more2marketing_What is the difference between product management and a product manager.mp3
Transcript
Susan
More to marketing. Welcome to more to marketing, a podcast on marketing, product and everything in between. I’m your host, Susan, and we’re gonna be talking about product managements. We are in for a real treat. We have Irene Liakos here and she’s come to share some of her huge experience in product management over the years, Irene has actually managed and launched the first phone with an. App Store the hip top. Worked with me myself at Virgin Mobile, where we launched the virally successful adaption of data gifting and she has actually got her own skin care brand and it was invited to the Emmys. Now that is a huge win. You can actually see that all over her product pages as well. With experience across Tokyo Tech, fintech, banking, beauty products, correct consulting and teaching room for a real treat with Irene today. So Irene welcome.
Irene
Thank you for having me.
Susan
I’m so excited to have you here. Tell tell us a bit about yourself in your own words and. Little bit about your experience.
Irene
So I’m one of these people that is intensely curious and has always been, you know, that kid that was always like, why? Why is it like this, you know, really annoying to mum.
Susan
I love it.
Irene
Which is the perfect grounding to be find myself in product management which I got into by accident over 20 years ago, had no idea what it was. Decided I absolutely loved it and have been doing product management incorporates before I did my own skin care brand and also consulting and even teaching product management because that’s the only way we’re going to really solve these big problems the world has. And there are so many. And to solve them, we need to do it at scale, so get a lot of product thinking out there.
Susan
And is exactly right and also focusing on the customer needs not just their wants so that you are solving that. Problem.
Irene
Yeah, I go deeper with it and I have done since 2018 when I was teaching at General Assembly where it’s not about needs. It’s about pain.
Susan
True. What is the Pain need around those.
Irene
What is the most painful thing that a user has and that isn’t being solved anywhere else that they are willing to pay for?
Susan
Yeah, fantastic. Well, let’s get. Let’s get into some of these questions. We’ve got to go through today. I’m really excited to hear some of. Your responses so. But what I suppose one of the biggest questions out there and I don’t think many people have the right answer, but what is the role of a product manager? We hear that phrase a lot. I think a lot of businesses don’t use it in the right. Way, but what is a natural product manager?
Irene
So. When a product manager has done a great job, you never know about it. You don’t know what’s happened. It is so behind the scenes. I mean, even Kagan talks about the product manager that worked on Google search and maps. And you know, they’re not famous. No one knows them. And that’s because they don’t want to be. They’re the ones that are actually solving the problem. They care so much about the problem. Ego is left at the door. It is very much about understanding and finding the most painful problem to solve and working collaboratively within a team to solve it. So there’s sort of like an. Art and a science to product management. The art side is about really imagining the future. Knowing the business goal, what is it? The value that the business needs? Using curiosity and empathy to go deep and uncover the the most painful. User problem that. No one else has solved. It’s untapped and understand the market and competitors and looking for clear space to solve it. So you know, looking for something that that you have a differentiator. And then it’s about defining the path to get there. How do you get their product strategy? The road map? Never forgetting go to market. Because you could have the best product, but if you haven’t thought about how your customers will find you, how you’ll reach them, then it doesn’t matter, Gibson, Biddle, CPO of Netflix, talks about three things and talks about product strategy. He talks about. It needs to be desirable, and I mean, we always knew that we need to make sure that we’re solving a painful problem that. I will catch that. And is willing to pay for it needs to be. I think he talks about he hard to hard to how to copy which you know anyone who’s done MBA knows and which I have knows that you need to be able to differentiate what’s your differentiator never talk.
Susan
Is that blue ocean part isn’t? It. Sorry that blue ocean part.
Irene
Yeah, it’s not thinking that as a business or looking at your product that you copy a competitor. In fact, it never ever copy a competitor go deep and solve that problem for the customer in a way. That. Is better than a competitor does, so you know it needs to be a differentiated. It needs to be hard to. Copy you need to solve a valuable problem, but because you’re a business. You know, Gibson talks about it as margin enhancing, which we all know anyone who’s ever looked at a P&L, make sure it’s profitable.
Susan
And that that’s probably a future podcast. I don’t think a lot of business managers actually understand panels and how they reflect back to pro economics.
Irene
Yeah, I’ve noticed that going from like corporate product management where I. Looked at the P. And L and looked at the costs, the things that make. Up the cost of a product. The the revenue, your price, things that make up the revenue and that you know the the profitable what the profit is and that’s really crucial cause I’ve noticed that when I’ve been consulting with Scala’s and startups, a lot of the product people in those companies never see the panel.
Susan
And that was just mind-blowing for me, because then it’s like, well, well, how do you know you’re creating value? It’s about the pricing strategy and making sure it makes sense for all the businesses needs and goals and also even going down to the level of campaigns and return on investments out of that product.
Irene
Yeah, you know.
Susan
I I I I know there’s a lot of people that still struggle with that even trying to get access to the data to do it and no one should hold back data within an organisation. They’re all there for that same goal.
Irene
Yeah. So the crucial thing is the transparency of that data being able to speak the language of the C-Suite, of the leaders, of the, the people that are deciding where the funding goes is crucial. And also, you know, as a product manager, the other thing, I mean, penal super important, but being able to inspire. And recruit others to deliver that future that you’ve seen that you want to build, that you’ve got in that strategy and road map. And that is like partners, stakeholders, internal external you know. You know I’ve. Heard about, you know, managing stakeholders and in my mind, everyone’s a partner on this. Money and you need to bring them all on board on that story. On that vision, they need to buy in believe into that vision. You know, you need to work with the squad or the delivery teams on delivering that vision and collaborate with them to make sure you’re solving it the best way possible. Not designing that solution yourself in isolation and then asking them to build it. Which is a recipe for disaster. So that whole evangelism piece is important in the sense that you’re bringing people on that journey.
Susan
And and even going back to one of your other points, the whole go to market strategy, that’s not just about how you actually go out into the world with your product. It’s also about all those internal stakeholders and bring them on the journey. So they feel like they’re part of it and that they’re really going to be sprouting this in the best way possible for all customers. Internal or external?
Irene
Yeah, it’s about thinking and mating your customers where they are, never expecting them to come to you, never expecting the. Build it and. They will come ID because that’s I mean. You know, it’s really, yeah.
Susan
Long gone.
Irene
Yeah, definitely, definitely. But I still see it. I still see this whole idea of building and they will come because people are really. Passionate about whatever they were built. But yeah, product management, it is about de risking those three things that desirability. So you know that whatever you’re building solves a real customer problem and it’s very that customer market fit there is the feasibility which is that delivery of the operational side of the capability, technology, engineering, the tools. To execute. And then there’s. Viability, which I think there’s a lot. Of room for. Improvement, understanding, profitability, making sure it’s a sustainable business model, commercially viable, it’s profitable, it stands on itself. If you can make it so that your customers love your product that they bring others.
Susan
Word of mouth. Very powerful.
Irene
Word of mouth tapping into the network effect. You know, they talk about network effect, viral, whatever it is, it’s a lower customer acquisition cost and everyone wants their customers to love their product. Nobody wants hostages.
Susan
And that’s where I think going back to your example of Netflix, it’ll be really interesting to see what the impact is of them changing the rules that they’ve done for signing in, because you could be in two different locations and sign in to the one. Account. With that, with the. Model they used to have. I’d be interested to see when they. Release the next round results with the impact was because that’s definitely a change in behaviour from what the project originally was. Possibly designed to do to be able to get the word of mouth out.
Irene
Yeah, it’s really interesting when you change the product, it’s about managing the customer experience and even when you talk about exiting products, Google exited a whole lot. Netflix is looking at exiting. You know, it’s not like exit and you’re done, it’s it’s a reverse go to market and it’s a reverse product launch and it’s like what, how do you manage that? Experience for your end users so that it is still positive, so perhaps you retain them on a different product or you hand hold them to a new product that may be not yours. Could be a partner or a another competitor, but just making sure that that customer experience is not going to damage your business, your brand, your your product.
Susan
And that’s where I know you’re very passionate about outcome focused. Do you want to talk a bit more about that?
Irene
So outcome is really important because there’s not, you know, there’s multiple ways to get to your end goal. And the question is, you know, what is the most efficient, effective way to get there to acquire new customers, to retain customers, whatever that company goal is or OK, RKP or whatever that your organisation is using. The question is what is the best way to get there that’s going to have, you know, reduce the risks of for desirability? Liability feasibility. But also you know you tap into. You know that good brand and I guess retention aspect or referral aspect, how do you get customers to even though you’re you’re you’re solving this problem, maybe that they don’t you know you’re exiting a product? How do you do it in a way where you still have a good outcome from the customer perspective?
Susan
And and also that your brand as well that you’ve put so much money into investing into to make it big beautiful customer focused. You don’t wanna have anything detrimental against that for people not to wanna try you again? Picture.
Irene
Absolutely. That is so important. I used to think that it was always about the. It was all about the product that everything else, it didn’t matter. And you know, we talk about lipstick on a pig. So you know, and I and I really believe that you could have the best product, but if your brand lacks trust. Lacks. You know, awareness people don’t know who you are. Then it doesn’t matter that you have this great product and you solve this painful problem. If you can’t get customers on board, there isn’t that trigger or that pool to bring them over. And often the brand is that trigger. I trust this brand and that’s why you see a lot of customers. Who are you? Know we talk about? Them as laggards. They don’t move off, you know, a poor product experience or poor business because they’ve been there for so long. They they. Is that better the devil. You know, you know they, you know in, you know that’s that’s where I use the term hostages because, you know, they won’t look around. They won’t even think about changing because of the risk of change. You know people don’t like change so you need to have a you don’t just need to be slightly better than the the current experience. You need to be, you know, they used to say 10X better you you need to be substantially better than the current experience. Whether it’s cheaper, faster or you know the user experience, it needs to be. Hugely better to get those customers to trigger across.
Susan
No, I I think that that’s definitely worth further conversations in the future because there is so much in that alone, how do you iterate, improve and then have the best outcome for customer customers when you want to focus on them, but also also your own growth too. But but what is so we’ve talked. About product managers. What’s project management?
Irene
So product management, I love this because. Product management is part of marketing. That’s where it started. It’s been around since, you know, the brand men of Procter and Gamble. And, you know, FMCG products. It’s been around before tech. And so it’s really interesting to me that a lot of. You know, tech companies, you know, think of product managers as an extension of engineering. And I always have to explain that. No, it’s not. It’s been around for longer and it’s it’s a completely, it’s part of a different area. And I think it’s it’s. Come to a period. Of time where it’s coming to its own you. Know you see CPO’s. You know, outside of CMO’s, all the marketing area, but I think so product management is definitely about making sure you are solving a painful problem. In the market that no one else can. Solve as as good as you. And then working with the the rest of the company, whether it’s a tech product, engineering development design to deliver that product and and deliver it, get get to the outcome you want to. Get to. So it’s very yeah, it’s it’s definitely quite, quite a polarising conversation cause I see you know. Product is part. Of marketing, but it’s also been seen as part of engines.
Susan
And and I think that’s the one of the problems I see of people still thinking it’s engineering is not necessarily the engineering team will be close to customers to understand how to solve and what they’re actually doing. So that’s where it becomes really important to have it part of the marketing arm, which includes research, customer service and all those other touch points that really bring it down to grassroots to know that you. Doing the right problem solving activity. Please.
Irene
And I think also under Agile, which has been around for over 20 years, the idea of empowered engineering teams empowered delivery is really important because that’s the only way you’re going to innovate. So, you know, making sure that the engineering and some of them don’t, you know, they’d like to just be coding. They don’t want to talk to. Customers at all, but. The importance of sharing what the problem is and how it impacts users and having engineers hear a recording or statement from the end user’s own words is really powerful, so they’re not just building a blue widget, they’re solving a real problem.
Susan
Yeah, I completely agree. And I I suppose this leads us into our next Ave of we’ve we’ve talked mostly about existing businesses, but do you believe there’s a role in product management where it differs depending on your business stages, so that startup versus mature?
Irene
So I’ve noticed that yes, product management I’ve seen in startup is very much a, you know, it’s almost like a delivery focused, you know building in a. Delivery project management, style of product management, which is a little bit dangerous, right, because then they can be stuck in a a build trap where they’re just building features. Features, experience and not actually solving problems.
Susan
And that’s where MVP’s are important, isn’t it?
Irene
Well, it’s really important. To start with what your product vision is, what’s your end goal? Not the company vision, although it must align with it. But what is the product vision for that specific product that you’re building and and what’s the strategy product strategy that will help you get? There. Now these need to align with the company vision but often. Companies have multiple products. So a product vision really needs that starting point. So every time you look at building something, a feature, something in the product road map, you’re creating a user story. The question is, does it align with the visa? Would it help us get to the the end goal, the outcome and kind of validate that rather than just build what the loudest person in the room asks you to do, which in a startup is often, you know, the leadership team.
Susan
Exactly, especially quite small. How do you say?
Irene
And for you? No, no, but so it’s really important to go. OK, great. That’s a great idea. Now let’s go validate it. Let’s go test it. Let’s go MVP it. Let’s go do some customer research. Let’s create some Wizard of Oz. Let’s, like, just test it. Let’s test it before we, you know, lock it into multiple. Friends. And use all our resources to build something that perhaps nobody wants and that nobody will pay for.
Susan
Hmm. So particularly on that stream, knowing that startups are trying to do things for the first time, what advice would you give them?
Irene
Validate. Definitely validate before you build anything, because you can often get caught up and it’s super excited about. What you had, you know, as a founder or as a as leadership team, but what’s in your head about what you want to solve and you run in that direction and you’re passionate about it. And the passion is.
Susan
Your list.
Irene
But you should validate it so you’re not wasting people’s time effort that you actually you want to get to that goal of solving that problem, that painful problem.
Susan
So then research, test and learn. Yep.
Irene
And it might not be what. Yeah. Yeah. So I I’ve done multiple, you know, customer empathy, validation, interviews, surveys. To understand what customers want, and this is really you know, there’s the what customers are doing, what users are doing in the platform, in the application. And I’ll use multiple tools to see what’s happening in the customer. Journey. What they’re doing, where they’re dropping off, where they’re lingering, where they look uncertain. So you can you can optimise what they’re doing, but that’s never gonna tell you why they’re doing that, why they chose you, what they were doing before you existed, what they like about your product, what they don’t like about your product. If you didn’t exist, what would they do? What? The alternative? Right. And I think that question is super crucial because then you understand who the customer is comparing you to. And so that could be that may not be your competitor, that may be a you know a substitute product or maybe the customer is doing it themselves at a higher cost, longer time, more effort and you know that’s the kind of thing you want to unpack. What are they doing today? What’s really painful about it? What they like, what they don’t like, what they wish existed, mean. You never ask customer what they want to build because you know you’ll get faster. Horses, like the whole Henry.
Susan
Ford quote and I have no idea.
Irene
Exactly. And so they don’t know, but they don’t know what they don’t know, and it’s not their job to know that. You know, AI can do this faster or there is this new tech that’s, you know, coming into effect that will solve this problem. So you really need to go deep on the problem, understand what the customer values, who they compare you against, and then actually even map. Up and prioritise what the experiences the user needs high to low. And map that against what exists today from a competitive perspective and how the user perceives. And so that’s really important. The perception of value, how they perceive the that experience, that feature against the competitors because you want to be in that space where and I talk. About. This when I was training pricing. Strategy. I talked about this matrix of competitive advantage. And I’ve got like, it’s a quadrant. It’s four squares where it’s like you have the customer’s perception of value from high to. Low. And. The the market, the competitors, your product, where do you sit? From high to low and from there I look at because obviously you want to be. Creating experiences, features, products that your customers value. And you want to do better than the the competitor does. And so instead of building everything your competitor has, all the alternative will substitute has you want to build where it matters, where they value it, where they’re willing to pay for.
Irene
In that space and that’s that takes time, but once you set that. Ground work that sets up your you know your. Product for success.
Susan
Yeah, I definitely. I definitely agree with that. And I think there’s a lot of companies, big companies at the moment that are going off doing these things that they think is Fandango. Doing it for free thinking there’ll be a perceived value from for the customer and they’re not getting any cut through. So did they actually did research? Did people say they wanted it but didn’t understand it? It’d be interesting to understand some of those big companies and the decisions for these because. Myself, coming from very recently from a large company. I saw some of the things that were developing and I was even questioning myself. Why were they actually solving a big problem or not? And that’s more of that mature. But if we if we go back a step to the scale up. What? What are your thoughts on the product, the role of product management in a scale up?
Irene
So in a scale up you’re there’s a lot more. There’s a little bit. More funding so. You know, I mean, the utopia is in a in a large company where there is a lot of resources and you can do, you can see you have reports, you have peers in other markets like when I was at Telstra, you know I could talk or even in the other telcos as well. I could talk to peers in other companies on the other side of the world. And understand and and understand and talk through what they launched, what they did, what problem they were solving, how they solved it, what did they learn? And then go, would that happen in this market, in our local market and and then validate that in a in a low risk way a scaler cause is sort of in the middle where you can do that as well. I think there’s that growing pains where they grow quite quickly and you know there’s still that element of can I get access to that? ENL. Or do I need to still prioritise using rice in Moscow and value from that end which is? A bit more abstract. So I think in a scale up, there’s a lot more resources to to build and test. You can have a few more bets, whereas in a start up you have less bets and less less funding to do those bets in a in a scale up, you can actually test a bit more and there’s that multiple, there’s that growing pains that happens as well. But I think there’s a lot of learning that you can get from that cross pollination from a. Corporate to a. Scale up and down to a start up in terms of learning.
Susan
So. So jumping into that mature more corporate. Going back to the role of marketing management, how does that one differ again? Because now you’re going to have a big organisation, lots of resources, probably lots of opinions and a bit of a cash flow going on.
Irene
Here so so corporate’s really interesting because I’ve noticed that you know, you definitely need to. Make sure everyone’s on that journey. You do need to manage the partners internal to the organisation, external to the organisation. Get them on board, empathise with not just your end users, but your partners, your stakeholders. The commercial team who’s going to help you with that business case and the and make sure that it financially stacks up. Empathising, the legal team and regulatory and compliance to make sure that you’ve got their their requirements. Into the product, but also ask them and validate how important they are, what is the risk of not not solving that problem? Has there been any precedent? Has there been any and and really validate, so I think there’s that strength that needs to happen for a product person to be successful. Is to not push back, but just ask questions.
Susan
And I think that’s.
Irene
They serious? Find out why something is important.
Susan
Yeah, and I. Think. One of the things that you said that really resonates to me. Is. What happens if you don’t do anything? Sometimes I I find that business cases when you’re presenting it in to leadership, that’s the missing piece is that if if you just sit back and idle and it can be a deal breaker sometimes for businesses for growth, particularly in a fast changing environment over COVID, we have had 10 year plus. Jump ahead in IT, so therefore there’s some companies that are going to be scrambling to catch up for consumer needs. So I do find that that quite a problem to solve for quite a. Lot of businesses.
Irene
That’s exactly right. When I launched the Telstra Hip job, the precursor to Android. And that was at a time when everyone had knock years and Telstra was #1 had a, you know, a large market share. But everyone had nokias they were. They were the the market was declining. So, you know, they had an ageing market or ageing customer base and and so they were. They were struggling to bring new users under the age of 25 who weren’t, you know, for the first month with were for the first time paying for their mobile phone. Mum and Dad was no longer. I mean, where did those customers go? And so with the hip top, I was tasked with solving this problem. How does an incumbent that’s been around for hundreds of years attract that, you know, that younger age demographic to purchase products from them purchase a mobile phone? As I went and scaled looking around the world for a solution, how did other markets with this problem, not just Intel go? But in adjacent industries, that’s that blue ocean. That’s like, you know, innovation happens at the edges. And so I was looking in Israel, I was looking in India. I was looking in the US in, in Germany, and I’d found that in parts of the the other parts of the world, there were devices where you could message, right. You could connect with your peers. You know, they were chatting constantly, I think so this was my, you know, mid 2000s. They were interested in in sharing photos and engaging. And, you know, this is like pre Instagram and so. I found this device called the hip top. It was the software provider was called Danger, the founder, Andy Rubin, then went on and created Android. But the hip hop was this real grounding in the first device that had everything backed up to the cloud, had an App Store so you could play games, or you could have a calendar in there. You could have your email in there, you know, negotiated Myspace to be pre loaded, which I know pretty funny. But like, that is the the precedent for social connectivity in social media. Right. They had a web browser before they were. All struggling with what? Which is the most horrible experience? And this device, you know? I had to negotiate to get this launched into Austra and manage and inspire stakeholders about this product that was very different to their normal mobile services. And so it was very much about enabling a test. Doing it in a way that would not risk the cash cow. I mean, that’s really important. I mean, every company worries about their cash cow and there’s always that. Do we make hamburgers ourselves, do we?
Susan
Outsource to a point.
Irene
Yeah. So they do know they need to change, but change is hard for anyone. It’s a human nature, so it’s very much. About how do we? How do I understand what my partners internally and externally are worried about and how do I mitigate those risks as much as? And so, you know, we talk about de risking it’s doing the same thing. The other thing is that the Hitch’s the first time that a device that was going a mobile device was being backed up to a cloud or a server outside of Australia. And so I had to get. I had to negotiate with the government as. Well, for you know how. To understand what the boundaries were, how do we manage privacy risk? All of these things, and so you know. This was the first I guess this was kind of like a learning of fire for me because it. Was one of. My early product roles, but it was very. Much understanding all. Those risks, all these partners and stakeholders that were crucial to this product, had that I needed to mitigate so I can launch this product. And when I did finally launch it, this was the first phone that people queued up for. I had never. Ever seen someone queue up for a? Phone before. Remember, this was before iPhone. MMM. And so I was from that moment since, and I was hooked. I’m like, how do I create products? That people love. And that they queue up for and it. It’s not just a phone. This is you connect it’s connection, it’s connection connecting with my peers. And it’s not just people. What I learned was it wasn’t just users under 25, it was also. The blind community. Or hearing, I think it was hearing impaired because they could then you know message was that they had QWERTY keypad, it was just much easier to view.
Irene
So it really I think it changed people’s lives. I mean, it changed the trajectory of what a mobile phone looked like, you know, before that everyone was looking for smaller phone. I mean, even Zoolander when that came out, they were. Talking. About the you know the the model was talking about, can we get a small phone and there’s this one scene where his phone it’s a flip and it’s so tiny. And it was the height of cool. But so it was under that environment.
Susan
And and that goes perfectly to the next question, which is all about. This is all about product design. So making sure that products are designed with that growth mindset, which is exactly what your example was about bringing your device to market with that growth mindset of how much more it could do within the future. How can we generally just go about this and are there any special skills we need to consider for success?
Irene
So product mindset on this I think is really important to leave your biases at the door. I think that’s really crucial. It’s really hard. To do from product.
Susan
And and egos, if I may.
Irene
Add egos. Yes, leave the ego. Leave the bias. Leave all of that. I mean, take your knowledge and learnings and pattern recognition. Cause I think pattern recognition is a big one. Because often as a product person, you see the future before anyone else sees it because. You’ve seen these patterns. You’ve kind of seen these dots and and so then it’s like how do I get everyone else to see this too? And how do I help them through this change? Do you risk what they’re worried about? What is it that they mitigate those risks, those fees that they have get the honest, have those empathetic conversations to get the the. Honest, you know, truth of what they worried about. Because if you don’t get that, if you don’t have those relationships with your partners, don’t understand what they’re worried about, you can’t. Help solve it.
Susan
Yeah, and and it goes.
Susan
It goes to that, making them feel inclusive in the creation and decision making as well, so they don’t feel like they’re being told, but they’re part of the discovery.
Irene
Part of the discovery, definitely, and I think the more you do this as a product person, the more you start to know what your partners are worried about before they tell you. What they’re worried about? And so you mitigate those issues before they tell. You about them? And so then you have stronger relationships with those partners? You know and and that’s so crucial, especially in corporates to get things done where. You know, if I. If I didn’t do that, then the hip hop wouldn’t, you know. Would never have existed. It would never have gone live, and it was the highest average revenue per user product, even today for a mobile product, customers were paying $100 a month. I had three hundred 350,000 customers at the end of three years. 80% completely new to the company, so it solves that problem. How do we bring new users? 80% were completely new, they’re in the demographic that we were targeting. We’ve solved that problem for them. They loved the products so much. They bought their friends. You know, it wasn’t just one person queuing up at a time. They were bringing friends and queuing up for those the device.
Susan
And and probably also buying for family members as well, yeah.
Irene
Definitely. Definitely. I think there’s a lot of firsts and I think when you’re in it, you know you’re doing something really innovative, but you don’t know, you don’t yet have the language to say exactly what it is. Yeah. And now in hindsight, you can. See it.
Susan
Hmm.
Irene
It’s backed up to the cloud. You have apps, it’s connectivity, you know. It was. It was designed to be entertaining, sharing, connecting. It’s not just a voice device. It’s not just a mobile.
Susan
It’s like and I think Hip Top’s been a a fantastic example that you’ve given us today about progress, been exciting. For you to launch. But have you got another really? Touches your heart example of delivering something to market.
Irene
Another one I loved was fun that we do together. At Virgin Mobile.
Susan
I wonder what that one. Was.
Irene
The thing was what I loved about Virgin was. Culturally, it was super collaborative. It was very much people, planet profit. So it was about are we are we doing the right thing? Are we aligning with? So there was so many things that I could have built. And launched that I. When you set that test of, does it align with the product, the brand, the strategy? That’s that’s a validation that you should always have, not just will it make us money. Think about does it align with the brand? Does it align with the strategy of the company wide strategy and not? You’re not not just build anything, so a Virgin Mobile we had this problem where users were we were experiencing churn, customers were leaving and they were going to the competitors who offered data pooling and it was at a time when. You know, Netflix had launched and this need for data and watching your Game of Thrones the moment it dropped on your commute on a Tuesday morning. What’s really? Hold on. And so users were wanting to experience their mobile in that way on their commute stream data and as a result, they were getting bill shock. They were going over their allowance, they were getting excess data charges and which were super painful for anyone.
Susan
And it was very expensive back then as well.
Irene
Yeah, it was insanely expensive. Data was exploding and So what we looked at doing and we worked together on this, Susan was, well, how do we solve this problem in a only at Virgin Way? Don’t copy your competitor #1 rule of product management. I stand by it. We didn’t want to do data pooling cuz we knew logically customers when they. Customers are not silly. They’re very smart. Respect your customer. They know if they buy mum a phone, dad, a phone, two kids, a phone and they’re sharing data, they’ll optimise the price so mum will pay, pay more and have the large data allow. Dad, less kids, less overall average revenue per user goes down, it gets dragged down. So you acquire more users tick. That’s great, but they’re not profitable. And at the end of the day, your business, you want to be profitable, but you want to do it in a way that your customers love what you’re doing, you’re solving their problem. And so we, you know, we brainstormed, we collaborated, I had teams in a room from engineering, customer success, customer support, legal compliance, everything. To idea how do we solve this? Which is really important because you want everyone on board on your solution and what better way to get users on board. Sorry partners on board you do this with users as well is by designing the experience with them. Solution with them and so we designed data gifting. And data gifting meant. Anyone could gift and receive data from anyone else on a Virgin Mobile service. So immediately overnight that would mean 1,000,000 plus users. I can’t remember how. Many. It was could share data with each other. Which means that, well, first of all, they don’t come into virgin with. The price you know, optimising their price point and trying to gain it, trying to get as much as they can, they come in going OK. This is the plan I want because this is how much data I’m going to use. So it’s that barrier. If I’m by myself, this is what I’m using. And then when they have this need for extra data. Game of Thrones drop something else’s drop. They wanna watch something. Maybe they wanna stream something. They. Can all say friend. They can shift and receive each other data, so overall it became it’s a very it was a very social product. We created it within the mobile app. One click, I know that the design team that worked on it were amazing in the development team on how do we solve this problem and how do we do it in a way that we. Stay very Virgin branded like the language we use. How it’s fun, but also solve it in a way that complies with legal and regulatory. We’re not spamming people. We’re not, you know, so that’s really super import. Got it. And the solution was like 3 clicks, right? Since it was so easy.
Susan
Yeah. So like you sign into your app, you go to the page and then you selected whoever you wanted to send it to and hit go and the.
Irene
Fact that we had it so integrated into your contacts, you don’t have to type in it or remember your friends. Number. We figured all of that out for you. We. Made it so easy. So the user experience I think brought it together and it was quite fun because it was quite a it was a slider in the app. You kind of had, you know, something fun and whimsical when you got the, when you, when you sent the data, when you received data. It was really cool. So. But what we were doing is we made data currency. As well, right, data was now currency. You could give data and receive data you know you can ask your your friend for data so you can watch Game of Thrones and in return you buy them a box of beers or whatever, right? You don’t know. But it’s value exchange.
Susan
And again, going back to, it was all about solving the problem. You’re working with all the tools that you had with the stakeholders. Get them excited to then to deliver something that the customers thought was absolutely amazing and became viral.
Irene
The other thing that we did, which I thought was really like I’d do this everywhere now do a pre launch with the with the sales and support staff or with you know, the employees because if they’re using it and they’re starting to enjoy it and they love it and they’re gifting their mates. As well then, they become more empowered, or I guess more attached to it and more excited about it. And so you harness the power of your employees to talk about your product.
Susan
And I think from memory we even with that internal launch, we even gifted everyone data internally as well.
Irene
Yeah, it was.
Susan
Just to get them even more excitedly could watch that Game of Thrones.
Irene
Yeah. And what it did, though, what I saw in the data in the P&L was that we were retaining users after that, our churn rate was far less. We were retaining users. But what we also were doing was we were we were acquiring. At a faster rate. So more users were coming on board. The average revenue per user stayed, you know, held. We didn’t lose average revenue per user, so that’s crucial. But customers loved us that they stayed and they joined and they brought their friends. They became, you know, BBQ, you know, weekend conversations, BBQ conversations with friends. And so people were it became this in crowd thing. Only a virgin. Exactly. With these. And so it was really exciting, you know, I mean when Virgin ended, I could see that I think belong took up that product. Because. That that it continues.
Susan
There’s a whole pile. They’ve now done iterations, yes.
Irene
Exactly right. But you know, so there’s always that idea of what? You know, there’s that. Piece of. There’s a risk when you launch something for the first time that no one else has done it before. What’s going to happen in? Product. Management, right. And that’s always the fear that holds that holds this these innovations back now, you know, I’ve done it with your job. We’ve done it with data gifting and you see that this continues like those products themselves don’t exist anymore. But you see, you know, hit top in the iPhone, right? You see that continue, you see data gifting in other in other telco products? So. I think that’s really exciting. You wanna you wanna create something that impacts the world positively like that.
Susan
Exactly. And they they’ve been two absolutely fantastic examples, more, most recently. Whatever you worked on. That’s exciting.
Irene
Ohh, I consulted to this company which was so fascinating. A drone data platform. And they had again, they were a. Scale up global. Based out of US and EU Europe. And they had. Scaled really quickly and had a lot of users on their on their platform on their product. I think the exciting thing was that it was early days. Every market had different rules on how you fly. The pilot licence, the rules of where you can fly when you can fly, how high you can fly. The details of the drone that you use. It’s very exciting because it’s like, you know, ChatGPT. There’s early stages, you know that this is gonna be change the world. But it’s still about. How do we harness this? How do we design this for the better? So drone delivery, I think I was working on it during COVID. They were working on, you know this plan. Form allowed users or anyone who was a hobbyist and loved flying drones to work out when they’re going to drive, fly, and plan their flight on the Saturday morning or whenever where they were gonna fly have their licencing details on there. Integrate with the regular regulator of the area. You know Castle or FAA or. Wherever, but on the other. End it also captured. Data on where people were flying when they were flying, what they were flying. So the traffic of flight. So in in, in a future. Of you know, drone delivery, you can make sure that there is no collisions in the future of delivering crucial, you know, medical equipment or vaccines or whatever to different areas of the world. You can get, you can make sure that you’ve got the right. Drone. The right. Flight details flight path that the safest way to get from A to B.
Susan
I’d even assume weather as well getting all that data as well to plug it in on which drone actually flies best during rain. If it is emergency to get it some. Yeah.
Irene
Absolutely. So there’s weather conditions, there’s the regulatory and rules conditions, there’s the details of the drone, there’s the traffic. There’s so many variables, so mapping that all is really exciting because I think there’s lots of opportunity on on future products. And I think I was really excited about it cuz it was during Colbert and you’d hear of. Other companies like Wing delivering doing drone delivery trials around. Australia, you know I mentioned.
Susan
Amazon trying to jump in on that too.
Irene
Amazon, Amazon I think started that too. Wing Amazon. There’s a few and I think that’s really exciting because that’s another delivery mechanism. There’s, you know, you’ve got your trucks, you’ve got your, your Uber drivers or trucks freight fleet. Planes, you know, this is just another delivery mechanism and the question is what’s most efficient at some point, the cost of all of this will get to a point where you can choose which one is the most efficient way to deliver things and where you know, during COVID, online sales skyrocketed because everyone was locked in and shopping. From home, so that behaviour. Became really important for us to start, you know, for a lot of product people to look at that. Fleet. Management. So yeah, so that was really exciting. There’s that navigation aspect of.
Irene
Gathering all that data for that platform, how do you get all the APIs working to plug that all in the rules, the weather, the flight paths, the flight traffic, the drone data information, the use cases? I think there’s just so many interesting using part parts that. You know, you know that sort of thing is really exciting for me because I don’t really turn off tapping into all of that. I think it’s really interesting now with ChatGPT, where that can go as well. It’s still very. Early days, but I’m pretty excited by it.
Susan
I think a lot of people are worried. About their jobs as well. How much will it take over? But I think.
Irene
Ask every new innovation you always work. There’s always the is it going to? Am I still gonna have a? Job to pay. My mortgage, like there’s always that fee like. I think I don’t think that there. Is. Change doesn’t necessarily mean job loss. It means change. Change your skill set so you can be part of these jobs of the future. Learn how to use these API’s and ChatGPT to make your life easier. Because you’re not always going to get the so right now I’ve been playing the chat. PT doesn’t always give me. The. Right answer. So it depends on how you ask it. The prompts that you use often times I’ve had to correct it. Too. And it just could learn learning.
Susan
And that’s a another perfect segue into my next question, which I’d love to ask, which is? Mistakes happen. Issues happen. Pros and cons. Let’s talk a bit about the the cons. So what mistakes do you think product and marketing managers are doing today when it comes to product management?
Irene
So. Mistakes. There’s mistakes in not. Solving the right problem. Solving, you know, doing the easy win of copying. What the competitor has. Not going deep on what is the most painful problem that the user has and how is it being solved today and how can I make this better? So that that discovery piece, because you can be in the right area but not actually solve the most painful problem. And so then it becomes. Irrelevant for the user or not strong enough or not compelling enough for them to move from what they’re doing today to your product. So that’s really important. I think also in smaller companies go to market sometimes gets forgotten. Because you can get obsessed with building something. So go to markets. Really crucial.
Susan
And and going on to your your point before, I think that they’re. Just because your competitor is doing it doesn’t mean their customers are happy. So by copying them you actually may not actually know the impact of customer, particularly if it’s an add-on service. Is it actually needed or is it more of a **** *** factor to the customer? That’s one of the gaps. If you don’t do like for research would be a big one for me with pro management. If you don’t do enough research to understand. Customer needs usage the problem itself. You’re you’re just delaying the inevitable that these people will leave you, unfortunately, because you’re not helping them.
Irene
And not just that, you may have wasted a tonne of resources on a feature that no one uses. It’s like wasted effort that you could have used solving a real problem that people are care enough about to pay for to switch to you for so you know, there’s a lot of I think a lot of things that get launched that felt like a good idea. The time and then you know it never reaches the business case forecast of how many users will use it. How much they’ll pay for it.
Susan
And Vegemite is probably a great example of not understanding users and doing the. I think it was called 2.0 at the time and that was the name of the. Product and. People were just like what?
Irene
They’re termite really. I love Vegemite and I just discovered that I can get it gluten free.
Susan
That is a very big plus for.
Irene
You very excited.
Susan
But when when you think about smaller companies, I think you you have a great point about resources. What resource do you think that there’s some common mistakes happening to?
Irene
Resources in terms of.
Susan
Like I’m thinking that I’m going back to our earlier discussion, the numbers. So I’m not understanding the numbers itself. So needing to de risk the viability.
Irene
So I think in small companies there’s so much to do, but there’s not much resources and it’s which one is the most important thing. So prioritisation is so important at that point. And knowing that you know you want to prioritise or what are your goal seeking, are you seeking for acquisition of your customers as quickly as possible then you go for.
Growth.
Irene
Then you’ll get a, you know, a product marketer or a growth marketer on board to grow it as quickly as possible. But if you’re thinking about, how do I do this profitably? How do I make sure that? There is a profit per product. I’m not lit selling. I’m not looking at like. Doing this at a loss, which I don’t think many can afford right now. It’s really important to go close to your customer. What is the most painful problem? Solve that and sometimes you know there’s, you know, early on in my career was like building and they will come. And so you there was this whole you build the product and then. You go OK. Who’s going to use this? Who’s the customer?
Susan
And particularly when it’s completely new as well. Yeah. And you’re first to market.
Irene
Yeah. So I think early stages, a lot of it goes down to the founders and the Founders team rolling up their sleeves and actually doing the work, not just delegating. And so there’s a, it’s a bit of a shift from a corporate where you you build those relationships and partnerships and stakeholders and bring people on the journey and and do all of that. You actually have to.
Susan
Do it yourself and.
Irene
Being real, I guess inventive. Or resourceful is really.
Susan
Exactly. And the whole the whole blue ocean piece as well. I I suppose one of the biggest gaps would be how to frame the programme. There isn’t an existing market or anything.
Irene
Well, here’s the thing. If you’re creating something completely new, there’s a lot of fear and change. And where does this fit in and? How will the salesperson explain this and how will I explain this on the website if? It’s. You know direct to consumer and they’re buying of themselves self service and this framing is really powerful. So knowing what the most painful problem is that the user has frame it from that problem as opposed to frame from an existing. You know, industry or market set your frame, set your context and talk about the product from that sense. One of the books that I was reading, April Dunford, so I do have books around here, talks about you know this how would you frame, you know, cake pop when cake pops first came out. So is it a lollipop? Is it a cake? It’s it’s a. Category that doesn’t exist right now. How would you frame that you know, so you have to kind of think about it from the end user. The problem that the user has and frame it from that angle and it’s really exciting because you can design. Name what your context is. You create the market you want to be in a position where you’re creating the market, because then it’s not compared to what exists today. The incumbent and you wanna kind? Of. You know, sever that thinking in a customer’s mind when they think about who your competitor is. So they don’t think of that. There’s a really great story that April talks about where they did this experiment. In Washington, outside of a train station where they had a like globally acclaimed violinist play. Sweatshirt, sweatshirt, cap, just like a Buster. So he didn’t. You know, you didn’t know his pedigree, his background, how long he’d been playing that he’d been playing since he was four years old or any of that. And so you did it during rush hour, where people are just like the context is I need to get to work. I’m running late. I’m just like. I don’t have. Time to stop and listen or enjoy. And so you know his value.
Irene
Was much less in that context. His his value as a product was not, was not valued in that audience for that audience. In that context, context in that setting, but put him in a, you know, at the opera role or playing in a in a venue, sell sell tickets. Have a brochure that talks about his background and how he had been playing since he was four years old and all the accolades that he’s had. And that audience appreciates that product, the talent, the you know. And so they value it at a higher rate. So that context is so powerful.
Susan
100% agree and and again it comes down to. Piece of marketing place is hugely important.
Irene
Absolutely.
Susan
So so coupling that with the context, you really have to think through what your project management process is going to be. And also as you said, go to market as well. But when when you’re doing all this, I’m I’m sure there’s a lot of tools that you use or can recommend. What would be the top say 5 that you use and why?
Irene
All the tools that I use. I’m a big fan of Miro. I can’t go back. Ever since I’ve started using mirror like the the boards, the templates, the formats I.
Susan
Mira over figma.
Irene
Yes, because I think Figma is great if you’re because I’m a product person, I’m not into the design as much. I can create. You know, we talk about wire framing and and mapping how the experience should look. But in terms of design, I think it’s important to respect your designer to do that and let them do their. Their job. Same with engineering. You know, we talk about no code tools and you can only go so far. You do need an expert. And so respecting their experience and what they bring is really important. But yeah, so I I do like Miro, I have played with Figma. I do get a little bit lost with Figma and it slows me down, but Muro doesn’t slow me down. So I really like Muro. That’s with that. The other thing I do like is. Mapping the customer journey and what they’re doing in real time through like a mix panel or an amplitude so you can see what they’re doing. I think that’s really powerful. So I do like using those. Other than that I like I use. You know the Google Docs sheets for collaboration slides. I do like using Canberra as well for someone who’s not a designer. I think it’s it. It helps. It’s like.
Susan
It’s got some really good templates in there and they keep evolving. I’m talking about a great product and also product management behind that. I think that they’ve been very clever and what they’ve built from the minimum viable through to what it has now.
Irene
I think it’s so powerful and it’s integrated with AI as well, so it’s even easier to use. I do like notion as well as a storage I since I’ve read about, you know, second brain, I kind of use a lot of I write all my notes either Google Docs or motion so then I can cross reference and check back and I think that that. Old second brain is really interesting thing.
Irene
Helpful can do so much more helps you be, you know, run faster. Other than that my slack email, they’re kind of the simple tools.
Susan
And I know you’ve talked about this already, so your answer might already been completed, but what excites you most about pro management? If you could bring it down to just two short sentences, if you can, what or or do you say?
Irene
Solving painful problems, finding the most painful problem, solving those painful problems so that we alleviate human pain through developing products, services, solutions that make the world a better place. And so by doing that, the users that use them love it so much they bring others.
Susan
Love it and lucky last question I ask every single person. What brand best represents you and why?
Irene
So I didn’t talk about this much. But probably my skin care brand that I created. Kiddie botanicals. Because. My tagline that I’d used was beauty without harm and that is very much about creating a product that solves a painful problem. So I had, you know, allergies and sensitive skin and reactions. And so I really needed something that was toxin free. So I needed something that will not harm my. Health and anyone’s health, so no harm to your health, no harm to animals. So I never used animal testing or any. And and it’s not vegan, which is really important because there’s a lot of powerful, you know, ingredients in nature, in, in botanicals, Australian botanicals. Yeah, happy to Plumb. Really. And so they’re really quiet, there’s a lot of ingredients and vitamins and antioxidants that are really natural and. You know it’s there. So no harm to your health, no harm to animals, no harm to the planet. Because I agonised over packaging. Making sure that there was no plastic as even recycled plastic is still plastic. So I used. Glass. You know, I went down this rabbit hole of looking at. Plastic made out of plants and you know the economics of it. And so so the brand is about. Beauty without harm or so no harm to your health, the planet, animals. And so I think that’s. That’s how I like to do product management. So something that solves the problem but doesn’t break something else. Doesn’t contribute to a problem elsewhere, because then you’re just kicking it down the down the road. And I think of it now. It’s the language about circular economy. From that space.
Susan
I love it. I do love it and there will be a future podcast specifically on KADIJA titles, so we’ll look. Everyone will look forward to listening to that one. But Irene, thank you so much for your time today. Going through product manager and product management, the difference helping us understand customer perception from a higher low point of view and also the competitors is really an important lens. Aligning everyone internally and also externally like partners for the goal of product management that you’re trying to bring because you’re trying to solve a real problem. It’s also really key and I heard it quite a lot through this discussion about how validation and doing test tests and iterations is extremely important. To make sure you’re delivering what you believe in, your heart is helping the world and the customer, and the final one is making sure there’s always value to the business and the end users, no matter what those metrics may be from money through to the experience itself. So again, thank you so much, Irene. Don’t forget to add more to marketing to your playlist so you don’t miss out on fabulous guests like Irene today. Thank you again.
Irene
And if you want to find me, I’m just on LinkedIn. You can connect with me there. I post quite a bit. I do teaching and I, yeah, anything. Product management. I also mentor users.
Susan
Fantastic. I will have the link in the comments section and also include it on the blog. Thanks everybody. Thank you. More to marketing.
