Quick Tips

Working with customers and engineers

How do newer product managers need to work with external customers and their own engineers?  At a Product Strategy Network Roundtable, Tina Wyland, Associate Product Manager at Philips, Gina Dickson, Product Manager at TrueCommerce, and Jason Baim, Director of Product Management at TeleTracking Technologies, shared their thoughts and on-the-job experiences about succeeding in a position that carries both great responsibility and little authority.  Among their insights:

• Help inform engineering.  Engineers want to build products that succeed, that sell, that delight customers.  The more information you can provide about the impact of their products on the marketplace, the better your credibility and your decisions.  If the engineers were in on some of the customer conferences, ask how they would approach this particular need, opportunity, etc.
• Play nice with engineering.  Get to know your engineers on a personal, not just a project basis.  Bring them into meetings with customers, make them feel included in the team.  It will help to build trust and respect.  And listen to what the engineers think and about what they need from you as a Product Manager.
• Know your customers.  Understanding your market and your customers, and being able to represent those customers within the organization, creates value for your company.  Knowing your market, customers, wants, needs, competition, gaps, and so forth is half the product manager’s job.
• Understand the issues.  There’s a lot going on and the environment is constantly changing, so your #1 priority today may not be the #1 next week.  So keep an eye out for whatever’s changing.  You need to understand all the issues on the table in order to prioritize them.
• Get technically savvy.  You need to know how the product works well enough to understand the engineering tradeoffs behind different designs and how these considerations impact the product and the value it delivers to the customer.  For example, why was a client-server format chosen?  Was it ease of upgrades?  Ease of service?  Cost?
• Understand impact of delays.  If there is going to be an engineering delay, and you’re on top of your product line, you can quantify the impact of that delay in meaningful terms: on revenue, on customer set, on other projects.  If the rest of the company is fine with that, then you’ve done your job as Product Manager – you’ve indicated how the delay changes scope, schedule, resources, and what it means for your product line.
• Develop customer empathy.  Understand the product as the customer/user understands it.  Understanding the user perspective is even more critical than understanding the engineering side.  You have to know the customer tradeoffs for different alternatives.
• Seek customer help.  If a change is significant and important to the customer, see if they’re willing to write the spec for it and whether they’re willing to be an alpha or beta test site.  Engage the customer in the design and development process; you’ll get more buy-in on what you deliver.
• Spend face time.  Hold periodic client conferences and regional conferences.  Conduct focus groups and free-form discussions to see where they go.  Do surveys early in the development process to get the pulse of the customers.  Even consumer product tools like conjoint analysis, preference mapping and others have some value, although they don’t apply as well in B2B markets.
• Find out what really happened.  Follow up with customers after the sale.  Ask why they chose you over someone else or what you could have done to capture their business.  You may be able to add features to your products as a result of learning where you were missing the mark as well as to communicate some things about your products and services which you didn’t realize before were that important.
• Build a board.  Put together an advisory board of people you can call or email for feedback.  Consider forming two advisory groups: a national one and a local one for quick feedback. 
  

Becoming an Effective Product Manager Quick Tips Series:

• Part I of III: What does it take to succeed as a newer product manager?
• Part II of III: Working with customers and engineers
• Part III of III: Business practices for the effective product manager

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