As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto, I have become more interested in pieces that talk about the state of Agile in today’s environment. I am a historian by training and firmly believe in the adage that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Product Managers can benefit…
“I believe that marketing is what you do when your product or service suck” Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures AVC Blog When Fred Wilson posted this quote on his blog in 2011 I was taken back a bit. I had been in enterprise software marketing for almost 15 years at the time having served as…
Charles Lambdin recently published a piece on Medium titled “Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending”. In the post Charles talks about his frustrations with the current state of Agile practice.
The story of the infamous Shed at Dulwich is a great example of how Internet marketing techniques can scam the unsuspecting public. The Shed at Dulwich was a fake restaurant created by Oobah Butler to prove the gullibility of today’s Internet user. I have been involved in technology marketing and sales for almost 20 years. …
I am launching a new side gig today vendorbumper.com. We provide research reports on software companies for buyers looking to build a basic profile of a firm or for marketers looking to update their competitive analysis. Gartner notes that buyers complete 70% of their buying journey before contacting sales. Unfortunately buyers often need to provide…
The objective of this post is to talk about a new strategy for filling the top of the sales funnel with valuable opportunities. The harsh reality is that only a fraction of the mid-market and enterprise scale companies in today’s market will purchase and implement a major new software solution. As Gartner has noted, buyers are completing 70% of their buying journey before contacting a sales rep. Research shows the odds of winning the sale are 74% when you reach decision makers at the right time and help set their buying vision. This post talks about the types of triggers that lead to customers starting a process to identify and evaluate new solutions.
Acquiring customers is the biggest challenge any B2B software company has. Unless you are lucky enough to have an award winning solution that sells itself like the mythical product led growth companies (Slack, Dropbox, and Expensify), you have to grind it out like everyone else. Display advertising, landing pages, sales development reps, content marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM systems are the basic table stakes in today’s B2B software sales game. This post explores the reality of demand generation and makes a surprising recommendation to significantly improve sales funnel conversion rates and closed sales.
White Hat competitive intelligence is a skill every product manager should have in their toolbox. There is no excuse for not leveraging competitive intelligence that is freely available on the Internet. Building a baseline competitive intelligence profile takes less than 30 minutes. Facts like these can help separate the myth from reality of a competitor’s true capabilities.
Prioritizing Agile epics, user stories, and backlogs is something contemporary product managers have to do on a regular basis. In researching another topic I came across a great piece for Agile Product Owners by Daniel Zacarias entitled 20 Product Prioritization Techniques: A Map and Guided Tour. The blog goes into great detail about 20 different techniques Product Owners can use to prioritize their backlogs. It is a long read, but definitely worth it.
As a product manager, it is helpful to understand the relative size and success of your competitors. Public software companies are required to report their detailed finances on a quarterly and annual basis to the SEC. When it comes to private technology companies it is a little harder to determine annual revenues. There are fee-based subscription services like Pitchbook, Hoovers from D&B, and Privco. While these services are great, they are a bit pricey for the typical product manager. There are a number of free resources that offer revenue information for private tech companies. Two excellent free resources include Owler and Crunchbase.
