Each year Pragmatic Marketing conducts a survey of product managers and marketing professionals. Our objective is to provide you with information about compensation as well as the most common responsibilities for product managers and other marketing professionals.

• Read the 2001 survey summary (.pdf)
• Read the 2001 survey complete results (.pdf)
• Read the responses to "If I could say one thing to my immediate supervisor without fear of reprisal"

Profile of a product manager

The average Product manager is 35 years old; 
80% claim to be "somewhat" or "very" technical;
87% have completed college and 33% have a masters; 
39% are female, 61% are male.

Organization

The typical product manager reports to a director in the marketing department.

• 48% report to a director,
• 28% to VP
   
• 50% are in the marketing department
• 22% are in the product management department
• 16% are in Development or Engineering
• only 7% are in a sales department

Impacts on Productivity

Product managers receive 57 emails a day and send only 28.

On average, we're going to 12 internal meetings each week.
But 23% are going to 15 meetings or more each week.

Working with requirements

The majority of product managers are researching market needs, writing requirements, and monitoring development projects.

• 73% researching market needs
• 51% preparing business case
• 75% monitoring development projects
• 73% writing requirements
• 29% writing detailed specifications

Working with marcom and sales

Product managers still spend a lot of time providing technical content for marcom and sales.

• 54% approving promotional material
• 43% writing copy for promotional material
• 52% training sales people
• 37% going on sales calls
• 17% performing win/loss analysis

Comments for the boss

• Product managers would like their supervisors to know:
• Learn to be a manager (and stop micromanaging)
• Provide ongoing support for our product plans
• Communicate the company strategy