Cauvin

I mention in my article on positioning and messaging that one way of formulating a theme for your marketing campaign is to identify your product's biggest weakness and highlight the strength within that weakness. Since your product can't be all things to everyone, it will have weaknesses. To be really useful and appealing to your target market, your product will inevitably turn off, or at least not appeal to, some people outside your target market. The key is to embrace this weakness and show how your target market benefits from it. For example, are you marketing a software product that is targeted at power users? If so, ordinary users will probably have a hard time using it. The difficulty results from satisfying the complex needs of the power users. That's okay, however, since power users by definition are able to deal with this complexity. You might therefore choose "power" or "sophistication" as the theme to trumpet to these users.

We typically think of an education setting involving a school and teacher who determine the lesson plans. The students in these settings are passive; they listen to the teacher and perform the activities he prescribes. A product manager turns this approach on its head. Product managers learn about the market for their products through proactive learning . We can't rely on someone to come to us with a lesson plan. We create our own lesson plans. Thus a product manager can't just be a good student. A product manager must be a special breed of student that specializes in proactive learning.

Slashdot linked to an article claiming that requiring employees to juggle multiple passwords is costly for businesses and actually decreases security. A particular peeve of mine has been the requirement by some companies that employees change their computer network passwords every month. I got so upset one time that I taped a Post-It note to my computer monitor with nothing but my password written on it, in large bold type.

One of a product manager's most effective approaches to understanding the market is pleading ignorance . When a product manager conducts an interview at a customer site, his purpose is not to sell the product or tell how it will benefit the customer. The purpose is to understand the customer's situation and problems, irrespective of whether the product solves them. Consequently, there is no reason for the product manager to flaunt his knowledge of the market. In fact, claiming to know a lot about the market will tend to: Make the customer feel her ideas and perspectives aren't very important, thereby demotivating her during the interview. Cause the customer to omit information under the premise that the product manager knows it all anyway. Set expectations high, thereby increasing the chances the product manager will disappoint the customer. Pleading ignorance, on the other hand, actually gives the product manager more credibility. It suggests that the product manager liste...

Cote included among his recent del.icio.us links an article by Alistair Cockburn on iterative development . The crux of the issue Cockburn raises is that "[d]anger grows when the results of [an] iteration are not directly linked to delivering the product to the end user." To realize the benefits of iterative development, your iteration cannot simply be a development time period that culminates in testing and refinement of the plan for continuing development of the product. An iteration must result in a working release of the product to an end user. I have made this point in the past: "With iterations, you perform the steps to yield a working version of the product for review." That is, the tests you run shouldn't just determine whether isolated features or pieces of the product work, but whether the end-to-end processes users perform are working. Why is it so important for iterations to yield a working, releasable product? One reason I've menti...

Many technology companies attempt to sell their products to two different kinds of buyers. For example, I once worked for a company that sold their products to both IT and managers of semiconductor factories. Unfortunately, you undermine your marketing efforts when buyer tension exists. Buyer tension is when the messaging that resonates positively with one type of buyer antagonizes another type of buyer. In the case of the company I mentioned above, the messages that were effective in marketing and selling to factory managers antagonized IT personnel. The reason was that, within the customer's organization, the IT personnel were currently providing their own custom solution to the factory manager. The most compelling message for the factory manager was to replace the custom solutions the IT personnel were providing with an out-of-the-box, easy-to-configure solution. Thus marketing and selling to the factory manager antagonized the IT personnel, because it threatened not only t...

Over on MarketingProfs.com , Jonathan Kranz has an article , "Before You Write: Your 10-Point Checklist". One among several noteworthy items on the "checklist": "7. Focus on one thing. I recently worked with an engineering company that has many talents. They do design. They supervise construction. They serve as expert witnesses in litigation. In fact, they do so many things so well that it was hard to craft a coherent message that wouldn't confuse potential clients. In the end, we agreed on a common theme: They solve problems that stump other engineering firms. In doing so, we had to elevate some elements of the message, such as 'problem-solving,' while subordinating others, like 'design.' This winnowing process may be painful—we all prefer to say as many good things about ourselves as we can—but it's absolutely necessary. Messages that are too broad disintegrate like powdery snowballs and never reach their targets. But a focused message...

Imagine someone sends you an e-mail asking you to complete a survey. What is the biggest deterrent to your agreeing to fill it out? Most likely, the biggest deterrent is the anticipated investment of time. If you feel that filling out the survey would take just a couple of minutes, you'll be much more likely to do it than if you think it will take ten minutes. Right? Some market researchers offer incentives for people to fill out surveys. The incentive might be a coupon or entry in a drawing for a valuable prize. For many potential respondents, incentives do not overcome the deterrence of the anticipated investment of time. Moreover, if a survey is too long, some respondents will begin answering candidly but will eventually start to answer randomly to get through it as quickly as possible. Not only are many surveys too long, but some survey solicitations don't tell potential respondents how long the survey is. If you want to minimize reluctance to complete your surveys, keep th...

Tim Bonnemann writes about agile product development: "Agility is about paying attention and reacting. You can’t not make mistakes. What you can do is figure out you made a mistake quickly and react accordingly." The inevitable mistakes and oversights occur not just with product design and implementation, but with product requirements, marketing messages , and pricing. Thus product managers, not just developers, must participate in the agile process.

Besides the view and the availability of free (prepared) food and beverages , another reason I like living in downtown Austin is the Farmer's Market . Saturday mornings between February and December, local farmers and other vendors assemble at Republic Square Park (4th and Guadalupe) and sell a variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, and eggs. Due to the climate of the area, the selection isn't large, but I buy the tomatoes and peppers on a regular basis when they are in season. Best of all, it's one block from my loft .

I described yesterday what a constraint is. I also promised to give an example of a nonfunctional requirement . Below is an example from a recent market requirements document I composed for a client. I have edited it slightly to avoid disclosing confidential information. A driver should be able to plan (in advance, by making a reservation) with a certain degree of confidence that a vehicle will be available when she needs it. Therefore, for advance reservations, it is desirable to maximize the probability that a vehicle will be available for reservation at the time the driver wishes to make the reservation. For a given number of hours of advance notice x , the following formula yields the minimum percentage probability y that a vehicle should be available for reservation: y = 100 - 1 / (.048 * 1.039 x ) The constraint is on a "Use Vehicle" use case . I won't burden you with the details of how I derived the formula, but suffice it to say it involved balancing the intere...

Whether you're a company executive or a product engineer, your product manager may at some point deliver (hopefully not in a BUFR manner) you a market requirements document (MRD). The MRD will typically include functional and nonfunctional requirements that the product must satisfy. The nonfunctional requirements comprise the constraints on your product that ensure it will solve or avoid prospect problems . The nonfunctional requirements will typically express the constraints as conditions or measurements that must hold as the user uses your product. In my next entry, I will give an example of a nonfunctional requirement.

Tim Ottinger writes about requirements in his blog . He mentions the danger of "paper-heavy methodocracy", which is roughly equivalent to BUFR . He also notes (about software requirements in particular) that "a requirement is architecture, language, library, and format agnostic", reflecting the larger truth that requirements should not prescribe any particular design or solution. I wonder if he agrees with my definition of "requirement" ?

If you are an executive at a software company, your development team may be familiar with agile or iterative software development. At first, its advocates lamented "big up-front design" (BUFD). Software organizations that try to design the product up front in excrutiating detail waste a lot of effort, as implementing and testing the software uncovers many unforeseen problems. Agile development attempts to exercise the architecture (high-level design) and expose these problems early. It typically does so by "releasing" the software early for testing. It thereby attacks architectural risks early in the development process and defers the design details. More recently, advocates of agile development have realized that a more serious problem than architectural risk is requirements risk . You never know all of the requirements until you release the product. If your organization engages in "big up-front requirements" (BUFR), you tend to waste even more time than...

The terms " agile development " and "iterative development" originated in the real of software products and projects. Do the same concepts apply to the development of other products? I've mentioned previously that hardware products can benefit from agile development methods. Another domain in which the concepts apply is manufacturing. Lean manufacturing seeks continual improvement. Just as with other forms of agile development, it embraces the assumption that it is impossible to predict up front what the final product will be. There are simply too many variables and too many uncertainties, so you implement a solution and iteratively refine it. A product manager has to work within this process of continual improvement to ensure the product meets the market requirements in a manner that's cost effective and realistic.

Instead of having a product manager go on a sales call , you can use the following effective approach to an important sale: Product manager meets with prospective customer. Pleads complete ignorance. Just asks questions. Afterwards, reports customer's special situation to sales person. Sales person meets with prospective customer. Uses SPIN Selling techniques. Tailors the message based on what the product manager reported. The reason this approach can be so effective is that the product manager "disarms" the prospect by making clear she is just gaining an understanding of the prospect's situation and problems, and does not plan to sell the prospect anything. But then the sales person has the benefit of having a thorough understanding of the prospect's situation before the sales call.

If you like primitive camping and can stand desert climate, you might want to try visiting Big Bend National Park . I've camped there several times. My first visit was a four-day, three-night camping adventure. With my buddies, Jim and Bobby, I spent the first two nights high in the mountains and the third night in a random spot in the desert. My fondest memory of the trip was playing the card game "War" in the desert while drinking warmed cognac as the sun set. I have a multimedia slide show of a more recent visit here . Many of the "slides" are video clips, so you may have to wait a minute for some of them to load.

Seth Godin writes about an unusual but effective promotional idea: surprise rewards . The typical promotion advertises rewards and often tells the customer what they must do to receive them. For example, airlines offer frequent flyer miles. Credit cards offer cash back. But what about rewards that come as a complete surprise to the customer? Everyone likes a pleasant surprise. When the customer purchases your product, how about giving it to them for free every once in a while? Or how about randomly giving them a voucher towards any future purchase? By doing so, you create powerful word of mouth for your product.

Product managers sometimes get dragged into sales calls even though sales is not among their core responsibilities. Product managers, after all, are experts on the market, understand the product, help devise the sales process, and formulate the key messages. What better person to take on a sales call? Sales people and product managers should work closely together so that the sales people are able to operate independently with customers. A product manager has not really fulfilled his full responsibilities if he hasn't communicated his understanding of the market with the rest of the organization. One exception to this rule is that it may be beneficial for product managers to "test" the sales process and messaging by personally applying them with real customers.

Lisa Wehr writes in a MarketingProfs.com article : "Landing page design should be clean; it should have easy-to-find buttons and a clear call to action." You shouldn't just hope that visitors browse various pages in your web site. You should orient the site, particularly its landing page, around inducing them to do something . This advice echoes what Seth Godin recommends in Knock Knock .