Presales to Product Part II: Skill Gaps
This article is part of a mini series on transitioning from Presales/Sales Engineering to Product Management. Start from the beginning here!
“I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.”
— Maya Angelou
I, too, have great respect for the past. It has, for better or worse, shaped the lens for which I look at the world. We all have this lens, and the shape of it is unique to each of us. It’s a culmination of all of the training, experience, and trial and error that we’ve accumulated throughout our lives. These lenses contribute to the strengths we’ve built. But, they also expose the gaps in our skillset (some that we’re not even aware of!)
I believe that most careers are more art than science. And I think this is true for both Sales Engineering and Product Management. Each role has a generic “shape” of qualities and skills that are likely to contribute to success. The “science”-related parts of each role are different in many ways, but the soft skills (read: the “art”) of the roles are strikingly similar.
When attempting to transfer from SE to PM, I realized that there were a set of overlapping qualities and skills that I could leverage to make a strong case for the switch; however, I was completely unaware of some major gaps (not even weaknesses — full-on gaps, especially in the “science” category) that are required to succeed in product. You see…I had a good grasp on the SE-related qualities (after doing the job for almost 8 years), and the overlapping skills in the center of the Venn Diagram above, but I was missing a lot of the PM-side qualities (both in the art and the science categories).
Reflecting on my transition to Presales to Product, I want to take you through the three biggest skill gaps that I’ve come across.
Gap 1: Decision Making Endurance
“Decision fatigue is not something I expected to encounter as a PM, but it is VERY real.”
In Part I, I talked about the extreme degree of ownership that a PM has over their product, and how it is one of the biggest differences between the SE and PM roles. You’ll often hear an SE say “I support the [NAME] account”. The key word being “support”. As a PM, you are the owner and decision maker of the product. It is analogous to the responsibility that comes with being the Account Director of the sales account team.
It was a refreshing smack in the face when I became aware that I had never professionally owned something from start to finish. And the largest gap associated with that smack in the face was with my ability (or inability…) to consistently make decisions. Hour after hour, day after day, Product Managers make decisions. Some are small (like what text to place in a label or what color to make a button), but actually have large consequences. Others are large (like delaying the delivery of a desired feature from a large customer). If you believe in compound interest (and you should 🙂 ), you’ll notice that all of those decisions:
1) compound to determine the success of the product, and
2) compound over time to tire out the decision maker
Decision fatigue is not something I expected to encounter as a PM, but it is very real. And because the PM is the owner and decision maker for the product, the product team NEEDS the PM to play this role, and to absorb this fatigue.
After all, the PM’s decisions have a direct impact on the value that customers will receive from the product (No pressure 😅).
Gap 2: “What and Why” vs “How”
“In my role as a PM, the “how” is now interesting, but “what and why” is important.”
Early into my transition to PM, it became very clear that my role on my new team was a 180 degree change from my SE life. As a presales SE, I was always looked to as the “how” person. “How are we going to explain this to the customer?”, “How are we going to integrate these systems?”, “How are we going to demo this concept?” My success and the success of my team depended on my ability to figure out the “how”. After all, that’s what engineers do! No matter the prefix or discipline– it could be Sales Engineer, Software Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Industrial Engineer, etc.– engineers all over the world thrive on figuring out the “how”!
So what is the Product Manager’s focus? It’s been described most simply to me as “what and why”. PMs exist to guide the team/product on what to do and why they should do it. Of course, this surface-level description masks a lot of the complexities of the role, but I’ve found it to be simple enough for my grandmother to understand. At the lowest level, PMs need to understand what the intricacies are of the most granular requirements. But at the highest level, PMs need to sell and evangelize their products throughout the product lifecycle (NOTE: ‘Selling’ is a skill overlap in the Venn Diagram above that I will cover in Part III).
After many years of focusing intently on “how” (and leaning on my sales partner to supply the “what and why” for the account), I developed a gap that I was unaware of. One of my former sales partners shared something that has stuck with me during my career. He said, “you have to know the difference between what’s interesting and what’s important” (more here– shout out to Sean Smith!). Simple, but effective advice. In my role as a PM, the “how” is now interesting, but “what and why” is important.
Gap 3: Quantitative Analysis
“…the bounds of product-focused quantitative activities do not benefit from the same constraints I had worked within as an SE.”
Personally, my quantitative work as an SE often consisted of helping create a business value case to show how customers could use our products to increase revenue or decrease costs over time. Although every case was different, the scope of the analysis was contained to a single organization with specific variables that were discoverable from the customer. Seldom was there a situation where we couldn’t track down a conservative estimate to complete our analysis during a set of classic SE discovery sessions. Being constrained to a single account greatly helped achieve the goal of the exercise: finding the right variables to help justify the account’s investment in our technology.
The scope of quantitative analysis in the PM world is much broader. Where I’ve been stretched thus far in relation to B2B “quant” activities is in evaluating markets, analyzing TAMs, constructing pricing and packaging, and developing metrics to measure product success, stability, and adoption. These types of analyses help our product team build strong business cases for investing in the growth of a product line or feature set.
But there’s no hiding it: I have a lot to learn. Some people spend years perfecting the breadth and knowledge required to properly analyze markets and pricing strategy. Others are experts at metric analysis on usage and adoption. The nice part is that I personally don’t have to go at it alone thanks to the amazing extended team at my current organization. But one thing is clear: the bounds of product-focused quantitative activities do not benefit from the same constraints I had worked within as an SE…and that makes for a more difficult (and fun!) analysis.
Now that we’ve covered the skill gaps between the Sales Engineering and Product Manager roles, we’ll dive into the skills that transfer well from SE to PM in Part III so you’ll know what strengths you can lean into while making your transition.
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About the Author:
I’m just a Sales Engineer turned Product Manager that’s sharing my experiences with folks who are eager to make a similar transition. Feel free to drop me a note in the comments!
If you enjoyed this article, check out some of these blog posts!
•Presales to Product: A Mini-Series
•Presales to Product Part I: The Three Biggest Differences Between Presales and Product
•Presales to Product Part II: Skill Gaps
•Presales to Product Part III: Skill Overlaps
•Presales to Product Part IV: 3 Practical Actions for Transitioning to Product
