Yes, there is indeed such as thing as a bad buyer. Sales people can't understand it but customer support people sure can. My friend Bob has a great post on this.

He writes,

How many of you have been burned by a customer who shouldn't have bought your product but did? When a company spends perfectly good money on a vendor solution it doesn't need or can't possible use successfully, the vendor loses more than the buyer - because buyers have this strange habit of talking to each other.

Go read Bob's post. I can't think of anything to add (although I really ought to say something about the Speedo).

My friend Scott has an interesting post on the overwhelming nature of email. He reports that Michael Arrington has 2400+ unread emails in his inbox. Here's a long-standing problem that many of us have, although perhaps not taken to this extreme. Join the discussion on how to solve this problem.

People (and markets) know they have problems; they just don't know how to solve them.

• Our email problems are legion (not even counting spam). We get too much of it; we can't find specific messages later; we often reply the same thing again and again.
• We knew we needed to connect individuals and businesses long before we had access to the internet. 
• I've known about Kensington's presenter's remote for years but rarely is one provided when I do speak at conferences.
• Wireless phones have too many buttons!
  
• TV remotes have too many buttons.
• The Amazon Kindle solves a big problem but dang! it has too many buttons.
  

What other problems have we lived with for years?

Meanwhile developers and engineers know about solutions but don't really know about market problems. So they assume that their problems are the same as everyone else's. Are your developers, your peers, your execs "regular people"?

That's where product management comes in. We need to build the bridge between the market's problems and the developers' solutions. But alas, in many situations, the product management role is merely to prioritize what development has already decided to build.

Where do those ideas come from? The effective product manager knows that problems come from the market.

In Everyone needs to know what we do here, I wrote:

The fastest way to lose credibility in a technology company is to say that you don’t understand technology. It’s okay to say that you don’t understand a new idea or a new implementation but to be effective in technology marketing and product management requires domain and technology expertise. People who tell you otherwise probably aren't very effective in working with technical products.

I was curious what others thought about the importance of domain knowledge so we asked some of our favorite bloggers to comment:

• Jeff Lash at How To Be A Good Product Manager
• Saeed Khan at On Product Management
  
• Roger Cauvin at Cauvin
• Bikram Gupta at Thoughts on Product Management

You can read my original article with their comments appended.

The consumer tech world went crazy this week with the introduction of Apple's iPhone. Alas, AT&T dropped the ball on activation... as most cynics anticipated. It seems everyone including CNN reported on AT&T's problems. Thousands blogged on it including Declan McCullagh who complained:

I spent innumerable hours on hold over the weekend trying to get AT&T to actually activate the iPhone I bought on Friday evening. They finally did on Sunday, after 39 hours elapsed.

In AT&T iPhone activation, he adds:

Synchronoss, the New Jersey-based company that has a contract with AT&T to handle iPhone activations, says it is "extremely pleased" with the way the iPhone activations went.

"Extremely pleased"? Yeesh!

What would a market-driven vendor do?

Step 1: Understand when a problem exists.

Step 2: Acknowledge it.

Step 3: Speak directly to the solution.

What not to do?
Ignore the problem, claim success, and hope it will all go away.

It's not just on big events like this one. What is your company response to small customer issues? Ignore them? Or make it right... as soon as possible?

Scott Sehlhorst reminded me about Geek Marketing 101 by John Dodds.

John writes,

It is so named because I see amongst many geeks a pervasive misunderstanding and consequent distrust of what marketing is, and a failure to recognise that much technology marketing is no longer geek to geek since complex products are increasingly being bought by non-geeks. Of course, these observations are equally applicable to geek to geek and non-geek businesses.

Scott adds,

Don’t let them know, but we’re on our way to understanding how this stuff works.

I spend time with marketers and developers constantly yet I often forget about the chasm between the two. A marketer says "Talk to me like I was a five-year-old," a phrase which translates for a developer to "I don't know enough to work here."

Technical people are often obsessed with technology--the "how" of the product--but people don't care about the 'how' until they understand the 'what'. Marketing people are often obsessed with competitive positioning, the unique selling proposition--they are more concerned with the "what" than the "how"--but customers don't really care how you're better until they understand what you're gonna do for them.

Geeks and flakes need to meet in the middle: what are we going to do for customers?

Some people (not me, of course) download songs from Apple’s iTunes, immediately burn them to disc, and then reload them from disc to remove the Digital Rights Management protection (aka DRM). Newer albums on Apple’s site come in “iTunes Plus” with the DRM protection removed yet they are still in Apple’s proprietary format.

Meanwhile over at Amazon, songs are available for the same 99 cents but in MP3 format.

As much as I value the elegant interfaces of iTunes Music Store to iTunes client to my iPod, buying MP3s from Amazon is almost as seamless. You can buy an album (such as Good and Reckless and True by The Alternate Routes) and the files are downloaded and loaded directly into iTunes. Pretty straightforward too—without the pain of converting from a proprietary format to standard.

In The Innovators Solution, Clayton Christenson argues that you must switch from proprietary to standard when “good enough” becomes available. For instance, Apple should have licensed the Mac OS when Windows 1.0 became available and TiVo should have licensed its superior software once Comcast started offering a DVR. In this case, at least for me, the effort of downloading new tunes from Amazon to my iPod is now good enough and Apple’s proprietary file format is no longer acceptable.

Sure, Apple has to deal with the idiots at the various record labels with their stupidity about DRM, but once allowed to offer unprotected music, Apple should offer an industry standard instead of their own proprietary format.

What non-standard formats are you imposing on your customers? A proprietary database? An in-house report format? An internal scripting capability that is “better” than whatever is out there?

One key aspect of being tuned in to your customers is to see your offering from their viewpoint.

Speaking of what people want to hear (but that the politicians don't), my friend Shaun is trying to stop those annoying calls from politicians. You may recall that they exempted themselves from the Do Not Call legislation. He's trying to generate awareness on his web site, Citizens for Civil Discourse. Join this movement to take control of the political conversation away from the politicians and give it back to the voter.

I won! Or at least I'm a finalist.

Thanks to all of you who voted for my YouTube video for the Business of Software conference. My video, "Software is a hobby," was in the top five and I'm headed to San Jose in October. If you're going to be at the conference, be sure to come by and say hello.

Now I'll have to see if I can say anything in only 11 minutes. Those of you who know me know that I can barely say hello in 11 minutes!

I've been discussing the New Rules of Marketing with David Meerman Scott. His conjecture is that you no longer have to buy or beg exposure through advertising and PR... but only if you have a story that people want to tell and re-tell. As if David was listening, this month Jason Snell of Macworld wrote about the new iPhone:

After announcing the iPhone back in January, the company let the hype-storm build naturally. Trust me, if companies could simply buy the kind of attention the iPhone received before its release, they would. The iPhone attracted that attention on its own.

Apple and its products build a buzz. Do the products at your company? I hope you're thinking about using the techniques of David's new rules. But first, make sure you have something to say that people care to hear.

We've long known the power of buyer and user personas. These biographies remind people inside your company that they are not the targets for our products or our collateral. I don't expect sales and marketing people to understand half of what we produce; technology briefs and white papers are written by a technical writer for a technical reader relying on the web site or sales person as a distribution method. The trick is that we must communicate something meaningful to the buyer in the language of the buyer. No vendor speak, no marketing babble, and no technical gobbledegook. The new rules let us take the message direct to our audience so let's say something meaningful.

My friend Saeed has decided to start a little controversy. Is product management really a profession? Can it be defined? Can it be learned? In particular, why is it that we say we want to be strategic but all of the discussions and webinars and articles seem to be about tactics: product launch, templates, leadgen, running the agile stand-up, writing better user stories?

Saeed asks,

What have we done in the last 10 years to make our lot better? And I don’t just mean incrementally better? I mean significantly better?

What I hear from hundreds of seminar attendees over the years is that new product managers need help figuring out where to spend their time. Or to put it another way, three days of training is better than zero days.

Adam from Write That Down adds:

Is product management hard? No. The trick is not being the best marketer, accountant, UI designer, developer, sales person all rolled in to one. The trick is to make sure that features get built, marketing communicates them, support can answer questions, and sales can sell.

So let's sound off. Post a comment below or on Saeed's site about the results that you have seen based on strategic product management.

There's a new settop box in town. The ROKU streams Netflix video to your TV. And the folks at ROKU have answered the top concerns in five bullets.

Alas, it doesn't fix the problem that the studios will not allow Netflix to stream all of their content so there's only 10,000 movies instead of 100,000+. And strangely, it doesn't have a hard drive so it cannot buffer the stream, which seems a poor decision.

In any case, the messaging on this is so clean and clear I have to admire it. Maybe it's just easier for consumer goods but could you do the same with your positioning?

"How do I get my executives on board?"

It's a fairly common issue with product managers. After taking a Pragmatic Marketing course, they can see the value of being strategic; they even have some practical techniques for implementing change. But how do they get the message to colleagues and executives?

How 'bout sending them an ebook?

Over the years I have been asked frequently for help selling the idea of product management. This ebook is one that I've wanted to write for quite a while. Download The Strategic Role of Product Management: How a market-driven focus leads companies to build products people want to buy.

The ebook explores how product management can be the focal point for product strategy, explains the difference between product management and product marketing, and shows how the role can add value in both traditional and agile environments.

Share it with your friends and colleagues. Post it on your company’s intranet. Pass it around the office. Print off a couple of copies to leave in a public area. Blog about it.

In 2008, we're going to be bringing many new tools to help sell the strategic value of product management to your executives. Keep watching this space.

Art Petty asks, "Marketers, Are Trade Shows Extinct Yet?"

I used to love trade shows, especially the ones in Las Vegas and Reno. Maybe because no one cared if you had a drink at 10am and you could smoke everywhere. Perhaps it's because I'm secretly tacky. In any case, I don't do many trade shows any more. When I do attend, I'm there as a speaker rather than an exhibitor.

That's always been my rule: if we exhibit, we must also speak. Some conferences, like the government, want sponsor's money but not the sponsor. You want my money? Then you get me as a speaker. Don't want me as a speaker? No money for you.

Trade shows are hard to justify based on ROI; webinars are easy to justify.

I love conferences--you are face to face with the industry, competition and customers--but I don't do them much any more; they're too expensive.

I hate webinars--the format is stilted, you can't see facial expressions, the Q&A process is confusing--but I do them all the time because they're rather cheap and usually effective. (I'm doing a webinar on The Four Roles of product management. Join me!)

I had dinner on Monday with the organizers of ProductCamp Toronto. ProductCamp is a collaborative unconference about Product Marketing and Management. The camp will be held on a Saturday in October. Details to follow.

As I ranted elsewhere, an unconference is about real people discussing about real topics rather than vendors making pitches. I'll be there, speaking on product management in an agile world. Whether you're agile or not, the techniques of agile can make you a better product manager.

ProductCamp only works if you get involved--that means speaking or leading a roundtable. Add your proposed session here or learn more at ProductCamp Toronto.

Quick! Which is better? Keeping your customers or losing your customers?

They say that it's ten times cheaper to keep a customer than to get a customer. (At least, that's what Ryan said on The Office.) Why do we lose customers? It's not price; it's not features; it's not any of the reasons we hear from sales people.

In The reason customers leave, Kristin Zhivago explains,

It's hard enough to get customers. In tight times, the last thing you want to do, after you've gotten a customer, is to lose them. Not a good idea. But, it happens all the time to lots of companies. Why?

One reason. Yes, that's what I said: ONE reason. In every situation, for every type of product or service, in all the thousands of customer interviews I've conducted, it's obvious that there is really only one reason why customers leave. The reason:

"You stopped caring about me."

(It's true for employees too.)

In our frenzy, particularly in economic downturns or company mergers, there's so much to do and so little time to do it. So we focus on the urgent instead of the important. Isn't it odd that the same clients seem to have emergencies time after time. Maybe they've learned that the best way to get attention is to cry "Wolf!" and your company responds.

(It's true for employees too. I knew a guy who quit with great fanfare every year. And every year, the VP of International Sales would woo him back with more money and more perks. What lesson did he learn?)

Have you contacted 100% of your customers this year... without asking them for money? Maybe you need to spend some time maintaining customer relationships.

What are you doing this year (and next) to keep your customers?

PS. Another incredible comment in the article. Kristin wrote: "...in all the thousands of customer interviews I've conducted..." Talk about being able to speak with authority. This lady has some serious NIHITO.

My friend Jim Geisman is offering his Software Pricing Workshop next week at The Hyatt Harborside Hotel in Boston. He explains,

Pricing is important today because products change frequently, competition is intense, and software development and delivery costs are shrinking. New software business models, such as on-demand/SaaS (Software as a Service) delivery, are threatening traditional software companies. Whether you adapt to these new models or address them another way, a tactical pricing error will hurt your company.

My friend Saeed has written a wonderful series of articles on product management. In his latest post, he writes,

In my early product management jobs, I focused a lot on the process of product management. A CEO of a startup I worked for told me that my approach to product management was “very academic” in nature. He viewed himself as a “get it done by any means necessary” entrepreneur, while I viewed myself as a ”get it done right” product manager.

Saeed continues,

The startup was a very sales/deal driven company, as many startups tend to be. Putting product management in place in such an organization is not easy. But having a process focus is very important for a product manager.

The "process of product management" is such an important distinction, isn't it? In a startup, almost everyone supports sales to one extent or the other but as Saeed points out, the product management job is to create repeatable products rather than one-time offerings.

The job of product management is a strange but wonderful intersection of business, technology, marketing, project, and process--all combined with deep market knowledge.

James R. Stoup offers these Things Every Programmer Should Know For Their First Job:

Hindsight being what it is, here are some lessons I have learned since entering the ranks of professional programming.

These tips are especially helpful for the new employee with years of experience who wonders, "Why isn't everyone listening to me?" New hires first have to prove themselves. If you reflect on your own behavior towards new hires in the past, it's obvious but you don't notice it when you're the new hire.

One tip (that I've been slow perhaps to learn) is silence never goes out of style.

I’ve been enjoying the TedTalks series of video podcasts. (You can view them online or subscribe to them via iTunes). Covering a myriad of topics, each session is fascinating in its message and its use of media (or not).

• Wade Davis uses brilliant photographs in Cultures at the far edge of the world. His photos are gorgeous and strongly support his message, that the world is filled with wonderful diversity.
  

• Jeff Han unveils the genius of a multi-touch interface design. His demonstration perhaps illustrates why typical demos aren’t very interesting… because compared to this, they just aren’t very interesting.
  

• Blaise Aguera y Arcas offers a jaw-dropping Photosynth demo hampered by techno-babble that detracts from his message. I guess some people really do talk like that!
  

• Hans Rosling conveys dense population data in a remarkably clear way, debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen. He demonstrates how rich data should be conveyed and reveals the promise of data-mining.
  

• Thomas Barnett offers the Pentagon's new map for war and peace from his book, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century. It’s a fascinating, amusing talk that is marred only by his truly terrible PowerPoint slides. He uses awful graphics, too many fonts, and silly sound effects.
  
• Al Gore’s presentation on 15 ways to avert a climate crisis is somewhat better although his slides are a little clumsy.
  
• My favorite speakers use no slides at all. Check out Sir Ken Robinson's Do schools kill creativity? His amusing speech is filled with stories with no slides.
  

There are hundreds of TedTalks which in the aggregate illustrate good and bad techniques for presenting information. Watch a few and see which ones resonate with you, and why. When preparing a 15-20 minute persuasive speech, having a simple message conveyed with stories and supported with images seems to work best.

My friend Annie Peng Cui at Kent State University is doing a survey for her dissertation on the value of product management. Let's help her out. Take the survey here.