Meet Michal Smetana — a Thrill-Seeking Group Product Manager
If Michal Smetana didn’t work as a Group Product Manager, he would probably be a race car driver. Luckily, there is plenty of adrenaline rush right behind his computer at Pipedrive Prague.
When Michal was still in university, he landed a job at Socialbakers — a global social media marketing company. His first professional experience in the tech-savvy IT world made him realize that product management is something that he is great at and passionate about. Fast forward a few years, and Michal was a Senior Product Manager at STRV, a software development agency, where he was responsible for the biggest and most complex client projects that the company had. Although he wasn’t looking for new professional challenges, a job opening caught his eye while scrolling on LinkedIn. Back in 2018, he had barely heard of this company, but the challenge was intriguing. At the beginning of 2019, he joined Pipedrive and was one of the first team members of the newly opened Prague office.
A job you never get bored at
If Michal had to describe his job, he would say that none of his days are ever the same. The scope of his tasks varies from working with research and analysts as he learns about market and customer insights to working with teams of engineers and collaborating with the sales team and product designers in preparation for the actual launch of the product. Based on his experience, being a Product Manager requires wearing different hats throughout the working days, which means there is simply no opportunity to get bored.
The multifaceted nature of his job means that launching a new product or feature involves managing different information from various teams and tying them together in a holistic way. There is a simple yet powerful tool for doing that — mutual trust between him and his team members. “Pipedrive is famous for hiring the best people who also fit the team, so we have a great internal culture. But we also have a lot of freedom to execute our ideas at work, which requires trust between different team members. As a Group Product Manager, I never tell our engineers how to do their work. Instead, I explain the problem that we’re trying to solve for our customers, and then they come up with the best solution,” explains Michal. “Our trust is mutual, so the engineers always know that our missions are based on data and research, not just on gut feelings.”
Growing with customers
Research shows that prospecting and lead generation are some of the biggest challenges that sales professionals face in their work every single day. Challenge accepted — right after joining Pipedrive, Michal and his team started working on automation to allow sales professionals to find high-quality leads quicker and more efficiently. In September 2020, LeadBooster 2.0 was finally launched, a comprehensive new lead generation and management toolset that Michal is exceptionally proud of. It is an excellent example of how the company is growing with its customers and how clients benefit from simple yet effective tools.
“We built a fully functional product from scratch. Lead management is an essential part of sales processes, and we ran the chatbot as our first pilot project. We saw that our customers benefited from the tool, so this validated the need for it. Then we started taking the next steps for fully automating lead generation and management. Today, the main features of Leadbooster include Prospector, Chatbot, Live Chat, Web Forms, and Web Visitors, each contributing to finding high-quality deals and helping nurture relationships with customers,” explains Michal.
3… 2… 1… Go!
If Michal didn’t work as a Group Product Manager, he would probably be a race car driver. For as long as he can remember, he has always had an eye for cars. As his parents recall, Michal loved watching cars driving since he was two years old. By the time he could talk, car manufacturers and different models were some of his favorite topics. Today, race car driving is one of his hobbies. He even owns a heavily modified sports car! Nürburgring, Germany, is one of the driving circuits that Michal has put to the test with his car.
Surprisingly, there are some similarities between driving a car and working as a Product Manager, even though driving narrow and dangerous roads seem a lot riskier than working behind the computer and collaborating with team members. The rush and adrenaline drive Michal’s inner passion for succeeding in anything he is doing, whether it’s racing a car or running missions at work. More importantly, both require making the right decisions — one wrong move, and it could be a disaster. “I think that this applies to product management as well. There is a lot of responsibility, especially since gut feelings should not drive business decisions. It’s important to do your research correctly and make the right choices based on that.”
By the way, not everything in Michal’s life is driven by the fast adrenaline rush. He has a big whisky and rum collection, and he loves reading about the history of different distilleries or finding out stories behind the bottles. In addition, he sees the 200 bottles in his home as a future investment that only grows in value in time.
On to the future
When asked what’s next in line, Michal says that he and his team will keep working on prospecting and lead generation features. Finding high-quality leads and boosting sales are the core challenges of sales professionals. With the development of automated tools, there is still lots to be done. They are also working on launching a completely separate product for non-customers who have yet to discover the benefits of Pipedrive for their business. Ready, set, go!
Interested in working in Pipedrive?
We’re currently hiring for several different positions in different countries/cities.
Take a look and see if something suits you.
Positions include:
— Group Product Manager
— Product Manager
— Product Marketing Manager
— Database Engineer
— Customer Solutions Expert
— And more
