From case studies to pricing strategies and career advice, February was another month of wide-ranging articles from Mind the Product, with something for everyone, no matter where they are in their product career. Read on to catch up on popular content that you may have missed.
How to thrive as a product manager in a product-led growth organization
This post from Yann Sarfati, Co-founder and CEO at startup Userled, offers some advice on succeeding as a product manager in a product-led growth business. He examines the product-led growth model and how you might build and manage products in a product-led growth (PLG) business.
He looks at what sets product managers in PLG companies apart and offers a few tips for thriving as a product manager in a PLG company. Yann comments: “As more companies shift to the PLG model, we can anticipate that what feels differentiated today will shift to what we consider best-in-class product management: working across the functions of marketing and product, driving strategic growth targets, and overseeing the product developments that help businesses reach greater heights.”
How to thrive as a product manager in a product-led growth organization
The first 90 day plan for new product leaders
In this article Shubhansha Agrawal, Head of Product at Yelp, breaks down the first 30/60/90 days of a product leader based on the lessons she has learned from her career to date. She offers an action plan for new product leaders and also points out some potential pitfalls for the unwary.
She suggests you start by building trust. Then take an active role by helping the team to achieve the immediate goals. The team should have clarity on what they need to work on, and the leader should also identify potential failure points. Says Shubhansha: “Aggressively and actively communicate, so it’s familiar to stakeholders and plan for contingencies.” Beyond this, she says, you should cultivate a growth mindset and culture, be inclusive and stay on top of trends and customer behaviour.
The first 90 day plan for new product leaders
Getting your product pricing strategy right
With help from product and pricing experts, this post looks at the key fundamentals for getting your pricing strategy right. It points our that a product manager’s responsibility for pricing may vary from company to company, but the product team will always have insights on what the pricing strategy should look like.
Pricing strategy starts with knowing why customers will pay for your product, so that you then know which customers you should target. Then you should solidify what experience you want to provide for your customers and decide what parts of your product you want to monetise.
The article then runs through how you might determine your pricing model and examines how often you should check it.
Getting your product pricing strategy right
Domain expert or practice expert: Your product management career
In the first of a regular series, Mind the Product’s own Emily Tate offers some insights for product people pondering their career choices. She says she sees two general types of career paths: the domain expert, and the practice expert. Neither path is inherently better than the other – they are just different ways of navigating your career.
She runs through the skills needed for each of these career paths, and the upsides and downsides of both. She says: “It’s also worth noting that deciding you want to focus on one or the other is not an irreversible decision. You can spend over a decade in a single industry and then decide you’d like to try something different and shift into more of a practice expert. Or you can jump between industries for several roles, and then realize you really have a passion for a specific domain and decide to go deep.” Whatever path you choose, Emily’s advice is to think intentionally about your career as you look at your next steps.
Domain expert or practice expert: Your product management career
A case study: How our own product discovery made us pivot Reveall towards product discovery
In this case study, startup CEO Ferdinand Goetzen relates how product discovery led him and his team to adjust their thinking, pivot and change their product.
Reveall started in 2021 as a platform to empower UX teams to do more with their customer research insights but product discovery led to a pivot and the decision to turn Reveall into a product management platform dedicated to product discovery.
Ferdinand explains the approach that led to Reveall’s relaunch. He breaks it down into four phases: research, mapping the opportunity tree, reverse discovery, and delivery. He comments: “Our main learning is that the product discovery really helped to rally the whole company behind the same priorities. Knowing what our desired outcomes are and what opportunities lay within them made it easier to research, plan, scope and deliver features that have impact.”
A case study: How our own product discovery made us pivot Reveall towards product discovery
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