I was asked recently to share my thoughts on what the role of a product manager should be (related to B2B intangible services). It’s a complex subject.

Experience Cycle

DDO has a paper on what it calls the Experience Cycle.

In a nutshell, I love the model, and I think it forms the core for what product managers should be focusing on.

1. connect & attract possible customers
2. orient them to the possibilities (i.e. product presentation, documentation, demos, trial account)
3. interact with the product/service, with a good experience as the outcome
4. extend & retain, develop customer loyalty
5. help them become an advocate, communicating their satisfaction with other people

They break down Apple at the end of the PDF, which has some of the best managed brands on the planet.

Google Product Development Product

Evelyn Rodriguez posted her notes from a talk about how Google focuses on user-centered design, using small, agile teams (like startups) to develop ideas.

“If you build something users will use, there will be a way to make money.”

“Good quality, by itself, improves usage.”

1. Build something that is valuable to people.
2. Monetize it (with separate monetization team)

I think this Google stuff is very complimentary to the Experience Cycle content from DDO.

So my “short answer”, with evidence from two very successful brands I admire, is this:

“The essence of product management is designing, creating, improving, and monetizing customer journeys.”

Great consultant-speak, but what about execution?

For existing product, I think execution =

• Maintain or improve product quality (& customer experience)
• Monetization (attract customers, clearly communicate potential benefits of product usage, getting them to buy, keeping them happy & getting them to renew, and hopefully getting them to talk about us in a positive way)

We can change the language, to be less consultant-speak or put it in specific terms for our projects.

• Assign a small team (2-3 people) to manage the product/project. Don’t make the error of assigning one person solo. A small team helps ensure continuity of knowledge & healthy peer pressure to perform.
• Their mission: 1) ongoing monetization 2) improving customer experience.
• How to accomplish the mission is up to them. They should feel free to find customers directly, or to try to sell product through the existing sales force—let them decide how to grow revenues and improve user experience, with assistance from specialists & executives, as requested.

Of course, you have to have good people for it to work, of course, since each project acts as a mini-startup.

About a week ago, I was googling (I don’t remember what) and on multiple occasions bnet.com results popped up. Site looked nice, content was relevant to my search. Honestly, I don’t even know why I registered at the site… but I did. Maybe there was some protected content that required account. In any event, I signed up.

A successful conversion! Their web + SEO team should feel proud.

July 8

I got 3 email from the site—pretty cool, pushing out some information to me. I note that perhaps it’s “over communication” but a couple of the articles interested me.

July 9

Just one email. Fine.

July 10

4 email! I get enough email in general, and the stuff they’re pushing to me really isn’t relevant, so I decide to unsubscribe. Plus the emails are quite laced with ads. The unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email didn’t work, but finally I figured out how to unsubscribe from the 4 categories of messages. End of story, right? Wrong.

July 11

Today I still got 1 email, so I figure out how to unsubscribe from all CNET email, from a link on the original unsubcribe page, which bnet.com seems to be affiliated with. They say it’ll take 10 days to process my request!

Total brand experience == sucks

My point of all this is how shitty an experience it’s been as a new user of bnet. What it tells me is that the business has not managed the balancing act of “serving the advertisers” vs. “serving the audience.” Their website looks nice, and I had a good experience with it. Their email strategy was horrendous, and I judge them on the “total brand experience.”

Update

Since I started writing this post, 2 more of their email have hit my inbox. I just made my first Gmail filter to automatically delete emails with subject line starting with “BNET Alert”. Side note, the Gmail filter setup process was a great experience. All hail Gmail!