At Percolate we look for five things in product managers: Leadership, ability to get things done, communication skills, engineering knowledge, and product sense. The last is, in my ways, the toughest to interview for as part of what you’re looking for is whether or not someone has a product intuition: Do they have an innate understanding of what makes a great product? This article on how to build great products has some good things to say about where that intuition comes from and how to tune it.
On the value of talking to people:
The best way to build this intuition is to talk to a lot of people. Talk to potential users. What do they think? Talk to people who tried to build a product in your space and failed. What can you learn from their failure? Talk to competitors. How do they approach the problem? Talk to engineers in big companies. What can they tell you about the state of technology? Talk to other entrepreneurs in adjacent spaces, investors, journalists, grad students, professors, even the naysayers. The best way to get a sense of taste in a given space is to inject yourself into the industry and talk to as many people as you can.
On making sure you understand who you’re talking to and separating signal from noise:
Beware of noise. Learn the difference between your users and people who are just commenting. Everyone you talk to will have an opinion. Early on it can be tempting to design a product based on feedback from industry pundits. But a feature is only a gamechanger if the person signing the proverbial check recognizes it as one. Otherwise, it’s a distraction. Industry pundits can be extremely useful for understanding the state of your field, but they’re rarely the ones to buy your product. If you design your product around their feedback, you’ll find that there is nobody to buy it in the end.
(Further on this one is the “5 whys,” which is a Six Sigma approach that suggests asking why five times to understand the root of the challenge/opportunity to ensure that you’re solving for the right things.)
The how to build great products article also offers up a really nice framework for thinking about the different categories of features and products:
A gamechanger. People will want to buy your product because of this feature. A showstopper. People won’t buy your product if you’re missing this feature, but adding it won’t generate demand. A distraction. This feature will make no measurable impact on adoption.
Finally, I should mention that if you’re a product manager looking for a new job, you should apply to work at Percolate.
December 17, 2014 // This post is about: percolate, pm, product management, products, Technology
I believe this marks two weeks of blog posts for me, which is a pretty major milestone. In celebration I’m taking the day off and instead sharing our new product video from Percolate. I’ve spent the last four years working with an incredible group of folks building out something that I’m very proud. This video does a really nice job not just showing that off, but also speaking to the Percolate brand.
Without any further ado …
December 5, 2014 // This post is about: percolate, product, video
This Tweet/post of mine really blew up and I thought I would share it here as well. When we first started Percolate I wanted to make sure that we didn’t become a company that became taken over by meetings as we grew. To that end I set a few simple rules in place, most important of which was that no phones or computers were allowed in meetings. Below are the rules or you can check out the whole post at the Percolate blog.
June 13, 2014 // This post is about: business, management, marketing, meetings, percolate
I really liked this quote Martin Weigel posted from Stephen King (the marketing guy, not the horror filmmaker) on how marketing companies must evolve:
Marketing companies today… recognize that rapid response in the marketplace needs to be matched with a clear strategic vision. The need for well-planned brand-building is very pressing. At the same time they see changes in ways of communicating with their more diverse audiences. They’re increasingly experimenting with non-advertising methods. Some are uneasily aware that these different methods are being managed by different people in the organisation to different principles; they may well be presenting conflicting impressions of the company and its brands. It all needs to be pulled together. I think that an increasing number of them would like some outside help in tackling these problems, and some have already demonstrated that they’re prepared to pay respectable sums for it. The job seems ideally suited to the strategic end of the best account planning skills. The question is whether these clients will want to get such help from an advertising agency.
That sums up a bunch of stuff I’ve been thinking about/we’re trying to do with Percolate quite nicely.
March 2, 2014 // This post is about: account planning, marketing, percolate, software, Stephen King, system of record
I wrote a little thing over at Medium about what I’ve learned about how sales works from watching the great sellers on our team at Percolate. Here’s a snippet about how great sales people don’t run over barriers, they get to know them and figure out how to work with them:
What I mean is the best sellers don’t bowl clients over, they work with them, understand them, and ultimately make their way around every potential roadblock together, no matter how vague it might at first appear. This isn’t just about asking easy questions and listening for answers, it’s about being able to get beneath the surface and actually identify a core challenge or opportunity. In this way the same thing that makes a great seller actually makes a great product person: The ability to get beneath the surface and get the root cause of an issue. The challenge here is that it’s not always easy. “Whying” sounds a lot like “whining” for a reason, and that’s the core question you need to ask to identify true opportunities. While a great seller might make a client feel uncomfortable as they go through this process, they build trust in their desire to actually solve a problem instead of just selling whatever it is they have.
February 16, 2014 // This post is about: percolate, sales
