As the CEO of your product, at the end of the day you are responsible for making it a success. Not sales, not developers, not the CEO. You. This is one of the HUGE differences between a project manager and a product manager.
Project managers can complete their tasks, make sure everything is checked off, and then feel an overwhelming sense of satisfaction. A product manager doesn’t feel that way unless their product is a commercial (or internal) success. In too many companies, the process for making a product a success is overly complex and seems to have been designed by a project manager: it reads with many steps and dozens of milestones. Making a product a success is actually a relatively simple process and can be accomplished by a product manager by following the three steps below.
In a nutshell, making your product a success comes down to doing three things right: improving the quality of leads your sales teams generate, improving the presentations about your product given to potential customers, and increasing the amount of potential customers calling your sales teams. To simplify the life of a product administrator, improvements must be made simultaneously in these three areas. Now here’s how to do that:
- Improve the Quality of Leads Your Sales Teams Generate: Help your sales teams by having existing customers provide referrals to new customers. Hey, the job of selling any product, much less your product, is a difficult task. When a salesperson shows up at a new customer’s door, do you think that potential customer is happy to see him? No. However, if he can get existing customers to open the door for his sales team, then the prospect’s guard will be let down and your salesperson will have a great chance of getting them interested in your product. Direct your sales teams to only meet with decision makers. You know better than anyone what type of fee will be required to shell out the cash needed to purchase your product. Tell your sales teams what to look for. This will help your sales teams make the best use of their time: if they can’t get to the right person, they’ll know to move on to the next lead. Guide your sales team towards the big buyers and away from the small buyers. Every deal takes about the same amount of time to close and if it turns out that a prospect doesn’t have a lot of money to spend, then they really aren’t a good fit for your product. Remember that just a few great offers is much better than a lot of small offers.
- Improve the presentations about your product that are given to potential customers: Help your sales teams by equipping them with the material they need for multiple meetings with a potential client. Rarely will a deal be closed in the first meeting, so you’ll need to teach your sales teams about the flow of the conversation around your product. A key part of this is helping them identify goals for the first and second meetings. If possible, as a product manager, you should practice with your sales teams to make sure they don’t nervously repeat themselves or raise objections before the customer does.
- Increase the number of leads your sales teams call: You are the CEO of your product. It’s up to you to guide your sales teams to the right leads and then let them work their magic. Make sure your sales teams only meet with decision makers – meeting with anyone else will allow your team to be identified as a seller rather than potential business partners. Put your sales teams in charge of their schedules. Have them agree to meet with a potential client at whatever time is best for the client, and then call back later to change the time/date that is best for your sales team. This way, they can include more customer contact on a given day. This is how they will eventually end up selling more of your product.
Finally, make sure the sales teams selling your products are out of the office during core business hours. If they are in the office, then they are not in front of a customer selling your product and this is bad for both of them. While this may seem like a lot of sales work for a product, remember that you are the only one in your company who will ultimately be judged on the success of your product. You have to be able to do it all!
