It’s Not Rocket Science: Why You Don’t Need a Tech Background to Find Success in Product Management

In our new content series, “How to Build Products & Influence People: 4 of Boston’s Top Product Managers and Their Stories” we spoke with some of the leading PMs in Boston to learn how they’re driving real change within their respective industries, but more importantly, within their own organization.

Our second interview is with Greg Achenbach, the VP of Product at SnapApp. He’s working to help B2B marketers reach new heights by improving lead quality and increasing conversion rates.

Greg remembers the days when product management didn’t formally exist. In the early 2000’s he worked as the Director of Information Technology for a small trade associationin Massachusetts. While the position was helpful in honing his technical skills, Greg was keen on working in a more collaborative, client-facing position. He landed his first PM role in 2010, and hasn’t looked back since. While Greg sees the value in having a technical background as a PM, he feels that product management is now more about communication and creative problem-solving.

This is part 3 of 4 in our “How to Build Products & Influence People: 4 of Boston’s Top Product Managers and Their Stories” series created in partnership with growth marketing agency Ideometry. Tune in tomorrow for another installment.

In your own words, tell us a little bit about SnapApp.

Greg: SnapApp helps B2B marketers generate the highest quality leads possible for their sales team using question-based experiences within their content.

How did you get your start in Product Management?

Greg: I’m old enough to remember when product management wasn’t really a thing. I’m 40 years old, and graduated from college in 2002. There were a lot of tech jobs out there, but I don’t remember any roles being called ‘Product Manager.’ My undergrad is technical, so my first job was at a very small company and involved a little bit of everything. I did a lot of networking, infrastructure, web development, and programming. A lot of the job was what we would consider today as more of a DevOps role.

Then, I pivoted into client-facing project management and did that for several years. It was for software companies in the EdTech and healthcare spaces. They sold these big enterprise products where a customer would buy it and would need somebody to walk them through how to use the product. Since enterprise software is highly customizable, I worked with the engineers back at the office to tweak the product to meet the customers’ needs. We were given early access to a select group of clients, and from them, we gathered feedback that was used to make our product better.

That’s essentially what product management is today, or at least part of what product management is, and I really liked that part of the job over everything else I was doing. I started seeking out roles to do product management full-time and eventually ended up in a more traditional product role.

How was your first PM role communicated to you initially?

Greg: The first product job I had was presented as, “We need someone to talk to the clients. We need this person to learn what they need, then translate that back to the engineering team, as well as help the engineering team stay on track.” At the time, it was a blend of multiple roles and my actual title was Project Manager, but I felt like I was technical enough to know how to handle these different parts. It also made me realize that I shouldn’t write code anymore.

I still enjoy talking with clients about their problems and discussing what they’d like to achieve. I’ve always really enjoyed the whole detective process around figuring out what the issue is, trying certain solutions, and iterating on the ones that work. That’s always been a really engaging element of the job for me.

How would you say the PM position has changed over time in terms of the cross-section of skills needed to be successful?

Greg: Working with engineering was a very important part of the job when I first started, and always will be, in my opinion. Ten years ago, the job was sort of a two-pronged approach, where you were going to get stuff from the customers, and you were going to work with the engineers. If you were interviewing PMs or interviewing for a PM position, the bulk of that interview was focused on, “How are you going to work with engineers and how are you going to keep them happy?”

Quality solutions only arise when product managers are talking with people regularly.

Today, PM roles are becoming more focused on the customer. This means empathizing with the customer and being transparent and upfront with them. While everyone still defines the PM role differently, everyone agrees that you need someone who understands the customer. It’s not as important anymore for someone to understand the technical knowledge.

What has led to the need for PMs to take on a customer-centric approach?

Greg: A lot of things have influenced the transition. One influential factor is that engineers are tired of having no creative freedom when having to solve a problem. It takes time and knowledge in your space to make the right decisions. So rather than hiring someone to read feedback and then determine what the problem is, companies want someone to dive into the issue as deep as they can and provide solutions. Quality solutions only arise when product managers are talking with people regularly.

As a company, you really want to be able to optimize your chances for success by fully understanding your users, while also influencing an improved dynamic within the engineering department. You want a PM who can talk to the team about what we’re trying to accomplish and communicate our shared goals. But they also need to let the engineers do what they do best, which is figuring out how to use technology to solve the most pressing problems.

Do you think you still could have ended up working as a PM without that technical background?

Greg: I think the way things are today, I would’ve still ended up working as a PM. But without my technical background, I wouldn’t have been seriously considered for most PM roles ten years ago. As someone who’s been hiring product manager’s for many years now, I’ve never hired a PM with a technical background.

The job today is all about communication, so while you need to understand how modern technology is built and possess certain technical skills, your ability to communicate is just as important.

Ultimately, determining if you need a PM with a technical background depends on your industry. Personally, I’ve had a lot more success with people who were English majors. The job today is all about communication, so while you need to understand how modern technology is built and possess certain technical skills, your ability to communicate is just as important.

Again, there’s a lot of varying opinions on what skills you should have as a PM, and I don’t think any single opinion is right. From my personal experience, I prefer individuals with strong communication and personal skills, rather than vast technical knowledge.

Why do you think the Product Manager position is becoming more popular?

Greg: We hired a PM a few months ago, and I’ve never had as many applicants for a position. There are a lot of people looking to break into it, whether they’re right out of college or are just looking for a change professionally. I think it’s a desirable position because it’s highly cross-functional.

It also doesn’t let you operate in a vacuum. You can’t do anything without the support of the other departments. If you have an idea, you’re not going to be able to execute it without a designer or an engineer helping you out.

It’s a really unique world where the job is constantly cross-functional, and that makes every day different. A role that comes with a lot of responsibility is very desirable for aspiring product managers.

Can you remember a time when you leveraged a narrative you developed based off of customer data that helped build a compelling story to influence the position organizationally?

Greg: Absolutely. We went through this massive project a year ago, where we were trying to get a deeper understanding of what products our clients needed. We eventually came up with some amazing insights that we hadn’t even considered before.

Essentially, the issues our clients were asking us to solve weren’t necessarily the ones we needed to be focusing on. We had these insights based off of customer data that told us that what they were saying wasn’t necessarily what they needed. It was very transformational for us as a company.

This project was extremely valuable in helping our employees understand why we’re making certain decisions, which is important because it’s better than some random executive saying, “We’re going to do this and not the other thing.” Instead, it’s, “We talked to three different companies and these are their words. What are we going to do to focus on this?” It’s turned out to be really useful and changed the way I think about talking to customers, in addition to the role of the product and how it fits in their world.

What’s one piece of practical advice you can share that will help PMs be more effective at driving change?

Greg: I think that to gain more influence, you need to have a thorough understanding of what you’re trying to do. The people that have the most influence within a company are the ones that can clearly articulate the problems they’re trying to solve. If the only thing you’ve done as a PM is look over customer feedback or NPS surveys, you’re not doing enough. Determine who the successful and struggling customers are, and get them on the phone.

The people that have the most influence within a company are the ones that can clearly articulate the problems they’re trying to solve.

Good PMs should talk to customers and find out why they came to their product in the first place. Data is valuable, but having a simple conversation helps you understand why people do what they do. If you ask the right leading questions and just let the person talk, you’ll be amazed at the insights you learn.

What tools in your PM tech stack are you using on a daily basis?

Greg: We use the typical stuff. Slack really handles all of our internal communication. We use ZenHub for our product developing tracking, which is essentially a Jira-esque product that lives on top of Github. We use a combination of Mixpanel and Chart.io to monitor what people are doing. We use Appcues pretty heavily for new user onboarding and for quick announcements and walk-throughs of the changes to the product. We use Prodpad for tracking feedback and creating roadmaps. There are probably a million other things we use that I’m forgetting.

Any PMs in the Boston area that you’d like to shout out?

Greg: I’ve always appreciated the mindset of the guys at Appcues. I think Jonathan Kim has a real good mindset on being customer-focused. I’ve always really liked their materials. Among the local product-focused companies, they’re some of the ones who have resonated most with me in terms of how I like to think about products, so I’d give Jonathan Kim a shoutout. I like what those guys do over there.

An all-day event tailor-made for product managers. Register now for Unbox 2019, September 20 at Marriott Copley Boston. Unbox is a day for product managers to learn from each other and hone their skills to build great products. There is little formal education for product management, and at Boston Product, we’ve learned that the best way to help people improve is to get them in a room with other high-caliber PMs.

Ideometry is a Boston-based full-service marketing agency serving a global client base. With a full suite of creative, development, and strategic services, Ideometry helps startups and Fortune 500 companies alike get the business results they’re looking for. If you’re doing something interesting, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us at ideometry.com or email hello@ideometry.com.