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.

Over 900 product management and marketing professionals responded to the survey, which was conducted during the period of October 29 through November 28, 2007 using Vovici’s EFM Feedback.

When making decisions, remember this report is describing typical practices, not best practices. For best practices in product management and marketing, attend a Pragmatic Marketing seminar.

Additional analysis of the survey results is at the end of the summary.

Summary

Profile of a product manager

The average Product Manager is 37 years old;
88% claim to be "somewhat" or "very" technical;
28% are female, 72% are male;

93% have completed college and 41% have completed a masters program (see Does a masters degree make a difference?)

The typical product manager has responsibility for 3 products.

Organization

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

• 39% report to a director
• 33% report to a vice president
• 8% report directly to the CEO or COO
• 36% are in a Product Management department
• 21% are in the Marketing department
• 12% are in Development or Engineering
• 6% are in the Sales department

Responsible for product profit & loss

Responsible for go-to-market strategies

Impacts on productivity

Product managers receive 50 emails a day and send about 25.

Product managers spend roughly two days a week in internal meetings (15 meetings/week). But 55% are going to 15 meetings or more each week, and 35% attend 20 or more meetings!

Working with Development

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

• 70% researching market needs
• 53% preparing business case
• 18% performing win/loss analysis
• 89% monitoring development projects
• 85% writing requirements (the "what" document)
• 51% writing specifications (the "how" document)

Working with Marketing Communications and Sales

Product managers also spend time providing technical content for marketing and sales.

• 43% writing promotional copy
• 36% approving promotional materials
• 14% working with press and analysts
• 47% training sales people
• 44% going on sales calls

Compensation

Average US product management compensation is $100,259 salary plus $14,799 annual bonus. 84% of product managers get a bonus, based on:

• 62% company profit
• 32% product revenue
• 44% quarterly objectives (MBOs)

Over 26% say the bonus does not motivate at all and only 17% say the bonus motivates a lot.

Regional impact on compensation

Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
Northeast (CT, DE, MA, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT)
Pacific (AK. CA, HI, OR, WA)
South (AL, FL, GA, KY, MD, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)
Southwest (AR, LA, OK, TX)
West (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, UT, WY)

Gender bias in compensation

Conventional wisdom is that men make more than women for the same job.

Female: 94,851
Male: 100,587

However, the data suggest that males and females make roughly the same amount when they have the same level of experience. The overall numbers for women skew lower because the percentage of women is higher in the lower experience levels.

Product Management ratios within the company

How are product managers allocated relative to other departments?
For each Product Manager (PM), we find:

• 0.7 Product marketing managers (up from 0.4 in 2006)
• 0.7 Marketing communications
• 6.9 Sales people (up from 3.2 in 2006)
• 2.3 Sales engineers (pre-sales support) (huge leap from 0.8 in 2006)
• 0.9 Development leads
• 12.2 Developers
• 0.7 Product architects and designers (a huge jump from 0.4 in 2006)

Other ratios

• 3.4 developers per QA manager (versus 5:1 in 2006)
• 2.9 sales people per SE (improved from 4:1 in 2006)

More on compensation

Review of Director/Executive compensation

More on product management and product marketing activity

Role of Technical Product Managers