Understand how your business really works
With only four months into my new company and with so many things to learn about my new domain, I wanted to bring up a post by product leader at eBay Marty Cagan on how to understand the business in which you company operates.
I will first start with this quote to set the context. I hope it resonates:
If the CEO of your company gets it in his or her head that you have no real understanding of how the business really works, then you will have little hope of being trusted and empowered.
He then continues:
I can tell you that the CEO is judging product managers on this, and if they are perceived as naïve or worse, it is going to be very hard to turn that perception around.
While this might sound intimidating (specially when read out of context) I think that it does a good job at describing the level of product/business knowledge expected from product managers to excel in tech companies. Please find below the 5 areas that Marty identify to ramp up your product knowledge within a company:
User and customer knowledge
Data Knowledge
Industry and Domain Knowledge
Business and Company Knowledge
Product Operational Knowledge
User and customer knowledge
First off, you have to become an expert on your target user/customers. Gather insights about them from your research, marketing and customer success teams. Learn from your own team. Don’t wait too long before you start talking to your users. You’ll be able to leverage this knowledge throughout your time in the company.
Data knowledge
There generally are three data tools in your company that you’ll need to achieve competence on: 1) Tools to gather data about how your users interact with your product, 2) tools about your product’s sales cycles and 3) data warehouses consolidating large amounts of data. Learn how to answer questions with the tools and understand what the data is trying to tell you.
Industry and domain knowledge
You will be expected to become competent on the domain and industry that your business operates in. That includes understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each major player in the landscape. And also being able to identify industry trends (tech and regulatory) that might impact your business in the future.
Business and company knowledge
Do you understand the various dimensions of your company’s business? Do your partners believe that you understand their concerns and constraints?
Your go-to-market strategy: how your product makes it to the hands of your users.
Your sales process: the funnel from awareness to trials to onboarding.
Finance: this involves both the revenue and costs side.
Legal: this relates mainly to privacy, security and compliance.
Business development, etc.
Product and operational knowledge
Are you considered an expert on how their product actually works? It takes a while, specially for business products where you lack domain knowledge.
You must be an expert on your own product to succeed at the job. While this might seems obvious, you will often meet people that struggle to effectively demoing parts of their product or handle live support queries.
That’s all for today 🙂
Thank you for reading this far.