The key Market Skills for a Product Owner, Manager, and Leader
A frequently asked question from Product Owners and Product Managers in the field is: “What are the most important skills for a Product Owner/ Product Manager?” Some of the best Product Owners, Product Managers, and Product Leaders we have worked with have mastered the core Professional Product Management competencies, as discussed in this article. Many of them however, have also mastered the Market Skills area as defined in the Professional Product Management Framework. These Market Skills will be discussed in this article in more detail. But first, let me introduce you to the Professional Product Management Framework to position these core skills.
The Professional Product Management (PPM) Competency Framework covers the product management skills and competencies that you may need to develop. This framework is used by organizations to hire, develop and retain treir product professionals. It is a comprehensive framework that allows to be tailored to an organization’s specific needs.
We’ve learned that at the core of professional product management it is all about Communication and Entrepreneurship. Product Managers create value by seeking out new opportunities, by finding problems worth solving and communicating that to the rest of the organisation. The other six areas that product managers need to master are Leadership skills, Product skills, People skills, Process skills, Business skills, and Market skills.
In this article, we’ll explore the Market Skills of a Product person in more detail. The other competencies areas are discussed in separate articles, listed at the bottom of this article.
Market skills
Having great Market skills is an essential skill for most Product Managers. They need to be able to discover the right problems to solve, by understanding their customers, users, market(s), domain, and broader topics like technology and data really well.
Great POs/PMs are always looking beyond their product into the wider world. They pay attention to what their customers and users need and look for opportunities to expand into new target markets. They keep an eye on the competition to stay one step ahead of them.
Having experience with conducting market research is important for any good Product Owner/Manager. When conceptualizing a new product, market research is critical to finding out whether there is a market or an audience for the product, as well as finding out how the product can best serve that market. This includes assessing customer needs and gathering customer feedback, and can also entail conducting user interviews and surveys or working with a user research team. They ask what needs to happen to develop a great product experencie and follow through on their learnings and insights. They are always listening and learning in order to be better.
It is a good habit to keep up to date with customer, user, and competitor insights, as those will pay off later on with a job well done. Knowing what problems to solve, what needs to satisfy, and what the competition offers, allows POs/PMs to design the best product with a great product-market fit.
These skills are grouped into the following competencies:
Customer Expertise
Be able to talk to a range of customers about their domain and beyond, looking for deeper insights. Be recognised as an expert in customer needs within their domain and is able to effectively create value in their domain.Domain, Technical & Data Expertise
Have solid, deep and wide understanding of the wider domain. Knowledge depends on the position/domain in the organization. Is recognised as the ‘go to’ person for product and domain expertise in the company.Market Expertise
Understand the competitor landscape and industry trends for their domain and is the ‘go to person’ for market insights. Use insights to inform product strategy and identify sustainable competitive advantages for their domain.
Want to learn about the other Professional Product Management Competency Areas?
The following articles discuss the other Competency Areas from the Professional Product Management Framework in more detail:
Excited to move your Product Management skills forward?
Becoming an expert in a field takes more than a single course. It is more like a journey, requiring knowledge gathering and experience in practice. That is why we have developed Product Management Learning Journeys for Product Owners, Product Managers, and Product Leaders.
If you want to use a structured approach to boost just those skills that you need to improve in order to take the next step in your career, then consider our Professional Product Management Training Modules. Modules like Value Maximization, Envisioning & Storytelling, Strategy & Roadmapping, or Stakeholder Engagement & Politics provide you with 8+ week learning and development tracks, allowing you to really improve a specific area of competence, instead of going through a very generic course that covers all kinds of different topics on a high-abstraction level.
Our learning journeys are designed to find the perfect balance between the theory from university with the intensity of a bootcamp. These ingredients are blended into a training format that fits anyone’s preferred style of learning. We teach you enough theory to know when you’re playing with fire, but we focus on applicability for the job to be done.
The journeys offer a personalized approach for professionals to grow their capabilities and to advance their careers. The blended learning journeys around product management consist of (competency) assessments, trainings, workshops, exercises, on-demand content, personal reflection, coaching, and consultancy.
The foundation of the product management journey is formed by the PPM framework. It’s connected to your product career framework and is implemented throughout the whole learning journey.
Want to get started? Take a moment to explore our website, learn more about our approach to Product Management, or schedule a chat about how we can help you, your team, or company to move forward.
