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Marketing

The High Cost of Product Line Complexity (plus Proof the Cranky Product Manager is Female)

by The Cranky Product Manager on January 31, 2011

in Marketing,pricing

This cranky post is sponsored by Quantum Whisper.  They are wicked awesome because they pay me and because they link customer feedback to your backlog.

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Every now and then the Cranky Product Manager learns that some member of the Crankerati is theorizing that she is not really a women, but is in fact a hot dog and beans totin' Dude. After all, what better way to be a spineless wuss than by hiding behind an anonymous persona of the opposite gender?

Well, this post (coupled with the recent few about sexism in software), should debunk that theory once and for all.  No way you'll think the Cranky PM is a "Dude" after this.

Let's set the scene.  A few weeks ago, the Cranky Product Manager went to the pharmacy to purchase the most womenly of accoutrements. Yep, you guessed it, maxipads.  Now, even women who LIVE to shop don't like to shopping for "feminine protection," but alas it must be done now and then.

Anyway, the Cranky Product Manager walked into the store aisle dedicated to such matters. And, as usual, she was confronted with an overwhelming morass of confusing product choices.  

The below photo does not do the scene justice - it covers only about 20% of the entire product selection and only shows about 1/3 the shelf space dedicated to the Always brand. Over 50 product varieties, 20+ from Always alone.

IMG00380 20091009 1137 

The Cranky Product Manager has to tell you that when she saw this, well, she was frackin' PISSED.  Again. Cuz it was the same way last time she bought pads too.

WARNING TO MALE READERS: you may skip the following paragraph.  Yes, you men are all so tough and manly and have copious hair on your chests. Plus you can HUNT DOWN PREY and kill stuff, WATCH sports, use POWER tools, and belch like beer pong champions.  But alas, despite the awesomitude that your Y chromosomes have collectively bestowed upon you, your delicate ears simply cannot handle maxipad talk, much as you cannot function when you have a cold.  So, squeamish males, please skip the next paragraph and recommence reading after the italicized text.

OK, ladies, believe me when I say this product assortment made no frackin' sense. As far as the crankypm could tell, she was dealing with at least 6 different variables -- wings/none, absorbancy, thinness, length, width, odorless/"fresh"  -- and each box on display had a different combination. PLUS each box had a different number of pads, which made price comparisons nearly impossible. From what little she was able to discern, the pricing made no sense, with the less desirable combos costing as much or more than the more desirable ones (who on earth is going to buy super-thick, minimally absorbent pads without wings anyway?).  And then there were the "marketing nonsense" features, where they claim something is "Infinity" and charge more but don't explain wtf "Infinity" is or why it's worth more.  (Also, someone please let the Always people know that NO ONE wants a period that lasts until "Infinity.")  To further add to the confusion,  there are multiple brands, plus the damn CVS brand which THEY INTENTIONALLY package to look just like the manufacturer brands, just to eff with your head.

Yes. The Cranky PM was pissed at this ridiculous cornucopia of choices. Why?

1. It made the purchase take WAY too long. The Cranky Product Manager wanted to spend 10 seconds on this purchase, not 5 minutes. 

2. She realized NO WONDER her Darling Husband (the household's designated grocery shopper) always came home with the wrong frackin' pads!   Those jerks made the purchase process so complicated that it couldn't be delegated.

But even more annoying were #3 and #4...

3. She felt she was being tricked.  WHY put out a ridiculous product assortment like that, with pricing that looked randomly generated, unless they were trying to confuse consumers into buying something less desirable for too much money? After all, they deliberately made it impossible to compare features and prices, plus there was that marketing nonsense talk about Infinity "features" that have no apparent benefit. It just felt dishonest.

4. She felt that the perpetrators of this crime against products did not respect or understand the purchase process of long-time repeat customers. Sure, they might have understood how she USED the product and provided great products to meet those needs.  But they did not respect how she wanted to BUY the product.  As in, I DON'T want to learn about your new features and packaging options while I am AT the store! Don't make me the weirdo who hangs out for long lengths of time (or takes photos) in the feminine hygiene aisle!  

The Cranky Product Manager was highly annoyed. Stupid retailers & manufacturers!  Idiots! 

But then she thought about the byzantine nature of most software companies' product and price lists. And how nearly every good, simple product inevitably decays into a labyrinth of derivative products/options with dubious differentiation and cryptic pricing.

Seems that we software product managers and marketers are not so different than those maxipad people.  In fact, we are way worse.  If a software company has shipped product for more than 5 years, the product/package/price list probably has 100+ lines, each with its own method of calculating price and with multiple dependencies between items.   

And we are thereby annoying the heck our customers. The complexity of our product lines:

  1. Forces repeat customers to spend time they don't have researching purchases for products that they already know quite well
  2. Increases customers' workload, by preventing them from delegating the purchase
  3. Makes customers feel like they're being taken advantage of
  4. Makes customers feel like they're not being respected or understood.

This situation is not at all what product managers intend when they decide to make that new feature only available as an add-on option. Or when they introduce that new technology in a bunch of completely new products, while letting existing customers to carry on with upgrades to the old products.

Alas, it only takes a few of these well-meaning decisions to make product line complexity explode. Watch as your efforts to make customers happy completely and utterly backfire, and as your sales, support, development, marketing, and overhead costs simultaneously skyrocket.

{ 38 comments }

Why the USP for Every Technical Product Sounds the Same

by The Cranky Product Manager on August 25, 2010

in Analysts,Development,Marketing,The PM Profession

Watch as your unique selling proposition is ground into gruel, indistinguishable from everyone else's gruel.

Every time the Cranky Product Manager reads about a new B2B startup or product, she gets a sense of déjà vu.

Alas, it's not a glitch in the Matrix. It's because pretty much every single product pitch sounds exactly the same.  Watered down, generic, and 100% free of taste. 

A grinder is at work at almost every B2B software company.  A soul-crushing process that pulverizes the unique, complex, and interesting, into gruel-like messaging that the industry's lowest common denominator (and by LCD, the Cranky PM means the PR people) find acceptable and almost understandable. (see footnote 2)

telephone game girls

Observe as the Unique Selling Proposition of DysfunctoCrank is ground into pasty mush.  (Anyone remember that game "Telephone"???)

What Development Says to Product Management: 

DysfunctoCrank's architecture uses an MPP-architecture, patent-pending modified vulcan compression techniques, Eventual Iron(TM) technology, predictive klingon data cloning,  dynamic resource kirk-ification, blah, blah, and blah.  We tested DysfunctoCrank on clusters to 64 CPUs, and it did pretty well.  We haven't tested on anything bigger.  

Remember, DysfunctoCrank uses a proprietary clustering. We're going to have to rearchitect the entire thing from the ground up if you want to support cloud deployments, and that will take the entire Engineering team at least a year or two.

What Product Management Says to Product Marketing -  For 80% of the use cases, DysfunctoCrank is about 35% faster than anything else out there and can handle double the workload of anything else.  It can scale out and scale up near-linearly, across any number of CPUs or machines, and has best-in-class features for high availability.

DysfunctoCrank can currently be deployed on-premise, but in our next release we are aiming for cloud deployments (although we still have significant technical challenges to overcome).

What Product Marketing Says to Corporate Marketing -  DysfunctoCrank delivers cloud-based reliability, performance, and scalability that no other Crank system today can match. It is the industry's most efficient, cost-effective way to achieve your business goals.

  • All the benefits of the Cloud: Pay only for what you need - start small, add cloud capacity only as needed. 
  • Infinite linearly scalable, supercharged predictable performance, and no wasted capacity
  • Self-healing, managed reliability

What Corporate Marketing Says to the Press and to the Analysts - DysfunctoCloud is a cloud-based solution platform designed to increase your revenue, lower your TCO, and synergize with your efforts to engage users in a virtualized, Social Media Web 2.0, cloud-based world.  Plus it's in the cloud. DysfunctoCloud is CLOUD-TASTIC!!!!

What the Press Says to the World - DysfunctoCloud is just like the cloud-based offerings from vendor X, vendor Y, and vendor Z.  

What the Analysts Say to the World- In our TragicQuadrangle, we're moving DysfunctoCloud a smidge to the right on the "vision" axis, because their cloud stuff sounds kinda seksi. But we're moving them down on the "ability to execute" axis until they buy more of our consluting (see footnote 2) services.

Footnote 1:  Allow the Cranky Product Manager to continue digging at MBA programs: Business school is a similar grinder. At top B-schools, the newest crop of MBA students arrive on campus as a highly diverse group, from all professions and walks of life. Then, just two years later, 80% of the students depart as one of only two varieties: banker or management consultant. 

Footnote 2: Not a typo.

{ 66 comments }

No Excuses Product Management (Part 3): I Have No Market Data

by The Cranky Product Manager on August 12, 2010

in Marketing,The PM Profession

Please excuse the Cranky Product Manager with a long overdue post, to continue her "No Excuses Product Management" series.

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LAME-ASS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT EXCUSE #3: "I have no market data.  I don't know the market size (or market share, competitor share, market growth, competitor features, or other relevant facts about the market) because there is no budget for market research."

This excuse demonstrates a defeatist, passive, victim-ish attitude that the the Cranky PM always finds shocking in a product manager. Product Managers should have the OPPOSITE attitude.

When tripe like this is trotted out as a justification for not knowing basic market facts, well, The Cranky Product Manager's Official Excuse-to-English Translator yields: "I don't know how to use the Google. I'm not resourceful. I don't know how to use SurveyMonkey or LinkedIn or email. I am uncomfortable with ambiguity. I have no idea how to make estimates (even though my two-year old learned how to do it from last week's Sesame Street). I'm lazy. I expect someone else to do my job for me. I have no business judgment. I have no tolerance for risk. I don't know how to dial the phone. I don't care enough to put in the effort. I am, and always will be, merely a requirements monkey."

The Cranky Product Manager sometimes hears this Lame Ass Excuse from former Proctor & Gamble-ish people who've given up the ivory tower life and are now "slumming it" in tech product management.

Sure, at P&G, the Market Research Fairy leaves conjoint analyses and detailed survey results under Brand Managers' pillows (along with a few much-needed breath mints) a few times a week, and there is nary a question about the product or brand that is too minor (or too expensive) for P&G to research.  But you ain't at P&G, are you?

Freshly-minted MBAs are also prone to trotted out this line of bull. Yes, we know your B-school professor told you that one-on-one interviews are no substitute for focus groups. And that focus groups are no substitute for surveys. And that if you're going to do a survey, you better do it right with a sample size of at least n-hundred, a sample group that is exactly demographically representative of your target, and perfectly designed questions that have been psychographically proven to be 100% free of any trace of bias.  And this is why the Cranky PM loves hiring spankin' new MBAs so much (for all you native Californians, we call this statement SARCASM).

Argh.  Here's a NEWS BULLETIN for all you Rapunzels in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) and all you shiny happy MBA grads: That ain't life in tech,and probably never will be.  It ain't life in any B2B industry, really.

In the world of tech, marketers don't rule the roost, but instead technologists and former Sales Droids rule supreme.  In general (and yes, the Cranky PM realizes there are some exceptions), if a tech company has an extra $400K lying around (right!), it'll probably hire a few more CodeBoys/Gurls or Droids, rather than ordering up a wicked huge market research study. 

You might think this tendency is dumb, dumb, dumb.  You might argue that without proper market research that your company will attack the wrong customer problems and will ultimately fail.  And you might be right.  No doubt, we could ALL use more "real" market research, especially about customer problems and whatnot. 

But guess what.  It ain't gonna happen. This is tech, remember. Sure, you might get to do a bit of "real" market research now and then.  But it won't be every year, and it will only cover a tiny fraction of the questions you need answered.  (After all, it's a bit tougher to do a conjoint analysis on all the features of a CRM system than it is for a bag of flour. And since CPG companies spend big bucks to analyze flour, your dream conjoint study would probably cost a pretty penny - possibly more than your product's revenue.)

So deal with it.  

Sure, continue to beg for that market research budget.  But in the extremely likely event you do not get it, do your own market research.  

Conduct your own customer interviews.  Use LinkedIn to find non-customers in your target market to interview.  Create you own surveys with SurveyMonkey, even though the questions will be imperfect and the respondents will undoubtedly be unrepresentative.  For market size estimates, create a model with high and low estimates, and fill in with data from as many distinct third party resources as you can find. Go at it top-down and then bottom-up - the answer is in the middle. Make adjustments based on reasonable assumptions. Be ingenious. Read everything you can. Talk to everyone who will talk to you.

Trust the Cranky Product Manager, you will learn something very important in this process.  Something you wouldn't know if you just trotted out the Lame Excuse and punted on the research.  Something neither you, nor any of the CodeBoyz/Gurls, would have ever guessed.  

The endless quest for perfect research and perfect clarity is the enemy of the Product Manager.

As is the refusal to do any research because it would not be perfect enough to satisfy your Market Research Professor.

Taking action, based on reasonable though imperfect data, is the Product Manager's friend.  80/20, baby.  80/20.

NO EXCUSES Product Management.  Try it, you might like it.

{ 34 comments }

A Prototype for the Worst Positioning Statement Ever

by The Cranky Product Manager on February 23, 2010

in Marketing

In the last post, the Cranky Product Manager mocked Crypto-Descriptions of companies and products.  Microsoft and Oracle were the targets of her crank-osity.  She’s sure you loved it, because after all, who doesn’t love a good public bashing of  Bill’s and Larry’s spawn?

Anyway, inspired by the ensuing discussion, the Cranky PM figured it might be fun to see if she can create the Worst. Positioning. Statement. Ever., but still have it be believable as something a real software company would say.

Here’s her attempt:

DysfunctoCrank is a business agility platform for organizations in financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, business services, and government who want to accelerate their businesses and achieve improved Return On Agility(TM).

Thoughts?  Can you do better? (and by better, the Cranky Product Manager means worse.)

{ 32 comments }

Call for Nominations: Worst Product & Company Descriptions

by The Cranky Product Manager on February 5, 2010

in Marketing

The Cranky Product Manager has decided to start a vendetta against the Marketing Cryptospeak that is so freakin’ common in the software industry.

You know… those meaningless, boilerplate-ish, hyper-generic, jargon-oozing, designed-by-committee, ridiculously cryptic descriptions of what a product (or company) supposedly does?

Those nonsense-filled sentences that leave  readers so confused about what type of product this actually is (is it a toaster? a really cool foam hand? or project management software?) that they simultaneously hold their noses and reach for the dictionary?

Examples:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.

Oracle Fusion Applications leverage industry standards and technologies to transform organizations into next-generation enterprises. Oracle Fusion Applications are service-enabled, enterprise applications that can be easily integrated into a service-oriented architecture and made available as software as a service.

Contrast these to this  Good Description that clearly states what the product is, what it does, and the benefits — all free of jargon and blah-blah:

Trusted by millions, Basecamp is the leading web-based project collaboration tool. Share files, meet deadlines, assign tasks, centralize feedback, make clients smile.

Alas, Crypto-Descriptions are much more common than Good Descriptions.

Thing is, no doubt the Marketing Weenies for these companies think these Crypto-Descriptions are Good Descriptions – just with even MORE Wicked Awesome!  After all, the Crypto-Descriptions probably took weeks, if not months, to concoct, and were born from some kind of all-inclusive, cross-functional, meeting-laden “product positioning” process.  And some Crypto-Descriptions even appear to follow that Geoffrey-Moore-approved Positioning Statement format (which, by the way, was never intended for external communication, but the CPM digresses).

So, in theory, these Crypto-Descriptions should Rock the Casbah.  But they stink.  Even the Cranky Kid can smell their foulness, and his/her nose has no nerve endings left after spending years in diapers.

So what’s the issue?  How did this happen?

Lack of Courage, that’s how.  Too many companies are afraid to clearly state “we do <X>” when <Y> is the hot, new thing all the prospects are asking for and all the Gardener/Forrest Ranger ho-bags are writing about. These spineless companies think that if they slap on a wig, lipstick, and a prissy dress on their tired old pig of a product, that everyone will be fooled, the product will rank in the “leader quadrant” (or whatever), and money will just start rolling in the door.

As if.

In effect, to attract the minuscule “Stupid Buyer” segment who are 1) dazzled by bright, shiny objects,  2) write big checks on whims, and 3) need drool cups,  these companies opt to ALIENATE their core target market — those buyers that actually HAVE the problem this product solves — by obfuscating what the product actually does and is good at.

What a great strategy.

Please join the Cranky Product Manager in her Vendetta against Crypto-Descriptions and start a “Crypto-Description Hall of Shame.”  Her first nominees are the two above examples, from Microsoft and Oracle.  Join her and nominate others for entry into the Hall of Shame!

{ 33 comments }

The Cranky Product Manager Sez Go Big or Go Home

by The Cranky Product Manager on October 20, 2009

in Marketing,The PM Profession

Oy.  Product managers create business cases and business plans all the time.  The Cranky PM has created and seen a bajillion of them in her day.  Lots.

But, cripes, so many of them suck.  In particular, so many business cases use a device that is a major peeve of the Cranky Product Manager.  Oh yes, you know it.  You’ve probably done it yourself.  It’s the “one percent of the market” argument.  It usually goes something like this:  “The total market is $X.  If we manage to garner just 1% of that total market, we will have $Z in revenue per year.  $Z is a lot of money!  Ergo, fund my project.”

Gack.

This argument seems wise and safe…. conservative even. After all, it is no major achievement to acquire a paltry 1% of a market… OR IS IT?

It is.  Trust the Cranky Product Manager, this argument is WICKED WEAK. It ignores the dynamics of how competitive markets work, especially in the software industry.

In the beginning of a new market’s life, sure, there are lots and lots of competitors.  Enough that many players might achieve 1% of the market.  That’s what markets look like when they are immature and stupid. But soon enough, the market’s childhood is over and you have an adolescent market on your hands. 

And in an adolescent market, a 1% position is completely unsustainable.  Because as that market starts sprouting the accouterments of puberty — the appearance of chest hair, voluptuous hips, or the first contrarian articles in the press (a la “this technology is not quite the shizz that was promised”)  – the number of players shrinks big-time, as the small-time players — the ONE PERCENT players — all die or get acquired.  And voila!  You end up with about 5 players.  And you better believe they all have more than one percent of the market.

And then, our frisky little teenager of a market grows up more and becomes a fuddy-duddy adult, with only 2 or 3 players — the smallest of which will almost certainly have at least a 15% market share.  And that is likely that way it will stay until the market is wheeled off in a casket, or at least put into an assisted living facility.

Anyway, all this rambling about puberty was the Cranky Product Manager’s way of saying that aiming for 1% market share is  basically aiming for failure.  You can’t sustain that.  You’ll either be a success and have a MUCH bigger market share, or you will fail and not exist.  And do the Cranky PM a solid….DON’T show her any business cases where you are aiming for failure, okay?   And don’t show a business plan that only applies during the market’s childhood years.  Show her your plan to become one of the top two or three players in the market’s adulthood – preferably the NUMBER ONE PLAYER — with a hell of a lot more market share than 1%.  Either that, or GO HOME. 

OK, don’t go home.  Your spouse doesn’t want you there either.  Go take up residence in the local Starbucks while you work on the next draft of your oh-so awesome business plan.  Get back to the Cranky Product Manager after you fix it.

{ 20 comments }

Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Part 3 – The Problem with Product Management

by The Cranky Product Manager on July 15, 2009

in Guest Posts,Marketing,The PM Profession

Yeah, yeah, the Cranky Product Manager is wicked delinquent in posting Part 3 by the Cranky Marketer.

You remember the Cranky Marketer, don’t you? That dude/dudette who thinks that in general Marketing is too busy with tactical crap to learn about and understand the customer, and that therefore Marketing’s failure to do its own job is somehow Product Management’s fault? (See Part 1, and Part 2, and the Cranky Product Manager’s response here).

Boy, that Cranky Product Marketer  pissed the Cranky Product Manager off.   Especially when she read Part 3, which she now posts here.  Once you read it, you will see why it cheezed off the CPM so much – enough that she could not bring herself to post it for several months.

But perhaps the intervening months have made her wiser. The Cranky Product Manager realizes that there is indeed something for us product managers to learn from this post from the Cranky Marketer, despite its thesis that there are basically no decent product managers out there, and despite its strong resemblance to another blog’s post on this very topic.

The Problem with Product Management, by the Cranky Marketer

(Part 3 in a series – see part 1 and part 2 here)

If there is one group that should actually work well with Marketing, you’d think it would be Product Management. C’mon folks!  Product Management was created from Marketing’s very womb. But perhaps, like Shakespeare’s MacDuff, it was from that womb untimely ripped.

Perhaps Product Management has some sort of reverse Oedipus complex with Marketing, or the problem is simply a transference issue related to the nasty aspects of the Development-Product Management relationship. Regardless, there’s way too much friction between Product Management and Marketing.

To paraphrase a recent post by the Cranky PM:

Product Management Community, WTF is wrong with you?

Why was it that in all my years as a Product Manager I never noticed that the Product Management community is filled with such a wide array of bizarre characters and arrogant jerks?

Let’s do a little segmentation. Let’s create the Product Manager Magic Quadrant. And trust me, this is one Magic Quadrant that’s sorely needed.

Gartner, you’re on notice. If you start using this in any way, I’ll sue your ass off.

And Forrester, if you put this into a “Wave” and repurpose it, make sure you send me a fat royalty check. I have a soft spot for you Forrester because you actually have analysts who cover things like Marketing and Product Management. Way to go!  And I promise not to sue you as long as the royalty check is big enough to let me take my family on a nice vacation away from my coworkers. I need that vacation real bad.

So, like all Magic Quadrants, this one has two axes.

The horizontal axis represents level of knowledge of the Product Manager. This is a combination of the PMs ability to understand market problems, customer needs, technology trends, and of course, their own product at a reasonable level of detail.

Note: very few PMs have deep knowledge in all areas, though many think they do, so very few PMs will be on the far right of this quadrant.

The vertical axis represents the ability of the Product Manager to effectively work across teams, This means that as the product or release is being developed, the rest of the company is kept informed and updated of progress, issues and opportunities so as to maximize revenue potential and minimize lag and wasted efforts.  And of course, on this axis, there is a slight bias to how well they work with Marketing. Hey, it’s my Quadrant, I’ll define it how I want to.

Note: a lot of PMs think they’re the ultimate cross-functional leader, but guess again. Every PMs will claim they’re easy to work with and keep everyone else up in sync. How could they answer otherwise? But the reality is this is not the case so a lot of PMs will not score at the top of this axis.

I’m sure you would agree, knowledge and ability to work across teams are two VERY important traits for product managers to have. So here’s what the Product Manager Magic Quadrant looks like.

(high)

Ability
to work across teams

(low)

Tenderfoots

Great people skills and usually very kind and decent overall, but unfortunately have no business being in Product Management as they can’t assimilate market facts and drive product direction. Far too many PMs reside in this quadrant

Angels

Said to exist but rarely seen. May be mythical beings. Have deep understanding of market issues, customer needs and competitor weaknesses. Are proactive in creating and conveying information across the enterprise. Truly understand that success is a team effort and take pride in helping other teams succeed.

Misfits

Have little knowledge of anything aside from their own opinions, and don’t even know how to convey those clearly. Think a cross-functional meeting is one where they ask everyone else what they did last week. How do these people ever get hired?

Assholes

Spend a lot of time reading analyst reports, attending conferences and talking to customers and prospects. Very eloquent when speaking with C-level executives. But will badmouth you endlessly when you’re not in the room and will throw a hissy-fit if you challenge them on anything they say.

(low)   Level of Knowledge and Understanding (high)

As you can see from this Magic Quadrant, the pickings are slim with the vast majority of PMs either too unskilled or too arrogant to be helpful.  The knowledge that Marketing needs about the product, product direction, strategy, capabilities, differentiators etc. is very hard to come by, with Angels being the ones who can convey it with any credibility and without extracting a severe price for that information.

With Assholes, the information has to be painfully extracted, and in most cases, abuse is heaped on the Marketer by the Asshole.

And of course, with the Misfits and Tenderfoots (Tenderfeet?), there isn’t a lot of information to actually extract, so what’s a Marketer to do?

Product Management is an important role and those of us who depend on Product Management to help enable us to do our jobs better struggle because a key piece of the chain is weak or missing altogether. As I said in my first post, it’s very difficult for Marketing to be the product and customer expert given all the other things we have to do in our job.

As Product Managers, ask yourselves how much thought, energy and time you spent researching needs for your most recent major release? How many discussions did you have amongst yourselves and the Engineering teams on architecture changes to make the product better? In how many internal conversations did you spend time debating competitive and technology issues before you came to agreement of what would and what wouldn’t be in that release and how it would be implemented and exposed to customers?

Now ask yourself, how much time was spent helping Marketing understand all those decisions you made, why you made them, the background information behind the key decisions, the alternatives you did and didn’t consider, the way the competitors do or don’t address the same problem sets etc.

I’m sure the ratio of time spent with Marketing is only a tiny fraction of the time you spent amongst yourselves and with Engineering. And then you wonder why Marketing “doesn’t get it”, or why Marketing “dilutes the message” or why Marketing “focuses on the wrong things”.

You didn’t gain your deep insight based on a 90 minute Powerpoint webinar, so why do you expect Marketing to be any better?

You want Marketing to gain a deep understanding of all the hard work you did over the last 6-12 months so as not to dilute the message etc.? Then don’t think we’re dumb or dumb things down for us.

Give us the facts, early and often. Give us time to think about the issues, ask questions, debate amongst ourselves and engage back with you. Try it. You’ll be amazed at how great it can work!

Or just continue to be Tenderfoots, Misfits and Assholes and be happy in knowing that the greatest barrier to maximum success of your product is you.

Also in The Cranky Marketer Goes Off

  1. Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Goes Off (Part 1)
  2. Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Goes Off – Part Deux
  3. The Cranky Product Manager bitchslaps the Cranky Marketer
  4. Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Part 3 – The Problem with Product Management
<< Previous in series |

{ 30 comments }

Happy Birthday to Me

by The Cranky Product Manager on June 15, 2009

in Marketing,The PM Profession

OK, everyone. The Cranky Product Manager wants you all to get up and sing. SING, DAMMIT, SING. Because the Cranky Product Manager is now officially THREE years old.

OK, three years old plus 4 days. The CPM is a little bit late with her own birthday – this blog was born on June 11, 2006.

3 years and 130 posts later, the Cranky Product Manager is still here. And still anonymous, despite having a (now defunct) cyberstalker and her committing countless careless gaffes. Hard to believe!

In honor of this momentous occasion, the Cranky PM is going to refer you to some of her favorite oldie-but-goodie posts.

Here’s the post that started it all (June 11, 2006): Who is the Cranky Product Manager?

Here’s the first post that got a lot of attention and a lot of readers (August 1, 2006) : Streetwalkers In Disguise

And here’s a bunch of other stuff that the Cranky Product Manager enjoyed writing (even if you did not enjoy reading it) over the last three years:

On the Traditional Whining of Product Managers:

On Product Development:

On Agile / Scrum:

On hiring and getting a PM job:

On Sales & Marketing:

{ 11 comments }

The Enlightened Stupid Marketer (a marvelous video)

June 3, 2009

Thanks to Midlakewinter for the link to this very-funny-but-in-an-uncomfortable-kind-of-way video, entitled the Enlightened Stupid Marketer. It’s especially uncomfortable if you play it for your marketing weenie husband… in response to his declaring that product functionality is irrelevant to product success.  And as a crabby-ass beeyotch and an extremely insecure individual, the Cranky Product Manager took [...]

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If a PR / Marcom Weenie Wrote This Blog

June 2, 2009

If a PR / Marcom Weenie Wrote This Blog, here’s what the About page would look like: About The Cranky Product Manager Founded in 2006, The Cranky Product Manager (aka CPM) is a leading provider of world-class, robust, scalable, and market leading content platform that helps product professionals unlock value and position themselves for success [...]

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