Product Management Lessons from Our Teams
How to make the right bets based on the time period you are optimizing for?
Should we use Augmented Reality or Video?
How to meet the (real) customers?
With broad, sometimes ambiguous responsibilities and high expectations, the Product Manager role is constantly evolving. Product Managers are continuously learning new things and need to improve themselves (not just the products they manage) on a daily basis. Here are some important lessons from our teams:
1.People want a hole because they’re looking for the painting on the wall: Spend more time defining what you’re solving:
As product design folks, we want to take solutions to consumers very fast. What happens because of that is we don’t always spend enough time defining what we’re solving.
The product team at OLX Autos mentioned the famous quote from Harvard Business Professor Theodore Levitt: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”
But if we analyze more, we can extend that further. People want a hole because they’re looking for the painting on the wall. If we go further, they want the aesthetics and the feelings the painting provides. This highlights the need to figure out the core user needs you’re solving for and then deliver an impactful solution.
A key component of the used car buying process is car inspection. We’re trying to sell a fairly technical product and it’s used. We must objectively understand the condition of the car and arrive at an accurate price. This process is super important to this journey.
So, with a solution of a state-of-the-art inspection process, the team at OLX Autos first asked themselves where to focus:
- Should they focus on the seller, which is solving for convenience and price transparency?
- Should they focus on the buyer, which would need to solve for trust (car won’t break down, price is good, etc)?
To improve the car inspection process, the team wanted to gather new data points to create a better experience. But they had to approach it correctly.
Since it’s a buyer-focused experience, the team wanted to focus on the data points buyers want and highlighted them in the new reports redesign. A Binary Information Widget that was added to the report makes the inspection report understandable for non-technical buyers, simplifies the technical report with ‘OK’ and ‘Not OK’ responses for questions and categorizes major parts of the cars, such as engine condition, interior condition, brake condition, etc.
This is how we allow non technical car buyers to have a better understanding of the car status, compare cars and take an informed decision based on data translated into clear insights. This is how the team solved the right problem: buyers trust.
Spend significant time defining the problem. You will avoid bad experiment design and false negatives and positives.
2. Make the right bets based on the time period you are optimizing for
When investing in a new product or platform feature, Martin, Our Director of Product Management takes time to analyze the ‘bet’, to find the ‘why’ behind complex decisions.
“We have a variety of different models for determining if new ventures will be successful. We look at how useful the venture is, the overall potential, and whether it’s a safe or risky bet. And we take steps accordingly,” attests Martin.
“For instance, Otomoto, the OLX Motors Europe platform in Poland, is one of the largest auto buying sites in the world, and we have a responsibility to existing users to meet their expectations. We make safer bets there in terms of improving the user experience while doing riskier bets on the future, such as new initiatives with financing.”
There’s no one single answer to whether any build will deliver its goals. However, as a guide on product management models states, you should be “continuously building a latticework of mental models” for deciding where to build or invest in the next product.
Any product manager must remember that the right investment decision changes based on the time period you are optimizing for.
3. And, Get to know the (real) customer
You can never spend too much time with your customers. Don’t believe that since you are similar to your target audience, you can stand in for them. You know your product inside out, they don’t. So get out of the building.
“We’ve been focusing on identifying key problems and building a platform where we can address these pain points,” says Jasjit, Associate Director of Product, Dealer Experience at OLX Autos.
“But one day, I chatted with a potential car buyer. He actually stressed the human angle. He wanted to go to the car dealer and drink tea with him to establish trust. Then it would feel comfortable to test drive the car for one or two days.”
“It’s that human relationship. We have to build virtual teas into the OLX Autos app. We must elevate the dealer experience to make it more holistic. You must work back from the customer. You have to identify and understand the key problems you’re trying to solve. Then you have a key chance to get through the ambiguity to solve the right problems for the customer,” adds Jasjit.
As Jasjit explains, a human touch — even in a virtual world — matters. After all, the OLX trading platforms are people trading with other people.
4. Be frugal and validate at each stage of the journey
You must think about the exponential costs along the lifecycle of product development. If you fail at a late stage, it can get costly.
The OLX Autos Product team had to understand the cost that comes along with failure. For their solution, the initial idea was to build a video-oriented solution to allow sellers to present the car they were selling, where people walked around the car’s exterior and interior. The seller would then upload the video and the OLX Autos platform algorithms would slice and dice it to create the car listing. A lot of platforms were doing such video solutions in the consumer space and in the markets where OLX Autos is operating.
Since people had become more comfortable with video, especially while remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, this seemed like the right solution. Other OLX platforms already had video solutions. For instance, sellers of household products can make videos to help buyers with decision making. The thought was repurposing this for the car category. But was there enough evidence this would reduce the team chances of failure?
The team had to figure out what that can try today without building something today. OLX Autos had stores and video capabilities from other OLX platforms. The team started to do some on-the-ground pilots. They got people to get on video calls with inspection engineers or make a video and send it directly to the Product team. OLX Autos was not the only one in the space trying to do this. There are SAAS, insurance, and OEM companies trying to build something similar. The team spoke to a lot of people, from VR and AR to software and video.”
They team decided video wasn’t the way to go. Too many potential obstacles existed. Making a video around your car is awkward. You don’t know if you should talk and how to open the car. The quality can dip significantly. The size of the video makes it hard to upload and optimize too.
Instead, the solution was smart images: An AR layer which guides users on how to take photos and what to capture. It’s a tap-tap experience that’s simple for the user.
Learning this so early in the lifecycle was crucial. Failing at the concept is way cheaper compared with failing at launch. What the team did was to fail frugally. Rather than failing prior to launch, the team failed at the state of concept.
Validate at each stage of the journey. Think of the costs of failing at a later stage and how validating at each stage saves on the cost
5. Bonus: Learn from the U.S. Navy SEALs
Product managers have a lot on their plate. At OLX Motors, they’re busy revolutionizing the way cars are bought and sold.
Having success hinges on your ability to prioritize the important things, both in work and daily life. You can’t get sidetracked. Martin, Our Director of Product Management shared the following:
“I want to solve problems at scale. I see leadership as a tool for making that happen. True leaders develop their junior leaders and empower them to make decisions. True leaders believe they can assist others in fulfilling their potential by providing a supportive climate within a clear context that inspires freedom. In addition, freedom within a framework enables ‘Decentralised Command’ and is a mark of an achievement orientated leader. For more inspiration I really recommend the book Extreme Ownership. Combat, the most intense and dynamic environment imaginable, teaches the toughest leadership lessons, with absolutely everything at stake. In this book, leaders of SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, teach us how to use those same leadership principles as leaders in businesses, companies, and organizations across the civilian sector.”
When you have a team that takes ownership, you can focus on what matters. You don’t get bogged down in pointless details or waste time.
Whether you are just entering the field or are an industry expert, there will always be challenges. There is no perfect product, and no perfect product career. But to establish yourself as a great product manager, you must tackle each obstacle as an opportunity to learn, adapt, and grow.
