Product managers have the power to determine whether a project will take off or go broke. Below, one from ispmanager discusses the most common mistakes that novice product managers tend to make in both startups and well-established projects and how to avoid them.

Four mistakes product managers make in startups

Startups have to develop their products from scratch, starting with determining who the product is for, why, how much it will cost, and how to market it. It may all seem clear cut, but in “the fog of war," problems can arise.

Here are some of the most common ones.

Don't put together too rigid a profile of the target audience. The key question for any salesperson is "For whom are we doing all this?" However, any understanding of who needs the product and who the end users will be can only be preliminary. Otherwise, development will be a bit like shooting clay pigeons in the dark: fun and interesting, but generating no profit for the company.

How to avoid this: Talk to people. Conduct interviews, interact in communities, and ask in forums—wherever potential customers frequent. The more we communicate, the more we learn about the character and motivations of the potential buyers.

Not defining what makes a product better than its competitors. When there are many successful analogs to your product on the market, it is harder to stand out. You can’t just hope that if something works for others, it will work for you.

How to avoid this:

• Pick a product feature and answer the question, "Why should a user choose your product and how is it better than the competition?"
• Ideally, you should have a clear idea of why customers should leave your competitors for you.

Not measuring results at all or not doing so systematically. Both beginners and experienced salespeople make this mistake.

For example, the team decides to test the hypothesis that users click the red button more often than the green one. Great idea: now we start counting and get rid of the less-clicked one. The test showed that 20 people clicked the red button and 10,000 people clicked the green one. So we removed the red one. But then profit crashed, and we’ve wasted all our resources for nothing.

I looked at our backlog, we're wasting all our time. We need to stop and start doing things that make money.

How to avoid this: ask yourself and your team "Why are we doing this?" constantly until you find an answer that leads to real profit. The answer is the guiding star that your project needs to find direction.

Not estimating market volumes. At the beginning of their careers, salespeople rarely think about market volumes. It usually goes like this: we take on a task shouting "woo-hoo!" and dive right in, sure that someone out there will buy it.

How to avoid this: objectively assess the size of the market.

Red flags:

• Your product has no competitors. You might think: "Let's launch a unique business without any competitors to worry about.” However, it turns out that no one needs it, especially if you find that no one is even looking for it on the Internet.
• There were no previous analogs or projects that tried to launch but failed.
• The problem your product solves doesn’t show up in any web search.

It's one huge neon red flag if all three of the above are true. Your project is almost sure to fail.

Tips for a startup salesperson on how to avoid making the mistakes from this chapter

• Build a profile of the target market: talk to people to check whether they experience the problem that the product solves.
• Analyze the competition—in what ways do customers solve the problem?
• Identify how your product is better than the competition.

Four mistakes product managers make with mature products

When a product is mature, all the problems with the target market profile have usually been ironed out and the differences from the competition have been identified. A mature product already has a product-market fit: a value for consumers. Therefore, in contrast to startups, salespeople in such projects have a different way of working and, therefore, different kinds of mistakes.

Here are some of the mistakes novice salespeople often make in companies offering a mature product.

They choose the wrong direction for product development. And yes, this is the most difficult decision.

How to avoid this: delve deeper into the metrics, like we do at ispmanager:

• Take a high-level business metric, such as conversion from the trial version to a paid license.
• Compare options on how to impact the metric.
• Hypothesize.
• Choose the most promising hypothesis and test it.

Confusing the method with the actual goal. Imagine your customer comes in and says that you urgently need to make a feedback form for customers on your site and app, with dozens of lines and complex filters. The team may have to drop everything and throw everything at the task. It may take huge amounts of time and effort, but it’s best to do whatever management wants.

The job of a sales manager is to constantly ask the question: "For what?" We need to understand what the task is, and most importantly, why we are doing it.

How to avoid this: have a conversation. After discussing with the customer, it may turn out that they just need to understand better how users react to blog articles. Then, it could be enough to put two buttons on the site: like and dislike.

So, we identified the real problem, proposed the best solution, and implemented it. We also saved a lot of the team's time and energy.

Severely trimmed-down MVPs. A common mistake is to release an MVP in a heavily trimmed-down version. It usually goes like this: we keep one feature out of seven, an MVP, and decide to add the rest later. As a result, the functionality is so limited that the users have no more need for the product.

How to avoid this: launch MVPs with a minimal set of features, but ones that solve a certain problem for the users. Then, there will be a better chance that they will find great value in the product.

Do not measure how much value the product has for users. Perhaps the financial indicators for the product are excellent, for example, good sales and LTV. But if you measure customer satisfaction, it may turn out that everything is not so great. They may be using the product, but already leaning towards the competition for various reasons. You won’t notice this immediately: business metrics will not immediately show that the product has stopped benefiting its users.

How to avoid this: in addition to business metrics, measure the value of the product for users.

Tips for a product manager managing a mature product on how not to make the mistakes listed in this chapter

• Determine the direction in which to develop the product by using business metrics, find how you can influence the metrics, make hypotheses, and test them.
• Separate the method in which the problem is solved from the end goal. Sometimes, the customer wants something but actually needs something else.
• Avoid downsizing the MVP to such a state that it is unusable.
• Evaluate the actual benefit of the product for the users.

Take-home message: tips for the aspiring product manager

Determine:

• The feature that will set the product apart from the competition.
• Who you are launching the product for. Try not to try to "sit on two chairs," meeting the needs of different target markets with one product.
• Always ask yourself: "What is this for?", "How will this affect the bottom line?". Always measure the results, over as little as a month, a year, or 10 years.
• Use business metrics to identify the right direction for product development.
• Competitors and market size: beware, if there are no competitors in the market and people don't have a problem that your product solves then they probably don't need it.

Do everything you can to make users fall in love with, and get addicted to, your product.

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