Great product management starts with an insightful understanding of your market.  Not just understanding a customer, and not even understanding all of your customers, but understanding your target market.  What works for you?

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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There are a bunch of new* ways of selling software these days.  SaaS (Software as a Service) has been in the consumer space for a while, and is making significant inroads into the enterprise software space today.    If you’re considering purchasing or using software, you should understand what SaaS means and how it is different from the software products of the past.*

(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Having trouble working through complex concepts?  Struggling to get a “simple” message across?  As human beings, we are all pre-wired to absorb visual communication.  You should take advantage of that to give yourself an edge when it comes to communicating.

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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We just wrote about the importance of understanding your non-customers.  That doesn’t mean you should neglect your current customers.  If you do, you’re in world of trouble.  Even if you don’t abuse your customers, maybe you’re taking them for granted.  You’re losing some of them every year.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Jeff Lash has been kind enough to ask me to answer another question on Ask A Good Product Manager.

Question: How can we decide between focusing on the needs of many small customers with only a few users each and the needs of a few large customers with many users each?

Go check it out for my answer and the developing conversation and other answers…

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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A lot of people stand up a variation of “If you build it, he will come” (from Field of Dreams) as a copy-writing hook for whatever they are about to tell you about creating products/services/whatever.  We’re no better.  We’re going to tell you that there is a big difference between the people who buy your product and the people who use your product.

If you build what he thinks he wants, he will come.

Actually, we need two catchy quotes.

If you build what he actually needs, he will come back.

For good measure, let’s plug my recent article in The Pragmatic Marketer, Maximize Your Word of Mouth Marketing: Turning Users Into Fans with a gratuitous quote.

If you build it right, he’ll bring his friends.

These quotes (the first two) highlight the differences between buyer personas and user personas.

(6 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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We’ve all heard the saying, the customer is always right.  For most product managers, however, the non-customer is the person you should be listening to.  When you hear the phrase understand your market, the goal isn’t to understand those people who’ve already purchased your product.  The goal is to understand the people who haven’t purchased your product yet.

(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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Should product managers get certifications? Ask a Good Product Manager asked us to answer.

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Adam Bullied has thrown down a “manifesto” to start a conversation on product management - and to try and help drive our community to a common definition or understanding of product management.  And he’s asked for feedback.  Using idea seeding, we’ll see what we can come up with in 30 minutes.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Jun 14th was the first productcamp in Austin (and the second one anywhere).  It was a great event, and here’s the presentation that I did on how to define the strategic problems that drive our products.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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