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Showing posts from 2012

Product Management Bookshelf

Great product management requires a combination of learning, leadership, facilitation, and strategy skills.  To gain and maintain proficiency, new and experienced product managers alike can benefit from reading books on these topics.  My product management bookshelf includes a number of texts that never cease to benefit me.  I find myself referring back to the books to refresh my skills, rekindle my product management passions, and cite interesting passages to friends and colleagues. Here are some of the top books I recommend product managers read.  The books I'm listing aren't books on product management per se , but they cover skills essential for effective product management.  If you're an executive overseeing a product management or product team, consider buying these books for the team's product management bookshelf. 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk Al Ries and Jack Trout Follow @lauraries This classic book enumerates and e

Top 5 Prospect Interview Mistakes

One invaluable tool that product managers use to understand markets is the prospect interview .  We identify prospective buyers and users who may share a common set of problems, and we conduct one-on-one interviews with them to probe their situations and dig deep into the challenges they face.  The situations and challenges inform our product strategy and decisions. If you're a company executive, you may be reluctant to empower your product managers to conduct interviews with prospects, as what happens during these interviews could potentially jeopardize a future sale.  Even if you have confidence in your product managers not to jeopardize a sale, you may view prospect interviews as a dubious way of gaining market understanding. Rest assured that prospect interviews will tend to foster trust and enhance future sales possibilities while providing a richer understanding of the market.  But only if product managers conduct them properly and avoid certain pitfalls. The top five