How Product Managers Can Use Better Communication To Boost Sales: How Product Managers Can Use Communication Skills To Make Their Product A Success

As product managers we know how good our product is. The problem that we are facing is that the rest of the world does not know this. The burden of somehow getting them to know the true value of our product rests on our shoulders – we need to find a way to make this happen. In the end, it all comes down to how good our communication skills are.

In the day and age in which we are living, the internet plays a huge role in how we communicate with our customers. What this means for product managers is that we need to take the time to learn how to leverage this resource to our advantage in order to promote our product. At the same time we can't forget about the power of social media to get the word out about what our product can do.

Before people can buy our product, they have to first notice the product. This can start with the product's logo – does it grab and hold on to the customer's attention? Next we need to take a look at the advertising that we are doing for our product. Is it sexy enough – does it capture our customer's interest and leave them wanting to find out more about the product?

As we spend both time and effort on trying to get the word out about our product, the issue of trying to measure how successful we are being comes up. The traditional way, calculating a return on investment (ROI) does not always match what we are doing. What we need is a better way to capture the value of a product manager's communication efforts.

The secret to good communications between a product manager and their customers is to provide the customer with the information that they want in the format that they want it in. What this means for the product manager is that they are going to have to create several different channels that can be used reach out to customers.

For more information on what it takes to be a great product manager, check out my blog, The Accidental Product Manager, at:

www.TheAccidentalPM.com

Good luck!

Dr. Jim Anderson

About The Author

I must confess that I never set out to be a product manager. When I went to school, I studied Computer Science and thought that I'd get a nice job programming and that would be that. Well, at least part of that plan worked out!

My first job was working for Boeing on their F/A-18 fighter jet program. I spent my days programming fighter jet software in assembly language and I loved it. The U.S. government decided to save some money and went looking for other countries to sell this plane to. This put me into an unfamiliar role: I started to meet with foreign military officials in order to explain what my product did.

Time moved on and so did I. I found myself working for Siemens, the big German telecommunications company. They were making phone switches and selling them to the seven U.S. phone companies. The problem was that the switches were too complicated. Customers couldn't tell the difference between one complicated phone switch from another complicated phone