I have given countless software demos in my career. But the funny thing is that when I myself sit down to listen to a product presentation, my heart sinks and all I can think is: "Oh, no, not another boring demo!" The problem with software demos is that so many of them are so very ...
About: pmc
Recent Posts by pmc
09Sep 2004
04024 Is Your Product a Missionary or Savior?
The software industry, and the high technology industry in general, is so young that sometimes everything about it seems to be brand new. It's a whole new world filled with new products that deal with unfamiliar concepts. For example, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is already "old hat" when it's a term that was unknown ten ...
26Aug 2004
04023 Marketing and Sales Materials: Business First
Technology companies, since they are largely peopled by technically oriented individuals, often fall into the trap of creating marketing and sales materials that are overly focused on the technical side of the product. Product Managers usually play an indispensable role in pulling the development of marketing collateral and sales tools over towards the business perspective. There ...
19Aug 2004
04022 New Features Won’t Solve Business Problems
Companies that make software have one big strong point: they know how to make software. They know how to build all sorts of cool features that work in amazing ways. And when they do that, they create businesses that succeed. But the problem comes when this strength at making new features is not rounded out by ...
09Aug 2004
04021 Guerilla Training: Learning the Product
It's an unfortunate characteristic of our economy today that inadequate time is spent on training employees on a product. Usually, companies look to Product Managers to be the gurus on the product, understanding the ins and outs of all the features. So how do you get to the point where you know the product inside ...
03Aug 2004
04020 New Features: Moving Ahead On All Fronts
When it comes to developing new features for a software product, every Product Manager is faced with the following dilemma: more new features are needed than there are resources to add them to the product. You can't possibly get all the features in that you want to put in. We are told to prioritize, which most ...
13Jul 2004
04019 Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Product Managers usually find that their success depends in large part in how well they work with teams of others to accomplish goals related to requirements, marketing collateral, sales support, analyst relations, and much more. It's a situation that involves influence rather than direct control, and direct responsibility but with indirect authority over others. It involves ...
06Jul 2004
04018 Building an ROI Calculator
One important contribution that Product Managers make is to play a key role in developing tools for the sales force that qualify prospects and reduce the sales cycle. This is a natural outcome of the Product Manager having deep familiarity not only with the product and benefits but also with the needs and goals of the product's users. When a business buys ...
22Jun 2004
04017 Product Management As a Counterbalance
The ideal company grows in such a way that it contains a balance of all the various strengths it needs: marketing, sales, technical knowledge, customer service, and management. Each function, such as Marketing, has its inherent strengths and weaknesses. One function's weaknesses are balanced out by strengths from other functions. Well, that's the ideal, anyway. But ...
08Jun 2004
04016 The Sport of Support
Of the many activities at a software company, customer support or customer care is one of the toughest to provide. Sometimes I think that to avoid burnout, you need to approach the whole business the way an athlete deals with a sport. Realize that it's a team effort, and that you will win some and ...
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