If you have ever been in sales, you will understand the frustrations of trying to sell products or services that customers do not want. Product management is necessary and the crux of getting saleable products or services into the marketplace.

A product manager’s key responsibilities include:

  • Managing a product/service life-cycle from research, conceptualization , design, prototyping, testing,costing, promotion,improvement to its end of life.
  • Monitors the operating plan to support efforts to increase market share and achieve revenue with profit for the key stakeholders.
  • Designs alongside marketing the go to market strategies to educate,inform the market about its offerings in order to deliver leads.

As a product manager, the role is a central aggregation of information from various stakeholders such as competitors, marketing, operations, customers, prospects and government agencies. To succeed in product management, the information gathered must be crunched and analyzed in order to harness the hidden business intelligence that can be used to inform the evolution of a product road map.

4 key characteristics of a successful product manager as follows:

1. Working with business intelligence and not gut feelings

The product manager will be continually asked why and the product manager must always be able to answer why with facts and figures support by evidence. It is much more powerful than answering with opinions of self or any others.

2. Getting the priorities in order

There is always an infinite amount of things that should be done but with finite resources. The product manager regularly struggles with resources to develop new products and also budget to push the product into the market.  There will be a need to weight the pros and cons of each, continually measure the competing issues to be in line with the company’s growth strategy and revenue plans.

3. Saying no

There will be plenty of times that someone will tell you a certain new product or feature will rock the market or the engineer telling you to trim a function because it will delay the development.

If those request undermine the key objectives of the plan, you have say no. The key is learning how to articulate the rejection with evidence and making the constituents understand your reason for saying no.

4. Transparency

No one should ever be in the dark about what is happening. Get everyone on board onto the same page by constantly communicating your prioritization, product road maps and the “whys” behind them. This will ensure maximum possible collaboration across the different functions together and to move forward as a team efficiently.