Product Managers in China — Types

We talked on RANKs in last post, we'll look into a more interesting topic today. How many kinds of PMs we got in China? Or, what’s the methodology to classify PMs of millions? lol.

As a PM, you always get the question on what you working on. And most answers are vague to the beginners, like I’m in SNS, or I’m on Android APPs, or I work on BE(back end). etc. Or most PMs have a blurred cognition on positioning of their own from the first place.

Today, I’ll try to classify PMs from 2 different perspectives, which hopefully would provide a macro and structured view on PMs of different kinds.

• Firstly. Role in business model. eg. PM on B2B customer acquiring.
• Secondly. Role in system structure. eg. PM on Website experience.

Transaction targeted companies should have the first perspective, eg. Amazon, Alibaba. DAU(Daily Active Users) oriented companies suit the second better, eg. Twitter, WhatsApp. Giants like Alibaba may pursue these two goal at the same time.

So let’s get back to our topic on PM, lol.

1. Role in business model. Most online business could be modeled as following graph, or partly modeled at least. You can start your company from neither B2C nor B2B, or just a fraction of one side. You make a living on continuable transactions among various roles in this model.

So if you work on B2C platform, your goal would be make customers happily and continuously buy more(or play/use more/longer, if supply for the needs is produced by the machine, which means you don’t have many sellers cause your system is the oligopoly seller. eg. search engine), which could be break down into several layers of one funnel, or even finer to one specific task in your business process. I'll use AARRR model to explain.

• Acquisition, you need find your customer online or offline, and draw their attention efficiently, provide convenient access methods for them;
• Activation, then you have bunch of operating tools or gadgets organized by your tactics to get your customers involved bit more;
• Retention, and you carefully nourish their participation, build more links to them, which might contribute to the ultimate goal;
• Revenue, one day they take that meaningful step, eg. pay the order, and there is no time for celebration, you start to
• Refer, apart from the cold business and number, you need to cultivate emotional resonance deep in their heart, so that they’re willing to stand out for your product with satisfying identity.

Each action throughout this process needs PM.

Similar process emerge if you work on B2B product, but things vary in the following ways:

• More roles, you have seller, whole seller, sales, manufacturer, even raw material supplier, and various service providers on info/logistics/government, etc.
• Greater complexity for more roles, and more customization they might need.
• Efficiency(first cost, then time) overrides user experience, especially when they are not micro-merchants(without license).

So, the answer to the question — “what kind of PM you are?” might be:

• I’m a/an _____ Product Manager in _____ industry.

First blank space could be:

• 2C, if there is no other B involved while you’re “selling” something to Cs;
• 2B, if there is no other B involved while you’re “selling” something to Bs;
• B2C, if there are plenty of Bs selling things to Cs through your product;
• B2B, if there are plenty of Bs selling things to Bs through your product;

Or, you can name yourself more specifically with finer description:

• Advertising, Marketing, Growth, Supply Chain, infrastructure, Finance,……

2. Role in system structure. Any product framework could be roughly mapped into this structure. And these systems serve those business goals above. This map is fairly complete, but not accurate for every company since structures of bottom 3 layers vary greatly across companies.

• Front End, reach your user/customer directly through different device / OS, so most cognition / UX / psychology methodologies work on this layer along with progressing FE technologies and faster devices, while it mainly dancing on 2C applications rather than 2B apps. And here is where most PMs start their career journey, mostly what you see is what you get.
• Back End, usually means the whole package of systems in need to drive your front ends or your business, these systems always have some business attribute / customization, eg. operating system. Products in this layer are getting a little bit abstract, which separates a portion of PMs.
• SoA Layer, provides standard services for a variety of business units’ systems to achieve greater efficiency on service quality, cost, data, etc. These services are commonly abstracted out from the upper layer systems through the evolvement of whole company who runs multiple businesses at the same time. eg. One account system compatible for every business. Alibaba is really doing a great job on this, we’re working on it, too. Adept PMs here could play as an architect for his product/business.

I name it “SoA Layer” here for it's the fruit of Service oriented Architecture thinking.

• Data, algorithm, gates… are the software infrastructure, deeper down we have physical infrastructures. Ambiguity rises on these two layers among PMs, architects, engineers, scientists, researchers. PMs work deeper down should have strong and abundant technical experience, usually they were engineers, lol. If not the case, PM turn into project/program manager, which is not the PM I declared in my first post, too narrow sense.

Most PMs work on top 2 layers, SMEs don’t even need the deeper 3 layers’ structure. Leverage this paradigm to classify PMs would be quite concrete. And it has little industry attribute, which means the work experience could be migrated across industries.

So, the answer to the question — “what kind of PM you are?” might be:

I’m a _____ Product Manager on _____ system.

So that is the content for today.

I hope this post could help you understanding how we break down product work to PMs. Send me a msg, or just comment, if you have anything upstairs🙂.