Advice for PMs!
Experienced Product, Tech, Sales, founder folks of GV, what would be your one piece of advice for a new APM/PM (1-2 yoe) in the industry, that would help them in the long run. Feel free to also let us know any mistakes you made as a Product guy, early in your career.
- Talking to customers is overrated.
- Don’t always rely on what the data/ analytics says.
- Use your product. Extensively. Everyday.
- Use other products. Think like a pm of these products while using those.
- Stay away from most Product gurus on LinkedIn and twitter.
One advice: Talk to all the customers and not only the most vocal. Monetise the ones who are not willing to speak or do whatever but talk to everyone and not fall into a cognitive trap.
Great one!
- Get a very good understanding on overall business. How a business works. What the different functions and how they complement each other.
- Identify your customer and users. Talk to them, listen to them.
- You are not here to write a document and create Jira ticket or coordinate with engineering for feature live date. This is not your primary role, not even secondary, just a basic requirement. Do not get hooked to these tasks.
Majority of your time should be spend on 1&2 and literally nothing more than 20-25% on 3
Point no 3 is something that I’ve faced for quite some time
This is the conscious effort one has to make in the beginning. Better you become with 1 & 2, better your understanding of problem to solve for. This automatically leads to low time consumption in 3.
Think of this way, as a PM your responsibility is to solve for business problems allowing company to reach its goal. Technology is just a medium to achieve it.
Start practicing on https://pearmock.com. Problem Solving practice is most underrated.
Product pitch karne ka tareeka thoda kazual hai! But yes will try it
Focus on execution! That's the hard part.
And second, use your own product extensively! I know it sounds basic but you'll be surprised to know how many don't use their own products and just rely on feedback, especially in B2B scene.