Developing a Product Mindset

Product skills help companies win markets, satisfy customers and build businesses faster.

When product management designs products or services they need to take the following things into mind:

• Design
• Customer Experience
• Production
• Distribution (Go To Market)
• Profitability
• Relationships

Design

Design is essential to having a product mindset. Designs need to solve problems — not just as a decoration.

In his book The Startup Owner’s Manual, Steve Blank wrote about the importance of Getting Out of the Building. Thousands of new apps are released every week, so it’s important to rise above the pack and design a product that users will to want to buy.

Customer Experience (CX)

When conducting research it’s important to talk to the people that will use it: mid-level managers, people on the line. They will understand the context a lot better than others. Will they have good quality wifi or phone signal, will it be loud, will it be a heavy industrial environment running an old version of Android, etc.

Design Thinking is a great process for conducting customer research and designing a great experience. As you get more and more purchasers (or users) it’s important to use a data driven approach to continue to improve the product.

CX support tickets can go through the roof if the Customer Support team isn’t aware of new features and the details.

Production

I work primarily with technology or software so I don’t have a whole lot of experience with getting physical items produced.

Distribution (Go To Market)

Go-to-Market can be really difficult to get right especially if the team is pulling in different directions. When creating a Go To Market strategy make sure it’s clear what you are expecting from everyone and when.

It’s very important to get on the same page and be clear about the value proposition with sales, marketing, and support.

Profitability

Distribution is related to the the way the product or service will be delivered and where your customers can buy it from.

Relationships

Partners, customers, and internal relationships are all an important part of developing and selling a product or service.

As I blogged about in the post “Adopting a Product Mindset” is vitally important and it’s the only way that a start up can win.

Originally published at Brian Cline.