How do i increase my sales for Product Management

How to create outlook signature

hey welcome to a liftoff PM product strategy interview lesson I'm Kevin way a senior product manager at Amazon and I'm thrilled to be sharing my PM interviewing strategies with you on this YouTube channel I recently landed offers from Fang and top startups and I spent the last three years helping PMS consistently land great offers as an interview coach I'll walk you through how to tackle these questions the common mistakes I've seen and how to avoid them so that you can secure that 10 out of 10 rating in your interview let's get started a common product strategy question you'll encounter is should company X get into y space this type of question assesses your understanding of business goals the risks and opportunities in the market and the impact of internal and external factors on them there are a few parts you should touch on when asked this question the goals of the company the internal and external factors that help or hinder the company from being successful in the space the factors that are going to be the most important to consider and where your final recommendation is going to be the goals of the company take a second and ask a few clarifying questions and get on the same page as your interviewer what does the company do how does it make money and what is it focused on right now this shouldn't take too long but it's a great opportunity to level set what would help or hinder this company from being successful in this space there are some common Frameworks you can choose from here none of which are right or wrong but make sure you cover both the internal and external considerations for a company to enter some space me personally I like the 5Cs which we'll cover in a little bit but there are a few others like SWAT strengths weaknesses opportunities threats and porous five forces the 5c stand for customer competitor collaborators competitors and climate customer what would customers think about this what user needs would this solve for and are those critical company what impact would this have on the company collaborators how might the company's collaborators like suppliers and partners react to this do the company's collaborators help or hinder them in this scenario competitors what is the competition like in this space you can consider both direct competitors and substitute products in climate what is the general climate with respect to regulation or public perception of technology in question the reason I like to use the five C's is that I think it's specific enough to force a productive conversation in important areas but General enough to take you where you need to go depending on the question in contrast I think SWAT is a little too General especially if you're just getting comfortable for example what strengths what weaknesses and I think porous five forces is focused a little bit too much on competitive forces so I think the five C's are a nice Middle Ground to start with but again there's no right or wrong framework here and if you want me to cover the other Frameworks leave a comment down below now let's see how the five C's framework guides us through a real product strategy interview question but before we get into that make sure you like And subscribe and hit the notification Bell it's a completely free way to show support and it really does make a difference so thank you in advance let's say you're asked should Google get into modular phones to start off you'll want to ask some clarifying questions like understanding the company's priorities but let's assume your interviewer tells you that a modular phone is a smartphone with parts that you can independently swap out to upgrade then before diving into your analysis set expectations with your interviewer tell them you plan to jot down some thoughts and then weigh the pros and cons otherwise they might think you're just listening out a bunch of considerations without a strategy you can say something like I'm going to brainstorm a few considerations with you and in the end we're going to talk about which ones matter the most let's start with a customer why would customers want this modular phones could appeal to Tech Fanatics or specialized users like photographers who want to mod their phones with the most powerful Hardware you can imagine a world where there's some people who want to save money so maybe they opt to pay for a lower grade camera also if something breaks it might be a lot easier to fix and finally modular phones May lower the frequency by which you need to upgrade your entire phone company why would Google get into this space Google already has a flagship line the pixel and they've been trying to compete in the premium devices tier with Samsung and Apple but with limited success Google also really cares about Android market share in general the more people using Google products the better for their bottom line Google could either continue to try and compete in this space or try another space to capture Android's market share for example if they wanted to continue to compete in the premium device space they could start to Market Ultra mods like a supercharged battery and if they wanted to start capturing more market share and lower to mid-tier markets they might want to focus on allowing users to upgrade Parts without having to upgrade their entire smartphone there's a revenue implication here though in both scenarios if users are buying fewer new phones in favor of parts do the ecosystem effects outweigh the loss sales in other words is it more important to Google to have more devices in his ecosystem than it is to recoup the cost of the devices there's also a large upfront cost in developing new hardware which Google would have to take into account my intuition tells me that a modular phone would not be able to recoup costs in a premium device segment so let's focus on the Emerging Market use case in this question as a side note notice how you can short circus some decision making here if you're going through the process collaborators what would Google's partners think about this I can think of a few things this might complicate Logistics with Google's manufacturing Partners it took Google a few years to learn how to make a phone and arguably they're still learning compared to Apple and Samsung so introducing a new model might be tough here competitors are there any existing companies that are doing this today none of the leading device makers or oems have a modular phone Google will be first to Market and this might be an advantage because once you buy Google's base model modular phone you would have to start buying mods that are for that phone only remembering that the value proper users is sticking with a base model and only upgrading some parts however being first a market was something that is unproven and requires heavy upfront costs carries its own risk climate the overall regulatory climate towards Big Tech is not favorable today a move where Google is seen as being less competitive couldn't be a bad one meaning Regulators might want to encourage competition if Google created a modular phone in such a way that disallowed phones from working with third-party parts that might not be a good look but if Google did allow third-party suppliers to make parts then they will lose some revenue from part sales common pitfalls at this point include sticking too closely to any one framework as I mentioned the five C's are a nice middle ground but once you get more comfortable you shouldn't feel tied to any one framework but you don't have to explicitly call on the framework you're going to use either as this can come across as being too scripted instead you can say something like I'm going to walk through the internal and external considerations for this scenario the pillars I want to start with are impact to the customer and the company as well as the company's Partners competitors and general climate that might help or hinder them after reviewing the five C's you should prioritize the considerations that should be weighed more heavily in your decision making keeping in mind the company goals at this point you have a long list of pros and cons in each category some pros are going to be more serious than others and the same with the cons so make sure you call out which risks you think are straightforward to mitigate and which benefits you think are the most important this way you can Whittle down the conversation down to the main bullet points that matter to do this you'll want to reiterate the company's goal and then go through the considerations listed in each part of your answer while highlighting the assumptions worth testing for our example we can start by saying that Google's goal for Android is to make sure there are as many people using Android as possible and to be competitive in the premium device space but remember we scrapped the idea of using a modular phone to compete in the premium device space since it'll be difficult to recoup costs so we're going to be focusing on helping Android increase its user counts the regulatory climate is a factor but I wouldn't say it's one of the bigger factors here since Google is usually under pressure for things related to its bigger product lines like search and ads that's also not worry too much about competition right now if Google were to launch this other companies would need some time to enter the market and Google's top competitor Apple would not need nor would they likely launch a modular phone the most important discussion we should be having here is the ecosystem versus the revenue in other words is getting more users on Android worth the money Google would lose in standing up a new device and having to recoup that cost much more slowly than they would with selling regular phones once you teed up the discussion think about how you'd make the recommendation based on its goal you can say something like Google's goal is to get more users on Android one tactic could be to convert users from the iPhone but this likely won't be effective they can also try to improve their existing Android software so that users don't turn Apple which doesn't apply here Google can also get more users by getting people who don't yet have a smartphone to use Google's device as their first device if we focus on the latter I would not recommend pursuing a modular phone to meet this goal while this would allow customers to have a cheaper alternative and a more sustainable way to stay online Google doesn't have a stand up in entirely new phone line to achieve this Google should explore other tactics like working with local oems and carriers to get Emerging Markets on Android as I mentioned I have a feeling that Android to Apple churn is a bigger threat to the number of users on Android so Google would be better suited focusing on efforts there alongside pursuing local Partnerships common pitfalls at the end of strategy questions include not giving a recommendation at the end many candidates go through their analysis and think that the question is over it's important that you make a solid conclusion with that said the recommendation does not need to be strictly yes or no it's completely fair to come up with a conclusion like yes but only if condition X applies and the same with a no these questions are more involved than others but hopefully having this framework to fall back on helps so in summary always keep the goals of the company in mind it guides your decision making through the entire conversation not just the beginning use a framework you're comfortable with to walk your interviewer through the internal and external factors to consider then tell them which factors matter the most to you in your decisioning so that you don't end up with a laundry list of pros and cons for them to sift through and finally wrap up with a confident recommendation remember a strong recommendation doesn't need to be all or nothing and that concludes this lesson if you found this liftoff PM less invaluable consider joining our community by clicking the join button below by joining you'll unlock many more valuable PM interview lessons get access to exclusive posts and be a part of a private community of PMS preparing for interviews these lessons give you the same material students get when they pay for coaching which can cost hundreds of dollars per hour keep up the great work I can't wait to see what you accomplished and I'll see you in the next liftoff PM lesson good luck with your upcoming interview