The product manager is one of the most pivotal roles in any company. The responsibilities of a product manager often vary from company to company. But in general, the product manager jobs require a candidate to deliver a differentiated product to the market that addresses a specific market need and represents a viable business opportunity.
What Does A Product Manager Do?
A Product Manager role is largely about ensuring that the product supports their company’s overall goals and strategy. Among the main things that a product manager do on a day to day basis include-
- Defining the vision, strategy, and roadmap of the product
- Articulating the customers’, user’s and/or buyer’s needs
- Closely monitoring the market and developing competitive analyses
- Gathering, managing, and prioritizing market/customer requirements
- Aligning all the company’s stakeholders around the vision for the product
- Prioritizing the features and capabilities of the product
- Collaborating with other team’s including sales, marketing, engineering, and support to ensure that all the customer satisfaction and business case goals are met
Skills and Competencies Needed In The Product Manager Role
In most cases, the product manager description covers a wide range of skills. However, most product manager roles have below key components-
· Business expertise
Product managers are central to the success of the product. To ensure this and to keep the product profitable, they need to have a range of important business skills. In addition to this, they also need a good amount of technical knowledge to be able to understand how all departments in the organization work and robust people skills to make sense of how a unified team works to be able to deliver an outstanding product.
· Robust operational ability
Product Managers in any organization need to deal with several minutes and big details to manage a product successfully. This could include anything from managing spreadsheets, churning out the details from numbers, and more.
· Domain expertise
Detailed knowledge of your niche market and product area is something that should be inevitably present in a product manager. As someone managing the product from start to end, you need to have a thorough understanding of your customers and the business.
Understanding The Role Of A Product Manager At Various Stages Of A Product Lifecycle
Every product comes with a fixed lifecycle that consists of various phases. The roles and responsibilities of a product often vary based on the lifecycle stage their product is in. To be able to identify, acknowledge, and understand which phase a product is in is a key aspect of a product manager’s role.
Primarily there are four key phases in a product lifecycle, including introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. During each of these phases, a product manager is required to focus on different aspects (as discussed below) to ensure the successful development of a product.
1. Introduction
This is a phase where every new product has to go through unique challenges, some of which require an early intervention of a product manager. Among the things that a product manager needs to focus on at this phase include-
- Emphasizing various aspects of the value proposition related to the product
- Highlighting different features to keep the new product viable
- Although a product manager may not be directly managing various tasks pivotal to this phase, their job as an in-house expert is to explain to everyone relevant the highlights and features of the new product.
A great product manager always puts customers and their needs first. Any new product they work on should build more value for clients and the company as a whole instead of just boosting sales temporarily.
2. Growth
This is the stage of the product life cycle where sales begin, and companies start investing in marketing since they figure out which messages are resonating with the target audience and which channels are best suited to them. At this stage, the product managers need to-
- Strategically manage the influx of competitors, who can drive the prices down to either match or undercut alternative products, to remain competitively priced without giving away unnecessary margins.
- Plan and strategize on which new features or changes are required in the product to bring in the additional business beyond early adopters.
- Prioritize the entire product roadmap to maximize sales during this phase.
3. Maturity
Maturity of the product is essentially a phase where new customer growth tapers off, competitors grab market share, and profits start to decrease. At this stage, a product manager needs to-
- Use this phase as an opportunity to reduce production costs while continuing differentiation of the product from the rest of the market.
- Bringing in more efficiency in every aspect of the operations, such as automating customer support and onboarding tasks.
- The focus of a PM at this stage must be on enhancements with a high ROI that enables them to open up a new target market with a unique product offering or reclaim the existing one.
4. Decline
This is a phase where the product starts going downhill, either due to a reduction in overall demand or a replacement solution. The other reason could be that the competitors must have surpassed your product in affordability, functionality, or popularity. At this stage, the product manager needs to-
- Understand the different scenarios that are driving the decline and how to manage the situation
- Find out various ways to leverage existing technology and brand equity to pursue and succeed in an entirely new market
- Figure out ways, in collaboration with marketing teams, to get previous customers back again or prompt inactive customers to restart and resume activity.
To Conclude
Product development jobs are fundamentally about thoroughly understanding the needs and desires of your target customers, followed by figuring out the right kind of product to build to address those needs optimally. The role also entails working with a cross-functional team within the organization to continually refine the product built to ensure its viability and success in the market.
There are multiple factors to consider when defining what makes a product manager successful. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. The need is to work hard and improve on all the elements mentioned above to truly increase your chances of success.
A successful product manager has various core competencies, such as performing a market assessment, robust communication skills, and design skills that help build a foundation for effective product management.
