot up-sell oppourtunity of either product or service?

Typically, no one has satisfactory answers to these questions even though most of them are just common sense practices and relatively easy to implement.

However, most organizations will struggle with handling this internal business process of managing the knowledge of the customer across sales, support and then service delivery. And who is going to get a bad rap? The product manager, of course, simply because, as the CEO of their product, they ought to care about this business process, because that’s how THEIR CUSTOMER will see it. It is the customer who needs to be successful, and therefore the functions that do certain tasks based on a certain order of things, is not a sufficient reason to overlook basic business process.

If you care about the customer, put their view of working with your solution first and put what they might need as a key objective — and determine this in terms of the services you can offer. And then don’t let your structure or hierarchy stop you delivering on it.

Technology companies I have seen in action would sell the “product” including some nominal service, and then (if you were lucky) let the customer “opt” to take further services. What must the customer have felt of the vendor’s confidence in their own services? And who knows what else might have got left on the table if no one was really trying.

A go-to-market program should include all the relevant elements to make your product successful, and that must include a clear value matrix for the value-add services, which themselves must be clearly described and defined effectively as their own product.

Ensure you can describe each of the services you can provide in terms your client can understand. Ensure you robustly define rationale, pricing, target attach-rate (service-per-product ratios) and ensure you can set targets your delivery teams and revenue owners buy into. If you fail to define the breadth of total service you aspire to provide, you will surely fail to provide it.

Even if your service revenues (or margins) are low, setting no objective will reduce them further. Define what your overall solution includes, and ensure each piece can be defined in its own right and as part of the whole.

Answer from Derek Britton, Independent Product Management consultant: I imagine that if you ask 10 people this question, you will get 10 completely different perspectives! Such a diverse array of opinions has already been voiced across the ‘net and in published texts, which tells us this:

1. it’s a great question!
2. the answer is quite involved, but is difficult to describe

First, I would agree with the hypothesis that a product manager should be CEO of the product — that’s exactly the behavioral trait they must show to be truly effective and to lead those around them to help the product truly excel.

We must also consider that some “CEO type” activities are beyond the remit of a PM, such as interactions with shareholders, establishing management policies, process, culture, etc. The point here is that to be “CEO” of anything (even if you are really a PM) means you have to assume responsibility for things and lead or influence others to do the right thing for your product. So, for example, as a PM, you want hiring managers to bring in those with the right skills to sell and support YOUR products, you want the sales leaders to focus on YOUR product, you want your marketing team to put the right spin on the collateral, you want your organization’s other product managers to share your vision of the future so you can work together (and not steal resources from one another), plus a million other challenges. By being “the CEO” you will see it as your role, your responsibility, and your opportunity to solve each of them and more — usually through effective leadership, influence and persuasion… and usually by enlisting others in a shared vision, since you won’t achieve it with merely hard work — it must be a team effort.

That’s where this question gets interesting — defining what a CEO “does”. Certainly if we think that all they do is make the big decisions, sort out the funding, hire the VPs, fire the wasters, help on the big deals, then we are missing the role of the CEO entirely. You will notice most of this is just operational day-to-day routine stuff. This isn’t the key bit, though of course it is important. The CEO sets the strategy, establishes and monitors the culture, builds a vision, challenges the process, and (usually) lines everyone up to squarely support “the customer.”

Not much of this is about barking orders; it is about building consensus, establishing a pattern of leadership, and a culture of empowerment. It is about setting a pattern of behavior where others feel like they can and should make changes for the good of the company, of the product, and of the customers.

Not much of it either is about technology or technical prowess on the part of the “CEO.” It is about reaching out to those with those skills and utilizing them correctly. The same is true for a PM — you don’t necessarily need to know all the techie stuff, but you do need to know how it affects your clients, and you need to know who in your “team” you can refer to for the complex technology questions.

But mostly, for me, the CEO role is about understanding what the company exists for, and this is usually based on their customer. A company is nothing without its commercial lifeblood — its client-base.

I think because of this, effective CEOs almost always have a strong commercial background, and are salespeople by trade, and businesspeople and leaders in equal measure. All of these facets are also within a product manager’s remit, but I think the balance is tipped by the typical sales leader’s experience in getting genuine commercial results, which of course is the cornerstone of any organization doing well. Commercial experience also suggests a cost-management perspective too, which is equally important (and why many CFOs are also good candidate CEOs).

There are for sure thousands of other considerations, but an executive recruiter will usually look for evidence of commercial success in a direct capacity for a would-be-CEO to be a genuine candidate. PMs typically don’t have direct authority over revenue in the same way sales guys do, and that for me, boiled down, is the answer to this, because many organizations see revenue as vital and everyone else as secondary.

I would imagine that seasoned PMs with some specific commercial experience would be very much in the running though. The first step for any PM in becoming a full-blown CEO would be to “assume those responsibilities” in their current PM role. This is the acorn from which greater things can grow.

I am a product manager currently living in the United States. I would like to get international product management experience, though I have had trouble finding good resources. I am also not sure of the requirements to work overseas and not sure if the best way is to start with a big international firm or if smaller firms even hire from the US. Also, would I be able to get a job immediately as a product manager, or might it be better to look for a position that is more prevalent, like sales engineer?

Answer from Derek Britton, Independent Product Management consultant: The geographic location of the product management role is affected by several factors.

Product Management is a broad discipline and much of the go-to-market and product marketing side needs to be territory-focused, which suggests local geographic support (for multi-nationals) — that’s therefore always an option. The product (technical) side of it is often more closely tied to the centre of development and/or the corporate head offices. So this will affect what Product Management jobs are on offer in the UK, for example, and you will need to focus on organizations where much of the development and/or the corporate HQ is located.

To help you locate possible opportunities, there are some obvious areas to consider:

Frankly (and this is good news), there is very little difference in the PM discipline from a geo perspective. In fact, UK organizations use US-based suppliers for PM training, thereby showing a tendency to rely on US ideas. Additionally, membership of AIPMM and others is a global thing; your US-honed skills are definitely viable abroad.

Of course, we must accept that the US is dominant in terms of size of market, maturity of the discipline, and available jobs. It is probably fair to say that while the economies of Western Europe are significant, the sheer level of choice compared with the US is going to be modest by comparison in any other country. Even this site shows a bias towards US-based subscribers –- there are 3 times more visitors to Ask a Good Product Manager from North American than from Europe, for example. This statistical measurement might explain your lack of success so far in finding anything useful.

But, to reinforce the opportunity, there are huge organizations in EMEA with their own software products arm and therefore the discipline does exist. In UK software you can do a search and find the top firms easily enough. In services, there are some players which are UK based. Both of these categories will invest locally and therefore almost certainly have PM staff needs.

Additionally, the likes of Microsoft, HP, SAP, CA, IBM all have their own vertical, geo and segment specific product lines, all of which need managing – there’s probably some merit in checking out their UK job boards. In the end, your current role and your industry will shape what sort of job you are looking for, what industry it serves, and other attributes; I can only guess the specifics so there is no point me making any particular suggestions.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to get a decent understanding of the market, however, is to get onside with one of the UK specialist recruitment agencies, many of whom will focus on IT niche skills. You might need to put some investment in to this though, but it will help you determine how serious your aspirations are, and will doubtless give you a better picture of the possibilities. I imagine that a good grounding in PM from a US perspective would be considered quite a marketable skill on a resume (by the way, a resume is called a “CV” in the UK).

For example, When is a Product Manager’s capacity full? Is it

• X number of products generating revenue in excess of $xx per year;
• X number of products generating revenue less than $xx per year;
• X number of products to launch in the year;
• X number of products in maintenance

Answer from Derek Britton, Independent Product Management consultant: If there was a standard formula, life would be a lot easier, but if you stop for a second, you are going to realise that there are many variables involved in determining the “right sized team”. The good news is that several big brains have attempted to tackle this issue head-on and there is quite an array of supporting material.

First, let’s turn our attention to the professional bodies for a steer. Many of them survey their members to get a sense of the reality of team size and ratios. The latest information might require a membership of the relevant organization, but for the purposes of illustration, here’s what Pragmatic Marketing got back in 2006:

For each Product Manager (PM), we find:

• 1.0 Product managers
• 3.0 Products
• 5.0 Developers
• 0.8 Development leads
• 0.4 Product architects and designers
• 0.4 Product marketing managers
• 0.6 Marketing communications
• 3.2 Sales people
• 0.8 Sales engineers (pre-sales support)

Reference: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/survey/2006

What this shows us is an overall footprint of team size in ratio with the rest of the company. This is an important yardstick. Another yardstick is just a simple view on the number of products – the following quote talks about a one-to-one mapping; I’d be surprised if this is an industry norm, however, and indeed even in this scenario the ownership was moving more towards 1 per 3 products (because of a specialist skill restructuring).

“One company had nine product managers and nine products, one product manager per product. Yet the sales people hated some of the product managers and loved others. The ones that the sales people loved were hated by developers. So we created three product lines with a Product Line Manager for each and then assigned a TPM and PMM to each product line.” (Steve Johnson)

Reference: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/1/2/07sj

Next, let’s now consider the products themselves. Products follow a natural life-cycle from a release and revenue perspective. These life-cycles are well documented, often referred to as the adoption curve, and you will read masters on the subject such as Geoffrey A. Moore’s ‘Crossing the Chasm,’ which talks about the effort required in moving from the “early adopter” phase (self-starter, low-volume of interested customers) to the large-scale, high-volume “mainstream” adoption by the pragmatist and conservative majority customer-base. It is widely-held that the tasks involved in product management are heavily biased towards the initial release and ‘crossing the chasm’. The guidance appears to be that if you are headlong into major new product releases, the amount of PM bandwidth required is significantly greater. Clearly, a larger customer base brings with it a larger workload.

Thirdly, and this is more from a personal perspective, a lot can also depend on the definition of the PM role in your organization, and the tasks and expectations set of the incumbent product manager. Let me give you a couple of examples of how this might have a profound effect.

The first example is where the PM team is being asked to provide genuine “line of business” management and the role includes product vision and strategic business planning. Business planning is a notoriously lengthy exercise, requires tons of research, and invariably needs board approval. It shapes the destiny of the company’s resources for a given period. This is hard-core business management and can be, not always, part of the PM remit. If it is, the ‘role’ might be defined as something else (strategic planning, CTO, product line owner), and this kind of activity will suck up practically all available resource for a lengthy period every time plans are required (a quarter per year, as a rule of thumb).

On the flip side of this, it could be that a relatively modest pool of PM resource has relinquished (deliberately or otherwise) some hitherto core tasks to other functions who are more comfortably resourced – reporting and governance could be farmed off to a central Project Management Office; older product ‘management’ (including sundown policy, extended care contracts) could be shifted to support; new technology acquisition could be in the hands of the acquisition team; and the classic “who does the demo’s and the internal SE training” question could have been solved by a professional services team. These task ownerships dictate many of the day-to-day tasks, which then affect the resource requirement of that role.

One final example is the amount of “content” expertise there exists in the marketing organization, which does affect how much time is spent writing for the PM. Sometimes turnover and skills in marketing dictate that PM is writing virtually all collateral and copy – not ideal but sometimes a genuine issue.

Finally, and notwithstanding the above, I’m afraid a lot of the basis for decisions on team size is nothing to do with any scientific measurement of tasks, products or customers. That rather sordid thing, company politics, also plays its part. A strong VP who is truly bought in to the value and therefore need of the PM team will probably support and promote a healthy resource pool, and invest in appropriate training, talent acquisition and infrastructure. But in periods of flux or a downturn in fortune, or where there is something as primitive as a clash of personalities or a weak VP, things are not necessarily so positive. I’ve seen both, and for no other reason than who is calling the shots, the size of team has been night-and-day different.

So while I haven’t been able to give you the math of an answer, I hope this gives some indication of the number of variables in that equation. Talk to YOUR VP and find out how they view PM; this could be your first indicator of what sort of resourcing you can expect to see going forward.

How much do you think the product manager should be involved in hiring new team members? At my current position I am involved in a bit of a professional tiff over hiring. I think if they’re team members who are going to be offering technical or administrative support to my product than I have an obligation to be involved. Part of the problem also stems from the recruitment team we’ve been working with; I have been pushing to find more folks through recruiting sites and other marketplaces where we can get specialized recruiters without breaking the bank. But, I have been at odds with both project and hiring managers who seem territorial. Am I over-stepping my boundaries or do I have a case?

Answer from Derek Britton, Independent Product Management consultant: It’s not 100% clear to me whether this question refers to hiring other PM’s into your team, or whether you mean hiring others in the organization who will be directly contributing to your Product area. I’ve therefore covered both.

Who recruits is actually a question that goes right to the very heart of whether the Product Manager has true operational responsibility for the entire go-to-market success of a product, or whether they are merely responsible for helping shape strategy and product delivery, reporting to others who own the “business” side.

Re-stated, the question is “Who shapes the team that delivers on the vision (including revenue results, go to market activity etc.) for a product”? Should it, as you might think, be something the Product Manager decides? In an ideal world, we’d all like to think so. But for other teams? What about the fact that the skills required might be (especially sales, maybe very technical positions, even some marketing expertise) unknown (or at least not clearly known) to us. Surely we have to defer to the relevant functional leaders. I mean, if it is a sales guy, surely it is the sales manager who has to do the hiring, as he has the best skills to make the best judgment; otherwise, what is the sales manager’s functional remit? When you consider functional specialism, it is abundantly clear you have to defer responsibility for recruitment to those functional leaders, and trust them to recruit the right staff.

Having said that, you absolutely have every right to — at the very least — specify any product-area-specific requirements you have to that functional leader. Certainly in the cases where the recruitment is going to be unique to your product area (if that is the case, trust me you are fortunate), you may be looking for a unique type of skill, a specific background, a certain demeanor, etc. This may even be part of an existing product area business plan, in which case any failure to listen to your input can be flagged to those responsible for that plan (assuming again it isn’t just you). In software, there is a big difference between repeatable, transactional selling of “upgrades” of existing kit, as compared with new-site major enterprise deals. The sales skills required for each are so different as to be almost mutually exclusive. This does have an impact on recruitment — it is your prerogative to raise such matters.

Where you do want to specify needs, I think that agreeing your requirements with the interviewers (and for the job spec, obviously) would be sufficient. I can’t imagine you necessarily want or need to interview all candidates for a role in another team, for example. Where the teams are separate functional disciplines, again such as sales, development, even marketing, certainly F&A, you’d want to leave that to the functional leads, and simply give input as necessary. If the “team” in question is somewhere within the overall PM organization (however it is structured), you have a stronger case for attending the interview, of course. But again, the leader of the function is probably ultimately going to have the say in terms of who poses the questions. In my role, we have tended to have “informal chats” lined up after the interview where other PMs can get to know any good candidates, to at least have a view of a first impression, but the actual interview process only involves the boss and one other team member, not the whole gang. Frankly, countless people asking similar questions is not a good use of time and does not convey much trust in those doing the interviewing.

To summarise, my personal view here is that the PM should be informed and involved, but not necessarily directly taking part, in any wider (non-PM) team recruitment. For the PM team itself, the involvement is more hands on. Where the recruitment is outsourced in some way, certainly in terms of the initial screening, then the initial specification must be rock solid –and you can stipulate that in the service agreement with your supplier.

Finally, any “tiff” needs to be resolved, face to face. If you have an “issue” with recruitment, you need to understand yourself what you think is amiss, and be sure your view is based on a professional principle, not a personal perspective. I know people who want to control every aspect of their PM sphere of influence, but it invariably results in them alienating people who don’t appreciate the implied lack of trust. The subtleties of influencing skills may be required to yield the best possible results in this case. If you just don’t think your recruiter grasps what is needed, then you have to explain the “gap” in terms of the business value the role needs and therefore the skills required. It isn’t a scalable fix to try to conduct the interviews yourself.

While this response covers a lot of ground, the question implies a lot of possible scenarios, so I was hoping this will be a good general guide and will hopefully cover your specific case. If not just send further comments and I’m sure we can pick up the more specific thread.

I’ve been in a Product Management role for about 7 months. I’ve been tasked to determine whether it makes sense to expand a US-based product internationally. The problem is that I’m always feeling like I need to do deeper analysis when folks around me tell me that deeper analysis isn’t needed. I’m told that all I need to do is a quick back of the envelope to determine if it’s even worth it to conduct that deeper analysis. Biz school teaches the deeper analysis: Porter’s 5 forces, SWOT, etc. But quick evaluations aren’t covered.

I’d appreciate any tips and tricks you might have.

Answer from Derek Britton, Independent Product Management consultant: “Going global”, or at least beyond your home territory, raises some interesting questions about your product, your market and your organization. There are some important considerations concerning language, geographic market forces, cultural aspects, competition in each of these categories that may affect what conclusions you may draw from a quick-fire assessment of the possibilities. You are right that 5 forces, SWOT et al. are hugely helpful here, but you can get a lot of good material down just by being fairly simplistic.

Before we jump in, I would also add that while it feels somehow ‘wrong’ to made such snap judgments, actually this process is extremely liberating, is seen as an effective management tool (read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking“ for inspiration) by many, and supports the accepted mantra for the Product Manager, which is to live life outside of your comfort zone. Yours and your colleagues collective experience may add up to considerably more expertise than you may realise. And the good news is your company appears to be empowering you to do just that!

• Your product. Considerations regarding going global on a product include the following but are certainly not limited to this list:
  • Documentation — Clearly you want to consider providing product packaging, documentation, installation and help manuals in whatever the target language may be. Some regions will insist on local language documentation (e.g. Japan, France), whereas it is less important elsewhere (Nordic regions for example may accept English language).
  • Codepage — Does your product (assuming its software here) support the relevant “code page” (which handles keyboard and screen input of local language) for the region(s)? If not, this is an engineering/testing effort.
  • Character Sets — In the western world your (software product) can work for all codepages and characters the region may need. In Asia, especially Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, the support needs to be multi-byte character sets (MBCS), which might need your software to be re-engineered to handle this. This is called “Internationalisation” and is a significant engineering effort, and would need ROI justification accordingly.
  • Cultural / Geo issues — If there is an incumbent competitor or “best practice” in a given target region, you need to factor into your plans whether you need to step up to providing some level of compatibility. This could be a big ticket item once again. If a Geo has a bias towards certain environments, product shapes, even pricing models (US pricing might be considered extremely high compared with, say, Latin America or Asia), you need to get inside the norm for the region and play out a few scenarios to test the business case.
• Your market. It is very easy to think that the global market is just the same opportunity just divided by the number of possible clients per region. Not so. IBM dominates the high-end server market globally, but only has a modest share in Japan, where local boys NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu are equally successful. Similar services organizations have a few global big guys but a lot of local niches. The same will be true for your market, which will be affected in ways that were perhaps hitherto unknown. It is hard to be too specific without knowing the product and the market in question but certainly if you were to list the top 10 characteristics of a market on a region-by-region basis, you will find notable differences that will affect how you take your product there. Culturally, remember US companies may not fare as well in certain regions simply because of the background, and a reputable local distributor/reseller might be a more appropriate route in, to help soften that blow. But then the margins on each sale drop dramatically, affecting your ROI.
• Your company. The size of the company, its existing (global) market reputation, and the aspirations of its board, and its shareholders, without sounding too dramatic, may affect any decision about a foreign go to market plan. Natural beach-heads to test the water are probably obvious (a US product would naturally find a strong candidate market in the UK and Australia, for example; whereas a strong Hispanic market would lend itself then for a foray towards Latin America). The big question then is how is the company disposed to setting up sales offices, or negotiating with resellers, or making what must be considered a relatively speculative investment on such ventures?

If you had a paragraph for each issue, for each region, in no time you have at least highlighted some primary considerations, and pinpointed any significant knowledge gaps that might need filling. Using that as your basis, this is at least the right model for an initial discussion. Add any caveats to allow for change and refinement, and your company seniors will applaud the speed of response and professionalism.