Strategies Product Management Leaders Use to Drive Success

SiriusDecisions surveyed more than 200 product management leaders, seeking to understand which programs and activities most aligned with high-performing product management. High-performing organizations are those in which 75% or more of their products achieve sales goals. Here are some of the actions product leaders can take to drive high performance:

• Establish an understanding of customer needs. Eighty-eight percent of high-performing organizations tell us that they have a consistent program to ensure product managers have a strong understanding of customer needs. Leading product management functions leverage customer interviews to understand underserved needs or feedback on offering concepts. Many high-performing organizations are establishing goals and objectives for product managers for the number of customer interactions performed and how much time they should be spending with customers in general. What you can do now: Create a central repository of existing research on markets, users and buyers so that the team can share this essential knowledge.
• Use of consistent criteria to evaluate new opportunities. Product leaders often point to better investment decision-making as an opportunity for improvement. They note that product initiatives are sometimes funded due to their momentum as opposed to a strong business case. Our research has found that organizations that put a business case scoring model in place and use it to make investment decisions are more likely have improved product success than those who don’t. What you can do now: Document the current process for investment decision-making, including who is involved, what type of deliverable is required and the criteria by which decisions are made. Identify any gaps and create a plan to close them.
• Use a consistent process for offering innovation and going to market. Nearly 90% of high-performing organizations have a clear and consistent product lifecycle management process, and most have specific activities and deliverables clearly defined and assigned to specific functions. What you can do now: Assess your current process and identify gaps, and prioritize filling them through clarified activities, functional assignments or standardized deliverables.

These are just a few actions product management leaders can take. Check out the full set of recommendations for during my session “High Performance Product Management: Where to Invest to Drive Business Growth” at Empower B2B, coming up on November 21, 2019, at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco.