Six tips for more success as a product manager

There is no classic entry point into product management. Only a few universities specialize in training product managers. Typically…

There is no classic entry point into product management. Only a few universities specialize in training product managers. Typically, product managers start their jobs after studying business administration, start as developers or designers and then switch to product management. Others develop from marketing into a product marketing position and from there into product management. Many roads lead to Rome and it is precisely this broad spectrum of previous experience that makes a product organization successful.

At the same time, this diversity also means that, product managers are difficult to compare. Everyone approaches the job in a different way. Every career path is individual. Every company has its own understanding of the role. Therefore, over time, many product managers ask themselves what makes a good product manager and what a career path for product managers can look like.

This question is not easy to answer, but you can actively work to understand for yourself where you stand and what is important to you. Equipped with this knowledge, you will make good progress in planning your individual career path.

1. Define what career is for you.

In the past, a career was clearly defined — it went up the career ladder. Success was measured in terms of the number of employees, salary and individual office. Fortunately, those times are over. A career can go up, or you can become an expert for a topic or domain and follow a horizontal career path. Not everyone wants to lead employees, for some it feels too lonely at the top, others want to continue working hands-on in their area.

No matter what it is to you, you should be able to answer this question for yourself. This way you can find out more quickly what is important to you and what you want to focus your energy on.

2. Don’t be afraid of the comparison

Engage with the other product managers in your company. What are their strengths? How is your career going? What makes you different from them? What can you learn from them? As already written above, you cannot compare any product manager with another and that is a good thing, because only a team that is diverse in all directions will be able to fully develop its innovation potential.

However, thinking outside the box will help you understand where others stand and what makes them successful. The aim is not to be a copy of the others. In most cases, you will only succeed in doing this inadequately. But it will show you what range of skills there are. Use your observations to become aware of your own strengths and try to recognize how you can use your existing potential optimally or develop it even better.

Only those who are aware of their strengths and weaknesses can develop themselves and thus their own careers.

3. Understand your company

Just like with product managers, companies differ a lot in the way products and product ideas come about. My experience shows that there are at least three different types of companies. Try to understand which category your business falls into. Ask yourself in which environment you feel comfortable. Then you will be able to assess more easily what is important to you when choosing your employer.

Marketing Driven Business

In these companies, the marketing department is often in the lead. It’s about SEO, SEM and landing pages and about conversion optimization. These companies are often at home in e-commerce. Product managers in these companies often work on the shop or on the backend and work hand in hand with the marketing department.

From a technological point of view, these companies mostly rely on existing software and the everyday product manager’s task is not to develop innovations or new features. Its more about optimizing the end-to-end journey of the customer so that the conversion funnel is as perfect as possible with only little marketing spent. Or maybe it is about optimizing the backend for customer support and operations teams so that processes are automated or at least run faster.

Sales-driven company

In these companies, the sales team is usually in the lead. The product is presented in the pitch with the customer and it is not uncommon for features that have not yet been built or planned to be promised and sold in order to land contracts.

In such companies, product teams are usually feature teams that manage a long backlog and implement customer requirements.

Companies that focus on this are often B2B companies acquiring large customers, having longer sales cycles. Ot can also be start-ups that want to open up a new market and gain access to the large customer business via the sales team.

In these companies, product managers often work closely with the sales team and take part in pitches with customers. Experienced product managers find a good balance between the implementation of requirements defined by the customer and the implementation of innovative problem solutions. But it is a challenge because the stakeholder management in this area in particular poses a major challenge to the communication skills and the prioritization skills of the product manager.

Product-led company

In the field of product-led companies, Spotify is probably one of the best-known, but there are also other examples like the Kartenmacherei from Germany. Marty Cagan calls product teams in these companies “empowered” because they work self-organized to generate added value for the customer and the company alike.

In product-driven companies, product teams are the heart of the company and 100% cross-functional. Departments such as Product Marketing or Customer Success support the GoToMarket of new products and the sales team supports the product team in order to develop a common understanding of the product.

What suits you?

All three forms have their advantages and disadvantages and there are probably product managers who are comfortable with all three. But it helps to become aware of your own needs. My personal experience is that all three types of companies have a different understanding of productmanagement roles

4. Which industry is right for you?

I have worked with product managers who have a passion for any product and to whom the culture of the company or the manager is more important than the product they are building. But there are also product managers who feel particularly comfortable in a certain industry and who become absolute domain experts, e.g. in fintech. E-commerce, or SaaS.

It is helpful for your career to actively deal with this thought. Knowing about an industry will certainly help you to become stronger strategically and visionarily, as you can observe developments, markets and trends over the years and draw conclusions for your product from them. On the other hand, it can also be exciting to gather your experience in a wide range of industries in order to transfer the knowledge you have gained and thus strengthen your own innovative strength.

5. Assess your own strengths

I have already written above that it is good not to shy away from comparison with others. But it is at least as important to be aware of your own strengths and challenges. Often we already have a good feeling for what defines us. But assessing your own strengths again and again helps us to decide on the areas in which we want to get better.

There are a variety of tools online for this purpose. In addition to the test for product management competencies that I provide on my website, I personally recommend the free test from 16Personalities, which will help you to get to know and better understand your personality profile.

6. Find your blind spots.

Testing your strengths is an important first step in deciding what you want to get better at. But we humans tend not infrequently to either evaluate ourselves better than we actually are, or to put our light under a bushel. I therefore recommend that you also seek feedback from colleagues and superiors. Many people feel uncomfortable because we could hear something that we don’t want to hear. But once the step has been taken, we are often amazed at how appreciative feedback can be and how positive our environment often evaluates us. It is not uncommon for friends and colleagues to uncover strengths that we have never noticed ourselves.

Congratulations. You know now:

• what career means to you

• why others are successful

• whether you want to work product-centric or with a sales or marketing focus,

• what importance the industry has for you,

• what your strengths are and

• how others rate you.

Now it’s time to put everything together and look at where you are today and how things can go on for you. Maybe in a conversation with your manager you will find an opportunity to work on your strengths, to take on more responsibility or to get a taste of another area? Or maybe it is time for you to take the step into another company in order to give your career the momentum you want.

No matter what you choose, dare to take the first step. You know. Everything will be fine in the end, and if it’s not good yet, it’s not the end.