Finding the Right Product Persona
Finding the right product role fit is an important task for the success of your future business
Product is a tough job. In my past 15+ years of product and go-to-market strategy experience in large and small organizations, I have learned a lot about what to hire and what not to hire for the different stages of a company when it comes to product management. In this blog, I will explore a few aspects of what I used as my guidelines for hiring the right candidate for a product position.
First, you need to recognize what phase your company is in. There is a different product manager profile for early-stage vs. scale-up vs. enterprise. A simplified view is depicted in the diagram below.
There is no shortage of people asking clever questions and oozing out the vibes of good product management by focusing on the customer facet of things. But ask yourself this: how many of these great question-asking candidates actually have an idea of answers?
The map to product excellence in my opinion looks something like this:
Detect and understand the market motions
Predict the next pain points
Validate and distill the pain points to what is the real product (see my previous blog post) - i.e., get to a clear why
Work with engineering on defining the outlines of the how; also pre-validate with target customers / potential design partners
Come up with how much (expected business impact for customers, ROI for your company, and required investment needs)
Present the plan and get buy-in, or move on to the next opportunity
Execute - with regular touchpoints to re-validate the buy-in and continuous investments
Work closely with design partners, and be open to learn and course direct as you go
Rinse and repeat
So how do you find a person who is good at this? Below are some ingredients of a great product manager, in my opinion. I have had the pleasure of interviewing quite a few, and working with some top-notch ones! No one candidate you ever meet will score ten out of ten on all of these dimensions but hire the one that best compliments you as a CEO / CTO and your team, and again, per the above stage diagram, think about who you need when.
Communication skills - can the candidate present a product to you in a way that you get what it is, how it makes a difference, and why it is needed? Can the candidate explain a complex product/tech to you and _sell_ it to you as if you were a customer? If you describe something purely technology, can they repeat back the gist of the value prop? Or the core problem?
Pulse on the market - a knack for where organizations are (especially your target customers), what pains they are experiencing and looking to solve this year, and what the next wave of problems will be around the corner? Do they have a sense of other vendors in the space that you should keep an eye on? Who would they partner with, and why? How is competition positioned differently compared to you and why? What risks are there that will force a pivot? Can they get slightly ahead of the curve on customer’s needs even before the customer knows what they need?
Understanding of the product lifecycle - from ideation to delivery to maintenance and sunsetting. The sunsetting says a lot - they have learned important lessons from this that will go into the design of their next product. How to scale a product? How to enable sales? How to enable marketing? What are the key elements sales, field, and marketing are looking for in a product pitch - have them pitch you in these roles if you are unsure.
Data-driven - distilling a lot of various data, as well as looking and analyzing data, and also understand what data needs to be tracked to be able to make the most impact
A reasonable risk-taking - this is what makes your company grow
Ability to speak engineering - can they design a product architecture or feature on a whiteboard with an engineer and leave the engineer with clarity on what is expected and why, and if there are any restrictions in requirements, yet also leave room to innovate a variety of options of how. The worst product managers are the ones who step into too much engineering and don’t allow the best solution to emerge.
Push and pull project management skills - you have to have a candidate that can quickly read the map of an engineering project and understand what will be delayed and do early course correction; someone who does not leave the unknowns without risk mitigation plans; someone who can push a team when needed, but also fend for them against unreasonable customer demands. The best product managers are the ones who can say no to customers and at the same time create trust and loyalty.
Stakeholder mindset - it is not only the customers who will deal with the product. Engineers, Quality Assurance, Development Operations, Support, Sales, Field, Professional Services, Independent Software Vendors and System Integrators, possibly partners of other kinds. Find a person who has the insight and the full understanding that stakeholders do matter for accurate product input and prioritization, for it to succeed at scale and long term.
EQ - to be able to create lasting relationships with stakeholders, customers, sales, support, etc. as well as meet people on different levels. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of the ability to empathize with what customers may be going through. Ability to navigate organizations to get the buy-in to move mountains if needed. Ability to see people, to acknowledge their impact and contributions’ worth, as it takes a lot of goodwill and encouragement, especially in tough times, to get value out the door with a pace to successfully meet customer needs and company expectations and goals.
Visionary - has the person studied the space, gotten excited about the tech/product ahead of time, and comes in with some thinking of their own - what will they bring to the table to take what is there now to the next level? Do they see what you see, and preferably beyond?
These aspects listed above are of course in addition to team diversity, value alignment, and skills and domain expertise, etc. I have lived in the product space for so long, it’s sort of second nature to me. Hopefully, these points provided some new thoughts or a good refresher to you. Please don’t shy away from sharing any thoughts, reflections, questions or comments - happy to learn your perspectives.