How to Improve Product Management

By  //  February 7, 2022

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 25% of businesses have a longevity of more than 15 years. What sets these successful businesses apart lies in the quality of their leadership – it’s in their overall strategy, customer acquisition, product development strategy, and human capital.

Assuming their current sales approach is effective, companies who excel in product management and as a result lead innovative, new product development can end up winning in the marketplace, as new products are the rocket fuel for sales growth. If you master the creation of new products, with an expert or not, chances are you will be able to grow market share and profits, all things equal.

Turn your idea into a successful product with a discovery phase of a software project.

Make Customer Insights A Priority

All successful companies understand who their customers are, and have a comprehensive insight into their needs – even unexpressed needs.  However, start with the basics and thoroughly research and gather all your customer insights and feedback in one place and then make sure you share this information with your teams.

Often, customer feedback can exist in a wide variety of places such as customer emails, on social media and in CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management). Tracking down all your customer insights, analyzing them deeply, and sharing them with the relevant teams will ensure that your product and services meet or exceed customers’ expectations.         

Prioritize on Your Product Portfolio and Objectives 

Even though difficult, reaching your sales goal comes only when prioritizing the investments for your new products or services. This will help especially when you have way too many projects underway all competing for adequate funding.

The best product management practices include  ranking of product development projects in the portfolio, but also must have adequate customer evidence behind those critical decisions to show that it is not just the product manager’s opinion, but also found in the data.

This makes all the difference when investing scarce resources in R&D, ensuring product-market fit, communicating with the development team, and driving growth in your top and bottom line.  

Product Roadmaps: The Next Step in Portfolio Management

Making visible product roadmaps and integrating them into your planning can be a very useful way to articulate your vision for the company – they are visual, and show the relationships between product introductions, which helps ensure that the organization gets the bigger picture. Your team will work much better if they understand the context of what they’re working towards.

Giving them a clear direction, timetable, and prioritized features direction will make them understand what new product development lies ahead, and will allow them to keep their focus on, and enthusiasm for, market leading products.   

Increase Execution of Your Product Management Function 

If your business has been going well, and you’ve been able to manage most aspects of the business process, it may be time to elevate efforts to the next level and examine the product management function. Even though your current product management team has delivered in the past, you need to evaluate if they are the right team for the future.

There is almost always a turning point in a growing business where sales starts to flatten out; perhaps your product managers and product teams have topped out, or changes in the marketplace dictate more innovation; in this case, you should look at the leadership in this function.  

To increase execution you need to either broaden your personal role significantly, or even consider hiring more management to help with workload. At this point, the future of your business will rely on  great market instinct, good product technical knowledge, and strategic thinking and negotiation; aspects of management that not only take a certain type of talent, but also consume a lot of time.  

Get Help From a Product Management Expert

Last, but certainly not least: It is highly recommended that you consider using a product management consultant or a product management consulting firm to elevate your new product development to drive sales and profitability. Firms that offer comprehensive product management consulting services for any stage of a company’s life are especially good at delivering the best product management expertise for technology companies.

A good firm will be able to help you with proper and thorough assessments,  customized solutions, and relevant strategies for your product categories and business strategy. Their impact can be invaluable, and your organization could benefit from outside expertise whether it is consulting or training.

Improving product management is hard. If you have the patience, the experience, the right customer insights, the right team, and the right approach, you can expect to generate significantly more revenue from new products.