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    How Product Managers Can Learn To Understand Their Customers: Techniques For Product Managers To Better Understand What Their Customers Really Want
    How Product Managers Can Learn To Understand Their Customers: Techniques For Product Managers To Better Understand What Their Customers Really Want
    How Product Managers Can Learn To Understand Their Customers: Techniques For Product Managers To Better Understand What Their Customers Really Want
    Ebook96 pages41 minutes

    How Product Managers Can Learn To Understand Their Customers: Techniques For Product Managers To Better Understand What Their Customers Really Want

    By Jim Anderson

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    About this ebook

    If you want to be successful as a product manager than you are going to have to be able to create products that solve problems for your customers. In order to do this, you are going to first have to understand your customers – what are their wants and needs?

    What You'll Find Inside:
    * HOW TO MOVE FROM CUSTOMERS TO PARTNERS
    * WHAT PRODUCT MANAGERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CUSTOMER LOYALTY
    * WHY PRODUCT MANAGERS NEED TO LEARN TO LOVE THEIR CRAZY CUSTOMERS
    * PRODUCT MANAGERS DON’T LIKE SURPRISES: KNOW YOUR PRODUCT’S CUSTOMERS!

    In order to be able to answer questions like this, you may find out that you are going to have to fire some of your customers – they are just too expensive for you to try to keep happy. Ultimately you want to change the relationship that you have with your customers and move towards being seen as more of a partner than a vendor.

    In some cases, one of your customers may start to use your product too much. In these cases you'll need to be able to find a way to tell them to stop using it. You'll be able to do this if you've found a way to have a real relationship with your customer. However, along with this comes the risk of perhaps finding out too much about a given customer.

    Once you have a customer, you may not have them forever. Customer loyalty is a fickle thing that product managers need to understand. One way to increase loyalty is to customize your product and engage in some niche marketing.

    All customers are not created the same and so product managers need to take the time to understand their differences. This means learning to love the crazy ones or realizing that you may be selling primarily to grandparents. Take the time to study product managers who know how to do this right and in the end, make sure that you don't end up surprising your customers – nobody likes that!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJim Anderson
    Release dateOct 30, 2015
    ISBN9781310065361
    How Product Managers Can Learn To Understand Their Customers: Techniques For Product Managers To Better Understand What Their Customers Really Want
    Author

    Jim Anderson

    J Jim Anderson is Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work focuses on: theories and methods of second language learning and bilingualism, including Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL); multilingualism and new literacies; and language policy. Underlying this is a commitment to an integrated and inclusive approach to language and literacy education incorporating the areas of foreign and community/heritage language learning as well as English as an Additional Language and English mother tongue. Jim is co-director with Dr Vicky Macleroy of the Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project launched in 2012.

    Read more from Jim Anderson

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      Book preview

      How Product Managers Can Learn To Understand Their Customers - Jim Anderson

      Do You Really Understand Your Customer?

      If you want to be successful as a product manager than you are going to have to be able to create products that solve problems for your customers. In order to do this, you are going to first have to understand your customers – what are their wants and needs?

      In order to be able to answer questions like this, you may find out that you are going to have to fire some of your customers – they are just too expensive for you to try to keep happy. Ultimately you want to change the relationship that you have with your customers and move towards being seen as more of a partner than a vendor.

      In some cases, one of your customers may start to use your product too much. In these cases you'll need to be able to find a way to tell them to stop using it. You'll be able to do this if you've found a way to have a real relationship with your customer. However, along with this comes the risk of perhaps finding out too much about a given customer.

      Once you have a customer, you may not have them forever. Customer loyalty is a fickle thing that product managers need to understand. One way to increase loyalty is to customize your product and engage in some niche marketing.

      All customers are not created the same and so product managers need to take the time to understand their differences. This means learning to love the crazy ones or realizing that you may be selling primarily to grandparents. Take the time to study product managers who know how to do this right and in the end, make sure that you don't end up surprising your customers – nobody likes that!

      For more information on what it takes to be a great product manager, check out my blog, The Accidental Product Manager, at:

      www.TheAccidentalPM.com

      Good luck!

      Dr. Jim Anderson

      About The Author

      I must confess that I never set out to be a product manager. When I went to school, I studied Computer Science and thought that I'd get a nice job programming and that would be that. Well, at least part of that plan worked out!

      My first job was working for Boeing on their F/A-18 fighter jet program. I spent my days programming fighter jet software in assembly language and I loved it. The U.S. government decided to save some money and went looking for other countries to sell this plane to. This put me into an unfamiliar role: I started to meet with foreign military officials in order to explain what my product did.

      Time moved on and so did I. I found myself working for Siemens, the big German telecommunications company. They were making phone switches and selling them to the seven U.S. phone companies. The problem was that the switches were too complicated. Customers couldn't tell the difference between one complicated phone switch from another complicated phone switch.

      The Siemens sales folks were in a bind. They didn't know enough about how the switches worked to tell their customers why they should buy them. Siemens reached out into their engineering unit looking for anyone who could help the sales teams out. I put my hand up and overnight I became a product

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