The rumor mill was right.

The Big Meeting everyone dreaded was finally happening. The general manager, in his stiff gray suit soberly announced “We’re closing the office” to me and fifty other shell-shocked souls.

Rumors had swirled for weeks beforehand, and I had watched the fear grow on my co-workers’ faces. Anxious eyes followed managers as they talked in hushed tones and then closed their office doors behind them.

We were doing what it took to keep our jobs. We upped our game, worked harder. Stayed later. Took fewer coffee breaks.

Most of my co-workers had invested years of their lives into their jobs and lived in fear of layoffs. Fear of change.

I suppose I was one of them.

Now none of that mattered. All of us were out of a job with those few words. Lives and families disrupted with what seemed like a capricious whim.

Looking back on those events years ago I realize I was living in a fantasy. If I somehow controlled my circumstances, if I could resist change and maintain order, I would be happy.

Now I believe the opposite: Change is inevitable and desirable.

We’re all operating under an illusion of control. No matter how hard we fight against it, everything will change. Jobs and careers change. People and relationships change. We change.

What matters, then, is our attitude about the change. Will we resist it and suffer? Or will we accept and even embrace the change, giving us a chance to grow and fully experience life? For me, this latter attitude has fostered more satisfaction and happiness in my life.

But I don’t pretend that shifting our attitude is easy. Humans seek comfort. Our brain seeks the easiest path. And often the easiest path is to resist change.

We must actively work against our comfort-seeking selves. If we don’t, we set ourselves up for disruption and pain based on external events — or someone else’s whims.

For me, my first corporate job after college represented security, a sense of control, and a feeling that I had made it.

Then as the layoffs happened, it all began to seem so pointless to me. As I watched my co-workers’ worst fears realized, I vowed to not become them. I wasn’t going to become someone whose life was upended by someone else’s decision.

So, I adopted a new perspective: the fear of disruption, of being out of a job, is a wasted emotion. Embrace it. I decided to be a person who accepts that change is always coming — so don’t hold on too tightly to the way things are.

After the office closed, I moved to Seattle and found a job through a connection. It turned out to be a dream job because I could create the role myself.

That experience formed the basis for how everything has transpired since then in my career. Opportunities cross my path and I think “that looks interesting, I’ll give it a try.” I know there will always be change coming at me from outside forces, so I might as well embrace it and create the change myself. And enjoy it.

I’ve found that the tighter I hold on to a specific outcome, the more likely it is that I will suffer when things don’t happen according to my expectations. The more I can let go of expectations in my career, the less I will be in pain when things change. I won’t be as frustrated. Or angry.

Embracing change creates a positive feedback loop. Change creates new pathways in our brain. And that makes future change easier to manage. Now I expect and even want change. And I’m happier for it.

A former colleague called me to ask for some career advice.

He had started a new position two months ago and felt that it wasn’t a good fit for him. His question: “At what point do I listen to my gut and find something else versus sticking it out to discover whether it could become something better?”

My advice to him: listen to your gut. If he wasn’t finding passion in some part of the job, the work he was doing every day, the industry he was in, the team he was working with, what he was learning every day, or some other meaningful aspect of the role, then it’s probably time to start looking.

I based my advice on my early career experience: In my first job after college I knew in the first few months the job wasn’t a good fit for me personally. I realized I never had passion for what I did every day. And because it was a large corporation with thousands of employees, I felt like I wasn’t making much of a difference.

But the 23-year-old in me placed importance on other aspects of the job that in hindsight weren’t truly meaningful: I was good at the job, the pay was decent, and the hours were consistent. I was able to live in Seattle, a city that was exciting to me. And I got to wear a suit, which for some odd reason was important to me at the time.

So, I stayed. Too long.

While I learned a few things and made friends, I didn’t listen to my gut and stayed there over three years.

During that time, I accepted promotions to offices in Sacramento, and eventually Minneapolis. Those promotions kept me engaged just enough, wondering perhaps if the next role, the next city, would offer me some glimmer of passion I knew was missing.

And I rationalized to myself: “I don’t know what else I would do, so I’ll stay in the job.”

That decision, which I revisited almost weekly, was turning me into a depressed robot. I was slowly dying bit by bit.

Eventually, it was an impending reorganization that woke me up from my depression. I could either move to Chicago and keep my job, or take a severance and leave. I had to make a choice.

The decision to quit and return to Seattle turned out to be the first of many decisions to take control of my own destiny.

As I made the decision to quit, I created a mental framework for myself that would guide my decisions about my career. The framework guides me even today.

My personal framework: I want an exciting and stimulating day. I want a flexible lifestyle and financial freedom. I want to control my own destiny, and not be subject to the whims of others. I want variety and to always be learning something new.

This framework is one reason I’ve worked for software startups for years, and eventually founded my own company.

I suggested to my colleague that he start to think about a framework for himself. What did he want for his life and career?

My other advice: become more comfortable with change. The mind seeks comfort. We’re wired to seek the easiest path. And the easiest path often is no change at all. We must actively work against that.

Change is inevitable, so seeking comfort eventually sets people up for a shock, a disruption based on outside forces such as a reorganization or layoff. I learned that we have a choice in how we cope with change. Are we going to resist it and suffer? Or embrace it and have the potential for joy (or at least less suffering).

I told my colleague that the first years of a career are about discovering what drives you. What makes you excited to get up in the morning? This in my opinion is more important than how a short stint looks on a resume.

Originally published at https://www.jimsemick.com.

For years, I asked this question almost daily, both in my personal and professional life. I wanted to know: How can I spend my time working on the things that matter most?

Like many of you, I’ve lived much of my life attempting to accomplish 100 things simultaneously. I was trying to please everyone and respond to every request. As a result, I scattered my energy and my time. While I made some progress, it often was stressful and came at the expense of the most meaningful things.

Managing products is no different. As product people, I’m sure you understand this well. We’re inundated with requests from customers, teammates, partners, executives, and internal stakeholders.

When we agree to do it all, or worse, include every request in our products, we wind up with no time for things that matter or feature-bloated and weak products.

The concepts of the book are summarized in one sentence: “Less, but better.” If there’s a single statement for product managers to live by, that would be it.

I’ve often thought that product leaders can learn lessons about building better products from the methods we use to prioritize and improve our personal life.

My free book The Essentialist Product Manager blends my passions of essentialism, mindfulness, and product management into ideas that you can bring into work and your life to make it all more fulfilling.

The methods in this book may sound simple. But, I promise you they are not easy. They require setting new habits, thinking deeply about what’s important, and making tough decisions about what not to work on.

I distilled many of the lessons I’ve learned about prioritizing products, business, and life. If you’re a product leader or you aspire to build great products, I hope this book inspires you to make a more meaningful contribution.

Based on our years of experience working with thousands of product managers around the world at ProductPlan, we’ve concluded that nearly all of a product manager’s key tasks and responsibilities fall into a few broad categories:

1. Connect and Communicate

2. Discover and Analyze

3. Document and Decide

Ultimately, these three categories work toward setting the long-term vision and strategy for your company’s products and then communicating this strategy to relevant participants and stakeholders.

But we all have just 24 hours in each day — at least a couple of which we need to spend sleeping.

It can seem impossible to devote the time to each of these three categories every day — unless you have the right planning and forethought.

Before you can even begin to maximize your calendar, tools, and processes, you must honestly ask yourself whether or not a time-consuming project or task is worth pursuing.

Will the time invested support you in one of these three mentioned areas? Will it help you connect and build relationships with the right people, gather the information that can improve your strategic thinking, and help you make important decisions about your products?

If the answer is yes, then, your efforts will be working toward identifying market problems that will solve worthy problems for your customers. If not, the initiative probably isn’t worth your time and effort.

In ProductPlan’s new book, Mastering a Day in a Product Manager’s Life, you’ll learn:

• The major categories of work that will take up most or all of your time as a product manager.
• How to prioritize tasks, and the types of tools you’ll be using to get your work done.
• How to balance strategic and tactical responsibilities, stay connected and accessible to my cross-functional team, and carve out the all-important time for strategic thinking and preparation.
• What a typical time-allocation plan looks like for a successful PM’s day.

Whether you’re entering a new product role or aspire to trying to optimize your impact as a product leader, there’s something in here for you. Download the book for free.

Master Your Product Management Schedule with These Productivity Hacks was originally published in Product Coalition on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been on product teams for a long time, helping transform rough ideas into real products and bring those products to market. I’ve honed some great techniques for validating products and want to share them with you in my new book Find Product-Market Fit Faster: Lessons for Product Managers.

In this excerpt from the book I give an introduction to the concept of “product-market fit” and the steps that product managers can use to iterate ideas, validate concepts, and make rapid decisions about what to build.

Download the full book here.

Products launch, products fail.

For some products, it may take years to find a fit in the market. And it’s often during that time products fail. They fail to see traction in the market, and the startup runs out of cash.

I’ve been a part of product teams for almost 20 years now. During this time, I’ve helped transform rough ideas into real products and bring those products to market.

Thanks in part to practice, and in part to mistakes made along the way, I’ve honed some great techniques for validating products. This technique is the process I used to quickly iterate ideas, validate concepts, and make rapid decisions about what to build.

This validation process will hopefully help you determine who your customer is, the value proposition for your product, what features to build, how to price the product, and how to talk about the product with potential customers.

By far, my best piece of advice for product managers and entrepreneurs setting out on their journey to product-market fit is this:

Make better mistakes faster and fail as early as possible.

It may seem like counterintuitive advice. But I can assure you, it works. In fact, it was with this mentality that my co-founder Greg and I were able to create a rapidly-growing SaaS business with thousands of happy customers.

As part of this guide, I’ll share our story at ProductPlan. I’ll share examples of the real lessons we learned as we validated our market, got our product built quickly, and eventually found product-market fit.

What is Product-Market Fit?

Before I start, let’s get on the same page about what I mean by product-market fit. You’ve likely heard about the magical product-market fit that startups aspire to — the so-called ‘holy grail’ for products and businesses alike. There are a lot of different ways to define it. Here’s how I like to think about it:

Your company is selling a product that solves a problem for a market segment, and you’re selling it in a repeatable way.

• Solving a problem.
• For a defined market.
• For customers who are willing to pay for solving it. • And selling to them is repeatable.

Bonus points: Finding a model that is cost-effective to acquire customers. Can you gain customers for less than what they pay you?

While this sounds like more of a mature company, my experience shows that you can find product-market fit earlier, and begin to reduce the risk of failure even before you build the product. This book focuses on the early stage work you can do to better assure product- market fit.

I’ll also add that you’ve probably found product-market fit when you’re no longer pivoting significantly. While experimentation, market expansion, and change are essential, you’re no longer implementing wild gyrations of the model to make the business model work. You’re not saying, “We got this wrong, let’s try another market.” Or, “If only the product had this feature, then people will buy.”

A lot of companies will continue to revolve on revenue models and value propositions. They’ll ask themselves these questions:

• How should they talk about the product?
• Who are the customers that they should be approaching?

All the while just hoping, okay, one day this is going to click. Well, when you stop doing that, and you find something that’s repeatable, then you probably have found product- market fit.

That can happen fairly early in the process and this is how we did it at ProductPlan.

The Process for Finding the Fit

Here are the tried and true steps I used:

1. Start with the end in mind.
2. Be a seeker of pain.
3. Make your best guess.
4. Find patterns of pain with customer discovery.
5. Validate the Minimum Sellable Product.
6. Find repeatable economics.

You can read more about the steps in the book. And if you have experience with finding product-market fit, I’d love to hear your stories!

Great products don’t happen by accident.

While there are many reasons products might succeed, it’s the direction of great product leadership that truly makes a difference.

Throughout the course of my career I’ve been fortunate to work with and learn from some incredible product leaders. Between the leaders I worked with at previous companies, to the leaders whose teams are using ProductPlan, I’ve learned a lot about different approaches to product leadership across different industries, business models, and company stages.

If there’s one truth I’ve learned about product leadership, it’s that great product leadership can be learned.

Great product leadership is intentional. It’s also complex, the result of the perfect balance of collaboration, service, strategic focus, and great communication.

So we wrote a book about it. A book for product managers who are ready to lead a product team, develop a valuable product, and be an empowered product leader. Who better to draw inspiration from than product leaders themselves?

In this book, nearly twenty product leaders tell their stories. They share in great detail about what makes for great leadership (and in turn great products). They talk about how to…

• Mobilize individuals across your organization to rally behind the product strategy.
• Evolve how your team works and plans (together) through thoughtful implementation of lightweight processes.
• Break down silos and encourage collaboration by fostering cross- functional partnerships.
• Make customer-centricity part of your team’s DNA.
• Cultivate a culture of continuous improvement that extends beyond
  the product itself.

Whether you’re leading a product team now or aspire to be a great product leader someday, there’s something in here for you. Download the book for free.

How to be a Product LEADER was originally published in Product Coalition on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Pricing software-as-a-service (SaaS) presents unique challenges — and opportunities — for product and marketing teams.

In the past few years I’ve had a hand in setting pricing for several successful SaaS products, including GoToMeeting, GoToMyPC, AppFolio and my current company ProductPlan (product roadmap software). In this article I’ll talk about the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Let’s Start with Customer Value

Let’s start with what I consider to be the #1 most important element for pricing SaaS products: customer value.

Understanding customer value is essential for pricing all software products, but even more so with SaaS.

Because most SaaS products are priced with a recurring subscription, every month or year your customers reevaluate whether they want to continue subscribing. This makes it even more critical to ensure pricing is in line with the value your customers receive.

Let me define what I mean by “value.” First, value can be quantitative, such as time saved or additional revenue earned. Measuring this is straightforward, and is the basis of Return on Investment calculations. If your product is B2B SaaS, you are likely already factoring this in to your pricing decision.

But here is the tricky part: Value can also be qualitative, such as pain relieved or lifestyle benefits your product provides. By thoroughly understanding and documenting this sometimes nebulous qualitative value through customer interviews, you can begin to narrow in on possible pricing models and a price range.

It’s understanding this qualitative value that can help product managers set their product apart from the competition.

I believe that customer value should be the primary consideration for your price and pricing model. Not features. Not what competitors charge. And definitely not your costs.

An Example: How We Priced GoToMeeting

When we were determining pricing for GoToMeeting, I interviewed dozens of potential customers to gain a deep understanding of customer pain and the value they might receive from conducting online meetings with our concept. We discovered:

• Cost and time savings from reduced or eliminated travel (quantitative value)
• Cost savings from switching to our solution versus expensive per-minute pricing of existing solutions (quantitative value)
• Increased usage of online meeting technology because users were no longer tied to per-minute charges (quantitative value)
• Lifestyle benefits from conducting meetings remotely (high qualitative value)
• Reduced frustration by eliminating complicated online meeting solutions (high qualitative value)

By understanding these quantitative and qualitative values, we developed GoToMeeting’s unique $49 “All You Can Meet” flat-rate pricing (an industry-leading innovation at the time).

The pricing model directly relates to the pain and frustration we heard from prospective customers in our interviews — the current solutions were difficult to budget because the per-minute charges varied so widely. The buyer experienced sticker shock every month. Therefore, peace of mind was another qualitative value we could provide customers with our pricing model.

While it’s hard to assign a dollar amount to qualitative values, these are the benefits that ultimately made GoToMeeting a no-brainer for millions of customers.

Because the product was SaaS, we had the flexibility to price our product differently from the competition and create a unique product in the market. In a sense, we made pricing a part of the product. It became a differentiating feature that marketing promoted heavily.

Most product managers already know that finding the right price is more art than science. However, if you thoroughly understand the value for your SaaS product, you can delight customers, provide competitive differentiation and ultimately launch a more profitable product.

Which Model to Choose?

It’s a brave new world for pricing software-as-a-service products. Gone are the days of simply setting a per-seat fee and launching.

I now want to talk a bit about why SaaS gives product and marketing managers unprecedented flexibility to choose unique pricing models. Models that can differentiate your product in the marketplace. Models that ideally align with your customers’ goals.

One of the exciting advantages of SaaS is that you can think differently about pricing models. Unlike traditional software, customers licensing SaaS products pay for your product on a recurring basis. Your product is no longer tied to a one-time purchase. And because the product is centrally hosted, you have additional flexibility for offering your product in unique packages.

A Short List of Pricing Models

SaaS gives you the ability to consider revenue models that weren’t previously possible. Here’s a short (and by no means exhaustive) list of pricing models used today. Many products use a combination of these models:

• Per-user (many SaaS products)
• Per-user with free participants (GoToMeeting, ProductPlan)
• Storage (Dropbox)
• Features (plans based on feature tiers)
• Project (Basecamp)
• Freemium (LinkedIn)
• Per item/contact (AppFolio, Hubspot)
• Per Node/Server (Hadoop)
• Per Visitor/Traffic (AdRoll)
• Processor time/Data transferred (Amazon Web Services)
• Open Source (free with paid services)
• Advertising (Facebook)
• Broker fee (AirBnB)

Feel free to add to this list in comments. My point is that with so many options, you now have the ability to discover a pricing model that aligns with your customers’ goals.

Success-Based Pricing Example

For AppFolio’s property-management software, we developed a unique pricing model based on the number of rental units managed by a property manager. Because we charged a flat $1 per rental unit per month, the pricing was simple and easy to understand.

This pricing model resonated with customers because it aligned with their business goals. They paid more for our product only if they grew their business by adding rental units to their portfolio. If they were more successful, we were more successful.

Don’t be Tempted by Competitive Pricing

When pricing a new product, there is a temptation to set your pricing relative to the competition. It’s common for new products to price using the same model as competitors, but slightly lower. Sure, you can price the same way as your competitors, and perhaps that’s what your customers expect.

But with SaaS, there are so many ways to price the product that you have the ability to stand out in the market by thinking differently. Capitalize on the approaches that your competitors haven’t considered.

Keep it Simple

Don’t overly-complicate pricing. With so much flexibility in SaaS pricing options, there is a temptation to offer various flavors and packages.

Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for doing so. For example, it’s common to have three packages based on features. Studies show that this approach anchors customers, and can be an effective technique for driving customers to your best-performing package. That’s fine if this is your goal.

However, creating an overly complicated pricing scheme has the potential to confuse customers and create a nightmare for your finance team. Keeping it simple reduces headaches and may even provide more revenue over the long term.

For example, at ProductPlan (product roadmap software), we saw that products in our space had complicated licensing options. Many required a paid license for every software user. Several offered complicated pricing tiers based on packages.

We took a different approach to simplify pricing. We charged only for editors of roadmap data and offered free licenses to other collaborators. Rather than offering complicated pricing tiers based on features, we offered unlimited use of all features for one price.

Because the product managers want to widely distribute the product roadmap to stakeholders, this model benefits the customer. It’s aligned with their goals. In addition, this model gives our product more exposure within the organization, so ultimately we sell more licenses when other departments ask to use the software.

10 of My Top Pricing Tips

Here are 10 tips that you can use when pricing SaaS products. While many of these apply to SaaS products, the lessons overall apply to software products in general. Here we go:

1. Pricing must be a part of early validation. While you may not nail your final pricing until later, the earlier you can zone in on your pricing model the better off you will be. This gives you a greater chance of building your pricing model into the value proposition. At a minimum, during the product conceptualization stage actively interview potential decision-makers about their purchase process, how they purchased their current solution, and frustrations with the current solution’s pricing.
2. Ballpark LTV as early as possible. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is so critical to a SaaS business model that you need to estimate it as early as possible — well before you have customers and revenue. LTV influences the sales model and what you can afford to spend to acquire customers. While there are lots of ways to calculate LTV, I recommend keeping it as a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation with input from customer interviews and similar products.
3. LTV > CAC. The formula for success is simple in the SaaS world: LTV over time must be significantly greater than customer acquisition cost (CAC). SaaS companies with a recurring revenue stream like Salesforce.com have LTV multiples that are three to five times the cost to acquire that customer. Doing back-of-the-envelope calculations on CAC will help you avoid surprises down the road.
4. Your sales model influences your pricing. Conversely, pricing constrains the sales model options available to you. For example, if you have an expensive field sales force, you need to ensure that your customer LTV is high enough to support that model. You’ll struggle if your average customer purchases $50/month over a two year lifetime. Ultimately, your buyer persona determines your sales model, so make sure you understand the expected purchase process.
5. Create upsell opportunities within your pricing model. One of the advantages of SaaS is the ability to offer upgrades and services that drive additional revenue. Consider these within your pricing model, as they can make a substantial difference in long-term product revenue. This is the model we used with great success at AppFolio.
6. Use caution when offering annual prepurchase discounts. Many SaaS products that license on a monthly basis will offer a discount for annual prepurchasing. However, use this with discretion. Analysis shows that over the long term you leave significant revenue on the table.
7. Consider free trials. If your acquisition and activation model is simple enough, providing a limited free trial is a great way to increase your sales conversions. It’s common to offer 15- and 30-day trial options.
8. Service is key. Because SaaS is typically licensed as a subscription, your customers are at risk of churning every renewal period. Service and support are even more critical than with traditional software. For this reason, many SaaS products build support and regular upgrades into the standard licensing fee. Consider whether your customers will be receptive to additional fees for support and maintenance for a product that they expect to work flawlessly.
9. Customers don’t care about your costs. I’m not suggesting you ignore your costs, but don’t price your product working backward from cost. This is not how your customers will think about the pricing. Sure, cost of goods sold needs to be a factor for you to be viable, but this is not related to how customers value your product.
10. Pricing perception doesn’t follow economic rules. Customers often buy products for reasons that seem disconnected from the Return on Investment calculation. Pricing is highly psychological. For this reason the demand curve is not linear — a lower price doesn’t necessarily equate to more customers and revenue. Take this into account by thoroughly understanding the qualitative value that your product provides.

With web-based SaaS products, it’s easier than ever to conduct A/B tests to gauge buyer behavior, pricing, and acquisition costs (before and after launch). As you test the user interface, I encourage you to test your pricing with equal fervor.

Use qualitative customer interviews to get enough data points to make good decisions. Get the pricing right, and you have a recurring revenue stream that places your product’s portfolio value well above traditional software products.

Pricing is such a core part of a SaaS product’s business model that you need to get it right. These are a few of my lessons. Please add your own lessons in comments — I’d love to hear them!

Jim Semick is co-founder of ProductPlan, roadmap software for product teams. Jim has helped launch new products now generating hundreds of millions in revenue. He was part of the founding team at AppFolio, helping launch the company’s first products. Previously, Jim wrote the product requirements and helped launch GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting (acquired by Citrix). Jim is a frequent speaker on new product development. He lives in Santa Barbara California. @jimsemick

Over 1,200 product managers gathered on May 4th at the San Francisco symphony hall to hear 9 amazing speakers talk about the latest insights into product management. Our team enjoyed listening to the speakers as well as meeting with ProductPlan customers and other fellow product managers. So many great observations in one day. Here are our top 6 take-aways.

1. Great product managers need to be comfortable in the “uncomfortable.”

Ken Norton kicked off the 2016 Mind the Product conference with the following analogy: Product managers operate like Jazz groups. Jazz by nature is chaotic. He made the observation that product managers can create innovative products by surrendering to the unknown, following the music where it goes, and “creating dissonance.” The best product teams provide space to take risks.

The takeaway? Get uncomfortable. There are no such things as mistakes, only missed opportunities. Software is unpredictable, so just go with it. You can read the full blog post from Ken’s talk here.

2. Product innovation never stops (competitors don’t wait while you write your JIRA ticket).

Des Traynor from Intercom provided a simple (but powerful) observation: People have been solving the same problems that your software solves for a long time. Technology that makes it cheaper, faster, or easier for your customers to make progress in their lives will disrupt your product — unless you disrupt it yourself.

Product teams can never rest and must keep innovating with the latest trends. Your product is not a single destination — it’s a system. You need to treat new competitors with respect. If you think of your product as an isolated application, rather than part of an overall system that solves a problem, then you will be disrupted (and you may not realize it when it’s happening).

3. Your customers aren’t “users,” they are people.

Maria Giudice, VP of Experience Design at Autodesk, spoke about the importance of truly understanding your customers as opposed to working with your assumptions. Create programs to get closer to your customers (like a “customer tour of duty”).

One of the key takeaways: Don’t think of your customers as “users.” They are people who need to be treated with empathy.

4. Are you naughty or nice? Assist your customers to achieving their goals.

Nathalie Nahai focused her presentation on user interface design, specifically a customer’s journey and the psychology behind successful products. In her talk, she gave examples on how companies either “undermine customers’ goals for their benefits” (naughty) or “assist their customers to achieve their goals” (nice). Nathalie divided the customer journey into 3 “battle fields:” Conversion, Adoption, Monetization. For each of the phases, Nathalie gave specific examples (naughty and nice) of what product managers should or should not do.

She concluded her presentation by reminding all of us that we are both architects and users of future technologies. And it is up to us what kind of world we want to build.

5. The experience is the product.

We’re often quick to share all the things that make up our great products. Peter Merholz kicked off his talk by comparing two product descriptions of the “photographic apparatus” in the nineteenth century.

The first product description is very lengthy and starts with this: “This apparatus consists of a box containing a camera, A, and a frame, C, containing the desired number of plates, each held in a small frame of black Bristol board…”

In contrast, the product description that Kodak used (which probably contributed to the success of the company) was simply: “You press the button, we do the rest.”

Peter Merholz talk was a good reminder that there is more to our products and services than merely the things we build.

6. Innovation is great, so long as the core mechanics (and language) are familiar.

Scott Belsky, Founder of Behance and VP of Products for Adobe, talked about how it’s more important to solve problems for new users than to bloat your product with features for power users. He urged product managers to simplify. The challenge? Keeping it simple is complicated.

Scott believes that innovation is important but not at the cost of keeping products easy. (A common theme at MTP). This is one reason why Scott believes that the product team should be responsible for marketing copy because it is part of the product experience.

2016 Mind the Product Theme

The conference was inspiring and we left feeling motivated and excited to be a part of the product management tribe. The presentations and conversations were multi-faceted. A common theme that we spotted across the entire conference was the “importance of the human aspect” for product managers. From “assisting customers to achieve their goals,” to “customer tours of duty,” to “people, not users.”

Attending events like Mind the Product is a good step in establishing more personal relationships in a world where it is so incredible easy to just be stuck behind screens. But it should not stop here. Don’t build products in silos based solely on assumptions without validating them with your customers at every step of the process. Product managers need to focus their decisions on customers (read: humans).

Our Free Product Roadmap Book

Don’t stop here! Download your free copy of ProductPlan’s book, Product Roadmaps: Your Guide to Planning and Selling Your Strategy, for tips and strategies for planning, building, and communicating your product roadmap.

6 Product Management Insights from Mind The Product San Francisco 2016 was originally published in Product Coalition on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At ProductPlan we’ve been fortunate to work with some of the most forward-thinking product managers at the world’s most successful companies. We’ve had a chance to learn along with them, and in turn we’re sharing that knowledge with you through our free book Product Roadmaps: Your Guide to Planning and Selling Your Strategy.

In my 15 years of product management and new product development, I’ve learned that product vision, goal-driven decisions, customer evidence, ruthless prioritization, and clear roadmap communication are essential for product success.

Product roadmaps are central to what you do as a product manager. But every week I hear how product managers still struggle with planning, creating, and communicating a compelling roadmap. After working with thousands of product teams and others involved with creating, marketing and managing products, we’ve learned that there is no single best way to roadmap.

Because there are so many different types of products, companies and product managers, every roadmap is different. Regardless of whether or not your title is “product manager,” your goal in developing your roadmap will always be the same: To clearly articulate where you’re headed, and to show your strategy to your stakeholders in a compelling way. For this reason, the lessons in this book will be helpful for those developing IT, technology, engineering, and marketing roadmaps as well.

In this book we talk about product roadmaps from two perspectives: The process of discovering and communicating the roadmap, and the document you build to communicate the roadmap. You’ll learn:

• The Key Role of Product Managers. We’ll define what a product roadmap is and discuss the important role you have as its steward.

• Tying Strategy to Your Roadmap. We’ll discuss the importance of product vision and goals, and how these tie back to the roadmap.

• Planning and Prioritizing Your Roadmap. We’ll give you several practical approaches to thinking through the best initiatives to put on your roadmap.

• Building Your Roadmap. We’ll provide you tips and specific examples of roadmaps to inspire your own roadmap process.

• Communicating Your Roadmap. We’ll give you suggestions for how to work with your stakeholders to achieve better alignment around the roadmap.

We’ve attempted to distill our learnings from other product managers. From that, we hope that you can pick out a few new techniques and best practices to help you sell your product vision and become a more effective product manager.

It’s free so please download and share it. We hope you enjoy it.

If you’re a product manager, you know how important data-driven product management is — it’s now at the foundation of most successful products.

But what if you’re launching new products or features? Metrics at the early stages can be challenging because there’s rarely a history of data. In some cases, if the product has recently launched, there might be a flood of data, but no structure or focus on the right metrics to use.

What are the right metrics that product teams can use to measure the potential success or weakness of a new product? Here are several tips for incorporating metrics into your roadmap planning.

Define the Metrics Early

By defining the right metrics early, you can get better insight to guide your product decisions and your product roadmap. It’s a good practice to begin discussing success metrics as early as you can during the development of the product — and well before it reaches customers.

With so many new analytics tools available for product managers, it’s become common to have a firehose of data and metrics soon after your product launches. The real challenge is in determining the few metrics to focus on — the sooner the better.

The Scientific Mindset

In order to begin setting the right metrics and product goals early, you’ll need to think like a scientist. Scientists first describe their hypothesis, define a test, and measure. Product managers can do the same by setting goals and then setting metrics for those goals. Although simple, this scientific mindset is one of the best ways to guide new products to success.

For example, you might decide that a conversion metric is important to measure — such as the percentage of trial customers who convert to paying customers. Even without solid customer data, you can create a hypothesis about what you think you will see and a target of what is ideal. This process itself is incredibly valuable because you’ll have great conversations with the team about the business model and will be able to spot challenges early on once the customer data begins arriving.

Are You Measuring the Right Things?

Ultimately, the metrics you choose depend on the stage of your product, your industry, the type of product, and the size of your company.

But the most important consideration is to focus on a limited number of metrics that really matter. These are metrics that tie back to the organization’s top-line goals and business results.

Avoid “vanity metrics,” those metrics that feel good but in the end are rarely actionable. For example, vanity metrics might include website page views or the number of Facebook likes. In the end, these metrics rarely tie directly back to business results or customer success.

Better choices would be metrics such as active users, acquisition cost, and average revenue. These are metrics that make a difference to the business.

Sample Metrics for Your Product

If you don’t already have success metrics, how do you set about finding the right ones?

Begin by researching metrics discussed in your industry. Whether you are in SaaS, retail, media, or another industry, there are experts who are discussing those metrics online.

Look at information about competitive products — companies that are publicly traded will often discuss those metrics during earnings calls.

Generally speaking, business goals such as revenue, margin, acquisition cost and retention are good places to start. Customer-specific metrics such as product usage and retention are good starting points as well.

Here are a few examples of metrics that will help you measure success from a customer and business standpoint. Of course, the metrics you select will depend on your business and product. Choose only a few to start, so you can focus.

Customer Success and Product Engagement Metrics

• Product usage/adoption (sign-in frequency, sharing, etc.)
• Percent of users who take a specific action that matters
• Feature usage (usage vs. other features)
• Which customer type is using certain features
• Retention or churn rate
• Quality (e.g. average bugs, net promoter score)

Business-Oriented Metrics

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• Lifetime Value (LTV)
• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
• Average Revenue per User (ARU)
• Conversion (e.g. site visit to lead conversion)

You’ll pick a handful of these metrics to set the baseline — these are a great place to start, but ultimately you’ll refine the metrics for your business. Work with your team to get consensus on the metrics that matter.

These are actionable metrics that tie back to the strategic goals and initiatives you put on your product roadmap. Revise the goals and metrics periodically — as the product matures, the metrics will need to change and likely grow with it.

I’m a founder of ProductPlan, product roadmap software. This post is an excerpt from my company’s free book, Product Roadmaps: Your Guide to Planning and Selling Your Strategy. Download the full guide for more tips on navigating your way from concept to roadmap to successful product.

Data-Driven Product Management: Choosing the Right Metrics for Your Product was originally published in Product Coalition on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.