The Product Marketing Sales Manager

A note for new subscribers: This post is part of a monthly Sunday series on my notes on technology product management (this is what I do for a living). You might notice that these posts often link to older posts in the series on LinkedIn even though they are all available on this blog. That is intended for folks who only want to follow future product management related posts. Finally, for all those of you who don’t build tech products for a living, I believe many of these notes have broader applicability. And, I hope you find that to be the case as well…

We kicked off this series – “Notes on Product Management” – by defining the role of a product manager and outlining the 4 key skills required to do the job – problem finding (solving for value), problem solving (solving for usability and feasibility), building effective teams, and selling.

We then spent time working through why problem finding is the most important skill and how to approach building problem statements and hypotheses. The next high priority skill we’ll spend time on is selling. For the sake of simplicity, I referred to the process of persuasion using marketing and sales as “selling.”

Today’s note, thus, is focused on how to think about Marketing and Sales in the product management process.

Why Marketing and Selling are part of the job.

“If you need to persuade someone to take action, you’re doing marketing.” | Seth Godin

Marketing, thus, goes beyond price, ads, placement, and product. It is the story about what we do and why it matters. It begins with the product and extends beyond the product.

The popular adage that people don’t buy a drill and instead buy a nine inch hole is incomplete. They don’t buy the hole or even the photo frame they hang on the wall. Instead, they buy the experience that comes from looking at something they care about. Great marketing generally starts with great products. But, great products don’t guarantee great experiences. Harley Davidson motorcycles aren’t special because they’re the most technically advanced motorcycles (they aren’t). The Harley Davidson experience, on the other hand, is something else altogether. There aren’t too many other brands who get their customers to willingly tattoo their logo.

So, what then, is the difference between marketing and sales? I’ll defer to Seth’s elegant distinction –

“Marketing tells a story that spreads. Sales overcomes the natural resistance to say yes.”

Marketing and sales are thus part of the job description of every educator, executive, and knowledge age worker. The proportion of the job involving marketing and sales might defer. But, they’re always key.

As far as the product manager goes, the importance of marketing and selling are self evident if they’re working on a (usually B2B) product that is sold by a sales team. But, these skills are just as vital internally.

It is common for marketing and sales to have a negative connotation when used in the context of the workplace. I’ve seen them used as a proxy for politics. That is unfortunate and is a result of a loss of purpose.

Good marketing and selling exist to make important change happen. Product managers who do marketing and selling right ensure their companies don’t ship their org chart. They use these skills to ensure good ideas that add value to users and customers are given a fair shot at changing the status quo. When marketing and selling is done right, the user wins and wins big.

On the other hand, when marketing and selling are used just for the purpose of career advancement, the user loses. The good news is that bad marketing and selling never survives in the long run – but, that is a discussion for another day.

How to think about marketing and selling in the product management process

As Product Managers, we are always attempting to persuade people to take action. We attempt to persuade our customers and users to use our products. We attempt to persuade our executives to resource our problem areas. We attempt to persuade our teams to do their best work. And so on.

My visual of this persuasion process is as follows.

We have 3 elements of persuasion at our disposal to make the change we seek to make –

(1) Direct marketing: This is everything that we do that is content led. When we combine easy-to-use flows and thoughtful in-product copy that attract “self-serve” customers, we’re doing direct marketing. Similarly, when we create a thoughtful strategy doc for a new initiative that wins readers over before the meeting, we’re being effective direct marketers.

(2) Sales: The other alternative is to employ the human touch. When we build a product that works and combine it with a narrative that inspires our sales team to be more effective, we are doing our job as effective salespeople. Similarly, when we facilitate an effective discussion that persuades our executive team to support that new idea that will massively improve the way we serve our users, we are selling effectively.

(3) Brand marketing: Brand marketing is the friction-reducing atmosphere in our persuasion process. When great brands deploy sales teams, they need to focus less on acquisition and more on customer success. Similarly, when we’ve acquired a reputation in our organization for someone who does great work on behalf of our users’ needs, it becomes easier to get cross-functional buy in.

The next step is to explore how we might get better at these skills – more on that in the next two posts.

A career and life sidebar: Our lives are an endless chain of persuading people to do things. And, while the process is hard enough when we’re dealing with adults, the difficulty level only goes up further when dealing with kids. While understanding how to apply these skills has a lot of obvious applicability in our careers, they extend well beyond work… making for a fascinating life-long learning journey.

Activation Energy

Activation energy is the minimum quantity of energy required for a reaction. The activation energy idea shows up every day in our lives in the form of the minimum amount of energy required to build momentum toward what we want/need to do.

Activation energy is why its hard to get to the gym on a cold morning. It is why getting started on something important is painful.

But, for those of us who have (at least on occasion) managed to make it to the gym on a cold morning, we have likely experienced that is easier to work out long and hard once we’re there.

Activation energy, thus, regularly stands between us and desired habits. So, it is worth understanding activation energy and how we can work with it.

Overcoming activation energy requires willpower. In the long run, the best use of willpower is to create habits. Habits, in turn, help us reduce the amount of activation energy required to get something. But, it isn’t easy to create good habits. So, here a couple of interesting questions for us to consider in our quest to do so –

1. What are ways to reduce the activation energy until we create a habit? For example, we could start the year with a commitment to go to the gym with a friend for the first 6 months. Or, perhaps, we might pay for a personal trainer.

2. Are there ways to bypass the friction and still reach the end outcome? A consistent home workout for a month may be a great way to get us into the habit. Once we consistently begin to feel the benefits of a good workout, it becomes to lower the activation energy threshold.

Like most things, activation energy is neither good or bad. It just is. And, our experience with it is what we make of it.

Extreme opinions are useful for promotion and debate

Given the sheer competition for attention on the internet, it is a melting pot of extreme opinions. Extreme opinions are great for publicity and entertainment value. They can also be pretty useful to spark debate.

But, by spurning nuance, extreme stands rarely help us get to the truth of the matter.

My approach over time has been to treat extreme opinions like the dissonance between the quotes – “many hands make light work” and “too many cooks spoil the broth.”

Each is useful in stretching our thinking in the right context.

But, the truth, almost always, lies somewhere in the middle.

Making “be kind to yourself” easier to implement

The advice “be kind to yourself” tends to resonate with a lot of folks (me included) because of our default tendency to be harsh with ourselves. For years, however, I found myself wishing I’d find an easier way to remember it in the moment.

A model I’ve begun using to better translate this powerful idea reframes it around the question – who does your self talk sound like? I’ve picked three characters my self talk tends to sound like depending on the day. It could either be harshest critic (“that was a dumb move”), spectator (“hey, what happened there?”), or coach (“let’s talk about what happened there and what you’ve learned from it”).

You could imagine other characters across the spectrum- mom, close friend, critical friend, etc – depending on your natural tendencies.

Thinking about self talk from the lens of these characters and reminding myself to channel the coach more often has made it easier to implement “be kind to yourself.” Here’s hoping it stays.

If you have ideas/models/habits that work well for you, I’m all ears.

Heroic consistency

Performance coach Brad Stulberg shared recently – “Don’t aim for consistently heroic efforts. Aim for being heroic at consistency.

Heroic efforts = take a huge toll emotionally, physically, and cognitively. Not a sustainable thing to strive for.

Consistency = compounds over time. Good enough over and over again makes you great.”

It resonated.

The one thing learning loop

In his book, Morten Hansen uses a concept he calls the “learning loop” to apply the principles of deliberate practice at work.

He suggests the following – pick one skill you’d like to get better at, find a coach/create a plan to improve the skill, periodically review progress, and then loop through the process.

The most useful lesson I took away from his approach was to pick one skill – just one. I’ve been guilty of trying to improve three or four things at a time for far too long. The downside of running so many loops is the absence of focus.

This simple idea has changed how I think of improving my ability to “communicate constructively and with clarity” during the workday. I can sense the sharp increase in awareness as I communicate over the course of the day. And, I’m looking forward to experiencing the results of this increase in focus in a few months.

Another timely reminder that more is not better. Better is better.

That root cause

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve analyzed people/relationship problems only to realize that the root cause is misaligned or unstated expectations.

It is amazing how many potential problems – in relationships at home, at work, and even that all important one with ourselves – can be nipped in the bud by the act of proactively understanding and then setting expectations.

The new year is a great time for revisiting, resetting, and realigning many of these expectations. Here’s to that.

Reflections from replacing a screen protector

I received a replacement screen protector recently (warranty). As detail oriented tasks are not my strong suit, I went to an AT&T store to request help with putting it on my phone screen.

A minute into the procedure (for the lack of a better word), the sales associate who kindly helped out was getting visibly frustrated. He had aligned it nicely but was unable to remove four remnant air bubbles. So, I gave it a try and got the number down to two – both of which were below the screen.

As he was steeling himself to try again, I thanked him for his time and explained that I’d be happy to live with this.

I admittedly came home and tinkered with it for another minute – but, I stopped.

For every such decision, I can think of multiple – big and small – where I’ve wasted a lot of time attempting to get to better and then to perfect. No good has come out of that wasted time.

The list of things worth maximizing in this life are very short. The sooner we realize that, the easier and happier our days are.

And, in case you are wondering about screen protector – I haven’t noticed it yet. When I do, I plan to do what I generally do when dealing with damaged objectives – I remind myself that the bubbles exist to remind me that life isn’t perfect.

It isn’t – thanks heavens for that.

3 reflections on the Echo Dot and Alexa

We recently received an Echo Dot as a gift. We tend to take a wait-and-see approach with most new technology and this was no different. 3 reflections from the first 3 weeks –

First up, our biggest use case is music – specifically children’s music. While we set the occasional reminder, Alexa and Amazon Music (free with Prime) have been an amazing add to the family. Amazon Music’s collection of children’s songs by the likes of Lisa Loeb and Caspar Babypants (the Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran equivalents for adults) is fantastic. And, it is much easier to request music by voice than fumble with a phone or an iPad while carrying a kid.

Amazon’s free music collection is also impressive. While we occasionally stumble upon a song that isn’t available, their radio stations / playlists are top notch for English music.

Second, Amazon delivers on value for money at the $30 price point. For most people, the Echo Dot might just replace the need for a speaker. I’ve written plenty about Amazon’s lead in the battle for the home – this experience has been further validation of the strength of their offering.

Third, I find it fascinating that Alexa and Google Home only offer a better manners option as part of parental controls. Why is it that we consider better manners only for the purpose of teaching kids?

From my experience, I have become more polite in the process of requesting our 2 year old to be more polite. I’d argue adults need this as much as kids do.

Perhaps the teams could consider a requirement for all users? At least one “please” for every 3 requests?

Overall, a fascinating device and one that has definitely added value.

PS: There is, of course, the downside of having a device over hear conversations. The party line from Amazon is that Alexa only hears things when she’s summoned. I am reluctant to buy that and have gone in with the assumption that anything within Alexa’s hearing range is sent to Amazon. As things stand with our experiment now, that’s a trade-off we’re willing to live with.

Why millions of kids can’t read and a better way to teach them

NPR had a fascinating article on the transformation of the early reading curriculum at a kindergarten school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The dominant method for teaching kids to read comes from an influential and incorrect theory that pushes for teaching people using context and visual clues.

The better approach is to help kids/people understand that written text is a code for speech sounds. So, the process of reading is really a process of decoding these sounds.

Harper attended a professional-development day at one of the district’s lowest-performing elementary schools. The teachers were talking about how students should attack words in a story. When a child came to a word she didn’t know, the teacher would tell her to look at the picture and guess.

The most important thing was for the child to understand the meaning of the story, not the exact words on the page. So, if a kid came to the word “horse” and said “house,” the teacher would say, that’s wrong. But, Harper recalls, “if the kid said ‘pony,’ it’d be right because pony and horse mean the same thing.”

Harper was shocked. First of all, pony and horse don’t mean the same thing. And what does a kid do when there aren’t any pictures?

This advice to a beginning reader is based on an influential theory about reading that basically says people use things like context and visual clues to read words. The theory assumes learning to read is a natural process and that with enough exposure to text, kids will figure out how words work.

Yet scientists from around the world have done thousands of studies on how people learn to read and have concluded that theory is wrong.

One big takeaway from all that research is that reading is not natural; we are not wired to read from birth. People become skilled readers by learning that written text is a code for speech sounds. The primary task for a beginning reader is to crack the code. Even skilled readers rely on decoding.

So when a child comes to a word she doesn’t know, her teacher should tell her to look at all the letters in the word and decode it, based on what that child has been taught about how letters and combinations of letters represent speech sounds. There should be no guessing, no “getting the gist of it.”

The results of this approach in the past 3 years have been great.

In 2015, before the new training began, more than half of the kindergartners in the district tested below the benchmark score, meaning most of them were heading into first grade at risk of reading failure. At the end of the 2018 school year, after the science-based training, 84 percent of kindergartners met or exceeded the benchmark score. At three schools, it was 100 percent.

The meta learning here is the importance of educating educators in cognitive science in addition to their respective subject material. To help people learn better, we must understand how people learn first.

This learning applies in our day-to-day as well. We often play the role of educators when we teach our partners, kids, or co-workers about something. Understanding how they learn and process content will help us make a lot more progress in our attempts.