Cauvin

Believe it or not, prospect problems and product positioning play only a small part in customers' decisions to purchase or use your product. The majority of obstacles to product adoption lie in the behind-the-scenes decision-making processes that people and organizations face. It's true I've dedicated many entries on this blog to pointing out that, to market and sell a successful product, you must develop it so that it: Solves problems that prospective customers face. Captures or "owns" a compelling position in the mind of the prospective customer. Many, if not most, products fail on both these counts. I've explained how the best product managers acquire market understanding and apply marketing principles to address these issues. Nonetheless, even products that solve problems and are well positioned often fail, because buyers weren't able to deal with change management issues that precede the purchase of a product. Prospects wishing to pu...

Trying new things - especially new software products - can be both intimidating and time consuming. You face a challenge when introducing a product in the marketplace. The forces of nature are working against you, since almost everyone but " early adopters " resists trying new products. A major reason people resist trying new products is the learning curve. People simply don't have the time or patience to wade through pages and pages of documentation just to figure out what a product does, envision what it's like to use it, and how it would disrupt the way they live their lives. One thing you can do to minimize this obstacle to adoption of your product is to provide the shortest path. Providing the shortest path means minimizing the time and effort necessary for a first-time prospective user to obtain demonstrable value from your product. To provide the shortest path, you do some combination of the following: Make available a "quick start" guide that a pr...

You may have heard the ( apocryphal ) Henry Ford quote: If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse". Over at the On Product Management blog , Saeed gives his take on this infamous quote. He "hates" it, and gives some compelling reasons. Saeed is spot on in his explanations. Personally, I think the quote is great, but it's a matter of interpretation. The valid point of the quote is not that it's a bad idea to facilitate a conversation with your market to better understand it. The valid points are: You must ask the right questions to get valuable answers. You must interpret the answers thoughtfully - often outside their direct meaning - to glean reliable information. Asking questions is not always the best way to "listen" to your market. (E.g., sometimes pure observational studies are more reliable.) Nonetheless, I find the quote is helpful to combat "armchair product management" in the...

It's common for people at all levels of a company, and in all company departments, to comment on the usability of the product or company web site and give suggestions on how to improve it. Why? Here's a clue. I wrote in late 2005 that: Most people, including executives, consider much of marketing to be common sense. We're all consumers, so we all know how we respond to products, names, logos, advertisements, and PR, right? So we're all experts on what works in marketing, no? Wrong. See the original blog entry to learn why marketing is not common sense . The same principle applies to usability. In playing the role of consumer in many aspects of our lives, we use products and web sites, and we know which ones are usable - and perhaps even what makes them usable - right? Wrong. Just as marketing isn't common sense, usability isn't common sense, and for the same reasons. Nonetheless, debates over usability and strategies for redesign can get quite contentio...

Reading Al Ries and Laura Ries' War in the Boardroom , I took particular note of the following excerpt (page 36): [A] left brainer at a smaller company thinks, "We can't afford the costs of launching a new brand. So let's use our existing name. Furthermore, we already have some good consumer recognition. With a new brand, we'd have to start all over again. We don't have the resources to launch a new product and a new brand at the same time, nor is it necessary to launch a new brand." The authors ridicule this line of reasoning, which is unfortunately common even among marketing professionals . The authors counter that successful product strategists: Strive to create a new product category. Create a new brand to stand for that category in the mind of the customer. Keep the brand focused on that one category. In the short run, creating a new brand may be more expensive. But in the long run, trying to "stretch" a brand name to stand for more th...

I will be in Sydney, Australia in early November to facilitate the fourth installment of brainmates ' Product Talks . The conversations will focus on the challenges of balancing commercial initiatives with user experience concerns. A copy of the media release follows: Raising the Bar on Product Management Excellence brainmates is inviting Product Management specialist, Roger L. Cauvin , to Australia this November to lead public and client events in Sydney, offering his expertise and fresh perspectives in Product Management to local corporations. Cauvin will be facilitating brainmates fourth Product Talks session, a free quarterly forum that brings together product and marketing professionals to network and discuss issues in contemporary Product Management. Cauvin will lead conversations on ‘Balancing Commercial Initiatives with User Experience Concerns’ on November 5th at brainmates’ office. Registration is required to attend Product Talks events. A selection of brainmates clie...

Pragmatic Marketing has a framework for creating and marketing successful, market-driven products. A grid familiar to many product managers and marketers depicts an overview of the framework: The left side of the grid shows the more strategic marketing activities, while the right side of the grid shows the more tactical marketing activities. On the far left side of the grid, we find research activities such as understanding market problems, the competitive landscape, and distinctive competence. On the far right side of the grid, we find presentations and demos, sales or other "special" calls, and event and channel support. The grid is an enormously useful tool for finding the gaps in your company's marketing efforts. Most of us who have taken Pragmatic Marketing classes know that most companies are severely deficient in the left side of the grid. They either have no coherent strategy or have developed strategies without a thorough understanding of the market. Does y...

Before becoming a product manager, I was a software engineer for about eleven years. During my career as a software engineer, I interviewed for many different positions and many different companies. Some of the companies had perfected their interview process; they employed such methods as: Analysis and design sessions Coding quizzes Design pattern questions Development process question/answer sessions The candidate's performance during each segment was fairly objective and straightforward to assess, and hiring managers felt confident that a candidate would excel on the job if she performed well. Any software engineering "rock star" felt confident that she would come close to acing these exercises and quizzes. Now, as an experienced product manager having recently interviewed at various companies, I'm struck that 95% of product manager interviews yield almost no useful or reliable information for assessing how well the product manager would perform on the job. Unfor...

Recently, several of my favorite bloggers have debated the role of product management in agile product development: Adam Bullied asked if the notion of an agile product manager is baloney . Enthiosys argued that agile does and should change how product managers do their jobs . Saeed argued that agile only need affect product management incidentally and at the margins . You'll find my thoughts dispersed throughout some of the comments in these blog entries. If you're an executive interested in the debate, here's what you need to know. First, read a blog entry I wrote in June 2005 entitled "Agile Product Management" . In it, I lay out some of the basics of waterfall and agile methods. Second, read a blog entry I wrote in September 2005 entitled "BUFR" . In the entry, I contended that the two main causes of problems with waterfall methods are big up-front design (BUFD) and big up-front requirements (BUFR). Third, note that the most important set of proble...

Over at the On Product Management blog, Saeed asks us to complete a brief survey on what the biggest problems are in technology product management. I answered roughly as follows: Q1. What do you see as the biggest problems facing the technology product management profession today? Too much tactical activity in the absence of sound strategy. The lack at most companies of a skilled interaction designer or user experience professional role. Q2. What solutions would you suggest to address these problems? Educate executives about the importance of strategy and how to best determine it. Hire skilled interaction designers or user experience professionals. Q3. Which of the following best describes your role/department? Product Management

Over on the Accidental Product Manager blog , Dr. Jim Anderson writes that cost-based pricing of a product is a bad idea, and that value-based pricing is the way to go. Cost-based pricing and value-based pricing are two different ways a product manager can decide on the price of a product. A cost-based price is the cost of producing a unit of the product plus a certain margin. For one example of applying cost-based pricing, see Adam Bullied's blog entry on the pricing new products . A value-based price reflects the value of the product to the customer. The way I suggest pricing a product based on value is to use negative pricing . Dr. Anderson points out that price and volume have mutual feedback effects: Since your unit cost is changing with volume, your price will determine how much you sell. This will then impact volume which then impacts unit cost. As a result: So what’s wrong with cost plus pricing? Simple - cost plus pricing will cause you to over-price your ...

Back in November, Seth Godin wrote about a frustrating experience almost all of us have shared. You call customer service, navigate a long sequence of touch-tone prompts, only to be informed that the office is closed. In Godin's case, he endured nine prompts. If a typical product manager or business analyst presided over the development of this telephone navigation system, I can imagine how it went. "Let me talk to your subject matter experts (SMEs) ." "What are the departments a customer might need to contact?" "Let's draw a chart showing the different paths through the phone system." Contrast this approach with the following focus on real requirements . The product manager or business analyst converses with customers and customer support to understand the problems that they are trying to solve and avoid by calling support. The problems don't just include the reason they call support in the first place. They also include potential proble...

You may know that Austin led the global product management community in holding the first ProductCamp . About ninety product management and other professionals spent a Saturday in June in the air conditioned comfort of the St. Edwards Professional Education Center. ProductCamp is like BarCamp, an informal conference in which professionals meet to share ideas about technologies, tools, and practices. I'm pleased to announce that Austin's second ProductCamp is taking place in January. We are expecting over 175 of Austin's most talented product management, marketing, and product development professionals to attend. This time the event will be at the UT College of Communications building. WHAT: ProductCamp Austin WHEN: January 24, 2009 WHERE: University of Texas, College of Communications CMB Building (Studios 4B-4E) 201 W. Dean Keeton St. Austin, Texas 78712 For more information on the event, or to sign up to lead a session, visit the wiki . Register for free here . Pragma...

Laura Ries makes two primary points in her recent blog entry : If your product is innovative or the established brand leader, it should own not just a word or idea in the mind of the customer, but should also "own" the category itself. I.e., customers and prospects should equate or strongly associate the category with the product. If your product owns a dying category and you introduce a new product in new or healthy category, don't put the new product under the same brand umbrella. Instead, create an entirely new brand . Some choice quotes: [L]eaders many times become the generic for that category. The brand becomes a short-hand device for talking about and asking for a particular category. Kodak is not in trouble because people don't love the Kodak brand anymore. Kodak is in trouble because people don't use conventional film cameras anymore. Moving Kodak to the digital category makes no sense at all. When your brand owns a category in the mind and your catego...

In August of 2005, I pondered , "Why Pay for a Logo?" Logos can be important, but it doesn't require deep thought to create them. It's just a matter of following certain simple (albeit counterintuitive) guidelines . Now Seth Godin recommends : [T]ake the time and money and effort you'd put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead. But when you do choose a logo, keep in mind that your impulse to create one with "meaning" is probably a bad idea .

Solution selling is a sales approach in which the sales person probes into the prospect's pain points and puts together a package of offerings to address them. Rather than selling a single offering, the sales person combines several offerings for the specific customer. (For a comprehensive introduction to solution selling, I recommend SPIN Selling .) Just as sales people should consider solution selling, product managers should consider solution management . Consider how some companies structure their product marketing. A friend of mine works for a company that sells hardware, software, and services. Each hardware, software, or service offering is a "product" in this company's terminology. The company's product managers manage these individual offerings. They determine the roadmap for each product, communicate the requirements to developers, and govern the marketing of each product. The company's business clients, however, almost never buy any individu...

On his Tyner Blain blog, Scott Sehlhorst has a richly informative entry on software as a service (SaaS) . What makes his treatment of the topic noteworthy is his focus on practical customer benefit rather than on the hype that typically surrounds SaaS. Based on Scott's entry, here is how I boil down the problems with licensed software that SaaS solves for customers: Deployment time and expense. When a new version of the software comes out, it can take considerable time and money to roll the software out, especially in an enterprise environment. With SaaS, upgrades require little or no deployment time or expense for the customer. Administration time and expense. Typically, when software is installed at an enterprise site, administrators monitor and manage the installation to ensure it is functioning properly. With SaaS, the provider handles site administration. Lack of accessibility. If the software is installed locally on individual computers, and a customer needs to use s...

Now that we have had more than a year to assess the success of Apple's iPhone, let's see how the predictions of the marketing gurus panned out. Laura Ries predicted that Apple would initially sell a lot of iPhones, but that ultimately the product would flop. I think it's safe to say that the iPhone has not flopped. Apple sold four million of them in a recent six month period. Ries has recently revisited her prediction . Seth Godin predicted that the iPhone would be successful, and that Apple would sell more than two million of them in 2007. I suspect he was right about the 2007 sales. From a marketing perspective, the most important observation about the iPhone is that it has not turned out to be so much of a convergence device. While much of Apple's initial marketing touted the iPhone's merging of music, Internet, and phone capabilities, that perception in the mind of the consumer has not taken hold. In fact, 51% of iPhone purchasers say they will use an iP...

Are you an executive who has recently adopted Scrum or another agile approach to product management and development? If so, Pragmatic Marketing's Stacey Weber has some important observations that will help you understand the roles and skills you'll need on your team. (See my concise description of Scrum first.) First, your product manager (often equated, unfortunately, with the product owner in Scrum) should focus on the problems to be solved, not features: How often have you already envisioned the solution before you’ve stated the problem? Begin with the problem-oriented requirement: “Every [frequency], [persona] has [problem] with [result].” Then work with a user interaction designer or business analyst to define the solution. and Take a look at your team’s backlog. Is it features? Or, even finer-grained tasks than that? A Product Manager’s primary responsibility is to know the market – to discover urgent, pervasive problems that people are willing to pay to have solved. ...

Scrum is an agile approach to product development that is centered around brief, informal stand-up meetings. The term "scrum" originated in the game of rugby. A rugby scrum is a way of resuming a game that has paused due to an accidental foul or the ball having gone out of play. Opposing players engage head-to-head and compete for possession of the ball, which is thrown into the fray. A "media scrum" is an impromptu press conference in which the media gather around a political figure and bombard her with questions. Thus "scrum" has come to refer more generally to a short, informal gathering. In the Scrum approach to product development, scrums are frequent (often daily) stand-up meetings in which each member of the product team states his immediate goal and any risks or obstacles he is facing. The scrums typically start at precisely the same time every day and are often time-boxed to 15-20 minutes. Other Scrum practices include: Iterations ("spri...