Empowering businesses to convert leads into sales for Product Management

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welcome to my new series called path to product where I suggest different Pathways that you can take to get into product management every episode will type on a different role discipline or skill I'll share an actionable step-by-step guide that you can follow to take your skills and experience and transfer that from what you're doing now into a product manager role today is episode one and it's all about going from sales into product now sales can include inbound sales outbound sales business development manager being a sales manager an account manager an account executive something along those lines if you are currently working in sales chances are you've had thoughts along the lines of will I actually be successful as a product manager what does a product manager actually do can I go down that path if I don't even really know what the day-to-day entails what skills do I need to be a good product manager how much technical knowledge do I need how am I going to work with Engineers if I have an done that before I'm sure these are some of the many many thoughts that have crossed your mind so let's help you with that and get into part one which is what you should do if you want to transition from Tech sales into product now here I'm assuming that you're already working in the tech environment so whether it's a big tech company or even a startup you are working in a sales role that is selling probably software as a service most likely you could be selling something physical as well but I'm going to assume here that it is more focused on selling software and you have a number of advantages if this is your scenario First Advantage you have is that you already know the product because you are selling it secondly you're already talking to customers you're talking to them directly and that means you know what they want what they need and what they are not getting as a salesperson you've probably had a lot of direct contact with customers and you and you need to use this experience as the primary leverage for your transition into product and I'll talk about that a little bit later and third you know the company that you're already working within and you know the people in it now knowing the customers and knowing the product are two things that I want you to really really lean into in terms of the skills and experience that are going to be very relevant and useful for you moving into product there are some things to be mindful of though because the way in which you interact with a customer when you're in sales is likely going to be a bit different to how you interact with a customer and the reasons why you interact with a customer when you are in products an example of this is when it comes to customer communication and interaction I'm assuming that in sales you are very hyper focused on exactly what that particular customer needs you're focused on that individual business or that individual person or team that you are trying to sell to whereas in product management when your community communicating and interacting with a customer you don't necessarily want to just think about how the product through them and only them you want to think about how the product is going to be relevant to a whole range of customers so in sales you're very much focused on that individual need and the individual benefit whereas in product you're focused on sort of the larger benefit and the larger value so that you can actually make a decision to build something that is going to benefit as many possible people businesses or customers as it possibly can so that's a small example of how a skill communication with customers that is relevant across the two could still be applied a little bit differently in the context of each role with that context being set here are the actual steps that you can take so step one I want you to express internally probably to your manager that you have a desire to step into a product role do this like you would with any other change or shift that you want in your career or your current role make sure your manager is in the know make sure that they are also looking out for opportunities for you and make sure that they have your back if an opportunity comes up number two keep an eye on the type of product roles that are becoming available in your company I think this is just important for awareness so you can see if there is specific hiring going on in a given product area if there is hiring going on for a particular level of product manager this will also help you notice if there is a new product area that is being created which would potentially mean the opportunity for new roles to be available so really just keeping your eye on the market except your Market is within your company and if you work in a bigger company chances are your company might be selling lots of different products and you might only be focusing in your sales role on one type of product so it's important to ensure that you understand where product development effort is being put so if you're focusing on selling one particular type of product but that product is a maintenance and there is no new product hiring going on then then you know that you should start looking at some of the other product areas that your company already has and maybe you can start doing some upskilling from a sales side on those products as well really just giving you more of an advantage if a role in another different area were to come up step 2.5 if you are not looking to move to a product role within your current company is just to keep an eye out on what product roles are becoming available in the market I would always recommend that you shortlist a number of companies that you would like to work at or a short list a couple of industries that you're interested in so that you can actively monitor the hiring of product managers within those companies or within that industry step three in your current sales role see how you can start working closer with product managers you can do this in different ways I would recommend identifying who the product partner is for the product that you are currently selling and set up a regular time with them to share product feedback your company may or may not already have some kind of established process for Bridging the Gap between sales and product but from my experience there was always plenty of opportunity for sales to connect directly with a product manager you could also be very transparent and just say you are looking to transition into a product yourself and you're really eager to potentially shadow that person and see if they're willing to have a chat with you about how they transition into product and if there are any available roles in their team and kind of just build that relationship with the product teams of the product that you're already selling so give them value by giving them that feedback and hopefully in return they can reciprocate some of that to you as well by letting you either Shadow them or bringing you along on the type of thing that they do on a regular basis in their role another idea is meeting with a product manager to understand what is on their roadmap and how they actually ended up prioritizing that roadmap that's useful for you to know from a sales perspective but it's all also useful for you to start thinking and learning about how prioritization decisions are made because that's essentially what you're going to be doing in your role when you eventually transition into working in product step four is to familiarize yourself and upskill on product management methodologies as well as the product development life cycle this step is really just focused on you being as proactive as you possibly can and doing some self-paced learning to make sure before you actually dive into a product role you're doing a little bit of upskilling on your own you can do this in so many ways one there are so many resources available for free on the internet so go crazy with leveraging those as much as you can before you consider going down the option of a paid course which is definitely not required secondly check out my video on what does a product manager actually do I think that will give you great insight into how we spend our time on a daily weekly and monthly basis you might want to consider learning things like each phase of the product development life cycle what is a roadmap what a different prioritization techniques do some cloud computing 101 look at what the SAS Market is like just make sure you understand what some of those keywords are and step five is to understand your strengths and your gaps and think about how you can leverage your strengths and how you can fill your Gap I really believe that most of your product management learning will be done on the job but it's important to make sure you're being proactive about filling some of the gaps that you might have in your skill set or in your experience so that's what I'm going to talk a little bit more about next now here are some of the skills and experiences that I think you can leverage when transitioning from sales into product first is communication I touched on this before but as a salesperson you are communicating directly with a customer with the decision maker who is deciding whether they actually buy the product and write that check and your interfacing probably with other product teams and your hopefully interacting with product managers the customer support team and some other different types of internal teams the main thing I want you to focus on with this communication skill is recognizing that in product management you will be talking to a variety of people and you need to tailor your communication and your message to every single one of those people so you could be talking to another product manager who doesn't know anything about your product you could be talking to an engineer who is very technical you could be talking to a designer a product marketer you could be talking to Legal you could be talking to sales so you really need to think about how you deliver a consistent message in a different way for different people a lot of this does come with practice but I think it's just being conscious of the fact that you have good communication skills because you need that in sales and just thinking about how you will be able to apply your good General communication skills in a more tailored way when you are one working in a product role second skill I want you to really focus on is voice of the customer not really a skill in itself but the fact that you know what your customers want you know what your customers are doing you know the pain points that your customers have you know why customers are not signing up you know why customers are leaving this is incredibly valuable for you to leverage as you transition into product because a huge part of product management is having customer empathy and that is something that you can basically bring from day one it should not go unnoticed so in preparing your CV or in having any interviews make sure you talk about how you build that relationship with customers how you build that empathy with customers how you work through customer problems and even have some suggestions up your sleeve but how you would want to improve the product based on having that very real and Direct Customer third skill to focus on is product knowledge as much as you know about customers you should also know a heck of a lot about your product because ultimately you are selling it I'm sure you would have gone through in-depth training on your given product or product area because of the sales nature of your role so make sure you again are highlighting how in-depth you know the product and how that can potentially make you the right person to be working on future product development initiatives for that product number four is Market intelligence as much as you know your customers and your product you probably also really understand your competitors and the General Market within which your company and product exists in pretty well because that is also a really important part of sales is really knowing what other options and Alternatives customers have where they are coming from where else they might be considering going to who else they are considering when they are considering your product so really really leverage that uh competitive and Market intelligence that you already have because product manager spend a lot of time doing research and a huge part about research is looking at what competitors are doing and what is happening in the market in terms of General Trends and and if you already have that knowledge that is going to be invaluable to your potential duties now there are a couple of skills that I think you should generally focus on building that could be a little bit different to how things operate in sales the first is influencing without Authority as a salesperson you probably have direct contact communication and authority over the customer or the decision maker at your customer but as a product manager you are able to hopefully influence the decision that person is making around whether they should or should not buy your product as a but as a product manager you will lose a lot of that direct Authority in fact all of it and really all you you have is influence you're going to have to influence people projects priorities stakeholders and basically you have to use relationships trust Data Business cases customer feedback and a little bit of credibility and to get other people to do what it is that you ultimately want them to do so that's a little bit of a shift in how you have to think about how you work with people in sales you're working for that one customer at any given time whereas in product you're really working for everyone without really having any say over them you have an engineering team but they don't report to you you have a designer but they don't report to you you work with product marketers they don't report to you but at the end of the day you are the one who is accountable for your product so you need to find a way to build those relationships and find a way to influence all those people in a way that entices them to do what you want and the second skill you should really start building on is techno medical terms is your technical understanding as working with Engineers now understanding technical terms or concepts is not a prerequisite to working in product management but it really does help you and your understanding of how things work how your product operates you can make better decisions that way but you can also establish better relationships with Engineers that way this is just going to help you feel more comfortable and confident when you are making decisions and when you're articulating things to different people again a lot of this will come with time a lot of this will come with experience from working with different types of people and learning the best way to work with your engineering team but if you can do a little bit of pre-reading and be proactive about doing some kind of 101 on basic technical Concepts if you don't already have that basis that will be really useful your level of technical understanding and knowledge will also really depend on your given product some products are super technical others are not really technical at all so keep that in mind but as a general principle it's really helpful if you understand at a very basic level how things work and how to work with Engineers okay on to part two which is going from sales in any industry to product management so there are two bridges that you need to cross in this scenario one is moving into the tech industry and two is moving into a new role that is product management so essentially your advantage if you are coming from sales from another industry is your industry knowledge whatever industry that might be so while you might lack product experience and you might not have any exposure to a tech company or Tech products you can bring deep knowledge about a given industry or discipline or Niche into a product role now this is really useful because at the end of the day every single tech company and every single tech product is still solving a problem and building a solution for one or more Industries right take fintech as an example in order to build some kind of Technology product that is solving some kind of financial problem you really need to understand how the financial industry works that can include understanding how banking works that could include Banking and Financial regulations and you really need to lean on people who understand how that financial industry Works building a technology solution still needs to be underpinned by fundamental industry knowledge of the problem you are solving so that the technology solution can be fit for purpose so you could be the person who actually brings that knowledge into a tech company or a startup or a tech environment even though you've not really worked in that environment before now here are some other things that I think you can focus on when transitioning from sales in any industry to product management firstly I want you to decide what kind of industry you are interested in or you have knowledge in so maybe at the moment you work in insurance sales and that's something you want to continue to do you want to continue working in insurance and you have a lot of knowledge about how insurance will alternatively you might hate insurance and you want to transition to a completely different industry that's okay as well but just keep in mind that the transition might be a little bit harder because you may not have product experience you may not have Tech experience but you might also not have knowledge about that new industry you might be exploring so do what you can to start learning as much as possible about the other potential Industries you are interested in number two I want you to find companies that combine technology with the problems in that industry so using the insurance example you could look for startups OR tech companies building insure Tech products maybe you like education look for startups Building edtech Products or look for tech companies who are building software for universities or for schools if you are working in the healthcare industry look for startups or companies building software for healthcare professionals basically look for companies that are combining Technology Solutions while solving problems for that industry you already have knowledge about or you are interested in and thirdly when you're applying for jobs or when you are interviewing do not be shy about your industry knowledge make sure you leverage that as much as you possibly can but make sure you showcase everything you know about that industry so that the role that you are going for can see the value that you can bring because all of the product management stuff you should be able to learn on the job and lastly make sure you're explaining how you are upskilling yourself and how you are being proactive with learning about product management and the tech industry in general now final point if you lack some product management experience if you lack some tech experience or exposure or knowledge and you're also transitioning to a new industry so you lack industry knowledge this could be a really good trigger for considering some kind of short course now this could be a course on product management Basics it could be a sort of an online self-paced course on cloud computing basically something that shows that you are willing to invest in yourself and invest in upskilling and being proactive with sort of bridging some of these gaps now when I say course I'm not saying go and spend ten thousand dollars on a course I'm really a big proponent of leveraging free resources first and foremost so make sure you do that I always have a bunch of links in my description for Tech resources some of them paid some of them free so really focus on building as much knowledge as you can in these three areas with self-paced learning there are still other options available to you like applying for associate product manager roles where you really learn everything on the job or even a product management intern friendship and you could even consider a business analyst type of role which you can then use as a stepping stone into a product role and I have a bunch of Prior videos on my YouTube and on my tech talk about these kind of things so I won't go into that in super depth right now so that is it for episode one of path to product I really hope you enjoyed this and it was valuable and I wish you all the very best if you are transitioning from sales into product management leave a comment if you have other roles that you would like me to do a video like this Sport and I will see you in episode 2 of path through product bye foreign