A Product Manager's Cookbook

30 recipes for relishing your daily life as a product manager

Ulrike Laubner

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783744802093
• Edition: 3
• eBook ISBN:
  9783743198319
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

A Product Manager's Cookbook, is the excellent guide for strategic and technical product managers who aspire to be highly effective. The key themes address pragmatic solutions to challenges and issues in becoming an effective product manager. The book shows methods to defining the right product requirements, implementing process efficiency in order to save cost, and optimize resources, and achieving high level of collaboration within the team as well as with internal and external partners.With reading A Product Manager's Cookbook, you will gain 30 tips, techniques, and great insights into how to achieve success as a product manager. The tips and checklists facilitates the daily product manager's life.

1. Marketing from the Customer’s View

How do customers rate your product, service or market presence? Marketing is the reflection of a company and its services. The first hello, the product design, business cards and brochures, the homepage and the user interface all make up the public image.

Your product will sell better if you develop both the product and the marketing from the point of view of your target customer.

Put yourself in the customer’s position:

• What problem does the product solve for me?
• Does it trigger the ‘wow effect’?
• Why would I buy the product or service?
• When would I recommend it?

Creative minds develop many ‘cool’ features. These features really are fascinating and magnificent––but are they what the customer needs? Focus on the client benefit and your competitive position. In the 21^st century, emotional needs are becoming more crucial for sales. Customers are increasingly searching for sense, for a simple lifestyle, a retreat back to nature or family, friends, and love. Keep these values in mind when developing innovations and when marketing them. Do not waste development and marketing money on unremarkable products that hardly anyone will buy and that will not improve your image. Do not let a lack of time lead to ill-thought-out decisions and then to product flops.

“I have the best ideas when I imagine that I am my own customer.”

(C. Lazarus, Founder of Toys “R” Us)

2. Evaluating Ideas - The Scoring Method

You have analysed the market, carried out a SWOT analysis and found opportunities for a new product or business area. You have brainstormed or used idea management to come up with several exciting new ideas, technologies or services. Now the product management process begins.

How do you now determine which idea is the best?

Many customers tell me that for most of their ideas, their decision to proceed is quite spontaneous: “Let’s just start! Obviously not every idea is going to be successful.”

But how long can a company afford these failures if the competition is faster and their product margins erode?

Statistics show that of the thousands of ideas out there, only 6% are successfully introduced into the market. Of course, there are various reasons for this, but one is that the product requirements have not been checked thoroughly. The product manager must analyse and assess new ideas systematically, so as to make a conscious and firm decision. Poor decision-making often leads to delays in the market introduction of a project. Good, conscious decisions are made with the four-step scoring method.

The four-step scoring method:

1. Develop company-specific assessment criteria from the perspective of the company, the customer, the employees and the competition
2. Identify the weight of each individual criterion
3. Evaluate each idea in a cross-departmental team
4. Identify the ideas with the highest number of points

Then check whether the idea matches the company strategy and the product objectives. For example, if the best idea is a new product that is manufactured with a high-tech plastic, it might contradict the company’s sustainability strategy. Then the idea will have to be more closely analyzed in relation to the business objectives and strategy.

Example:

The Scoring Method

In this example, product b emerges as the best product. For market growth or profit reasons, it may make sense to develop product B, even though it is not as sustainable as other solutions. The final decision is also dependent on strategy fulfillment, project resources, skills as well as the financial situation.

If you have little time or are missing information, you may want to use a different technique to make decisions about new product variants or innovations. See Chapter 5: Make decisions confidently!

3. A General Dogsbody– A Product Manager’s Core Tasks

I encounter many different types of product managers in the courses I teach. Since the title ‘product manager’ is not trademarked, the role seems to apply to many different fields of work. Employees in sales, distribution, purchasing and development are all ‘product managers’. Is someone who is only concerned with the product during its life cycle really a product manager?

A typical product manager has the following core tasks:

• Market analysis and observation
• Development of new product ideas
• Creation of marketing plans (the 4Ps: product, price, place, promotion)
• Product specification, product briefings
• Market introduction of the product
• Product controlling
• Product care during the life cycle
• Product elimination (see chapter 18)
• Internal and external communication

Tasks that product managers do not do:

• Hotline support
• Homepage maintenance
• Collecting financial figures
• Creating advertisements
• Building design concepts
• Elaborating functional specifications (see chapter 7)

Do you have tasks that do not fall under product management? Note them on the last page as room for optimization.

4. Value Curves - The Product Life Cycle

Every product and every service will have its peak sales period and its weak sales periods. In total, products go through five phases, each of which requires its very own marketing campaign.

1. Innovation phase
2. Introduction phase
3. Growth phase
4. Maturity phase
5. Degeneration phase

But how do you know what phase a product is in? How do you decide on the right marketing actions or on investing in new developments?

Look at figures for the product since its launch to find out whether the product can be eliminated, needs further development, or would benefit from a new advertising campaign. You can also make some assumptions based on the historical data of similar products.

The ideal product life cycle

Indicators of the state of the product life cycle:

• Turnover and sales figures
• Contribution margin
• Marketing and sales expenses
• Development costs

These numbers are indicators of where a product currently is in its life cycle. Development costs are lower in the introduct...

Table of contents

• About the author
• How this book will help you relish your job
• Table of Contents
• What the symbols mean
• 1. Marketing from the Customer’s View
• 2. Evaluating Ideas – The Scoring Method
• 3. A General Dogsbody – A Product Manager’s Core Tasks
• 4. Value Curves – The Product Life Cycle
• 5. Make Decisions Confidently!
• 6. Spot Trends or Discover Needs
• 7. The Burden of Requirements Specification
• 8. Mastering your Workload – Time Management
• 9. Daily Business: S.O.S. Actions!
• 10. Accurate Product Briefings for Agencies
• 11. Traveling with your Customers – The Customer Journey Map
• 12. Getting to know the Customer – The Persona Method
• 13. Offline is OUT – Online is IN
• 14. Meetings – “Lord of the Things”
• 15. Managing Product Projects – Focus on the Goal
• 16. Living a Multi-Cultural Communication
• 17. The Buyer as a Friend – Teamwork
• 18. Death of a Product: Eliminating Products
• 19. Preparing a Successful Product Launch
• 20. Scanning the Horizon – Benchmarks
• 21. Modern Design – A feast for your eyes
• 22. Present Convincingly
• 23. Market Data in Brief – The PM’s Cockpit
• 24. Avoid Conflicts: Appreciation
• 25. A Symbiosis with the Sales Department
• 26. Fair Prices at Last – Setting Prices
• 27. Prices are Emotional – Always!
• 28. “Want to bet that…?“
• 29. Marketing for Technicians
• 30. Determine Customer Satisfaction
• Copyright