Is "social product management" for real?

Here's an important rule of thumb, if you're a researcher such as myself: Don't name something unless it really exists. That sounds fairly obvious, but unfortunately, in the history of the technology industry, there's a sad history of failed neologisms. In some cases, these phrases exaggerated the importance or complexity of some relatively mundane aspect of the world. That's how the superheated usage of the term knowledge management turned into a four letter word. In other cases, people use neologisms designed to describe things that might (or might not) exist in the future as if they already existed now. I've heard some presentations about the Semantic Web that certainly fall into that category.

Therefore, when I use a phrase like social product management, believe me, I'm using it very carefully. Over the course of the last week, I've had occasion to use it on several occasions, most recently at last night's open house for PMs in the Forrester Foster City office. (Thanks to all who attended, by the way.)

Social product management passes the sniff test for neologisms because it describes something that's really happening: social media are changing the way that product managers and product marketers work. Here are a few manifestations, excerpted from the research I've been doing for the last several months:

• Social media figure increasingly in the to-do lists for PMs. Whether it's answering forum postings or monitoring "chatter" about your company on Twitter, PMs are spending more time using social media to get some aspects of their job completed.
• Social media demand new skills to master. It's abundantly clear that using social media, in either an inbound or outbound capacity, takes real skill. Unfortunately, not everyone has learned how to  spot the social media outlets where particular kinds of stakeholders congregate, or how to collect and interpret a representative sample of aggregate social media activity.
• Social media frequently require investment. It takes time and effort to figure out which social media channels are worth your attention. In some cases, new tools, such as listening platforms, can be a big force multiplier in these efforts.
• Social media require new attitudes to work. Everything falls apart if the company isn't ready to take social media seriously. Strangely, customers expect social media to be the place where conversations happen, instead of providing yet another brand of megaphone for vendors to announce their greatness. They also expect you to follow up on these conversations. Weird, but true.
• Social media foment professional crises for PMs. The natural consequence of the previous bullets are some tough conversations between PMs and their managers. Topics include How the hell do you expect me to do this in my free time to Why use these new sources of intelligence if we continue to make the same mistakes in the decision-making process? However these conversations turn out, the fact that they're happening at all means that social media are having a real effect on the PM job.

Let's be clear: I'm not saying that social media obliterate everything that PMs used to do. Far from it. In pretty much every aspect of the job where social media are relevant, they supplement existing PM tasks, deliverables, or resources. For example, as useful as innovation sites may be (users propose features, comment on them, vote on them), you still need to have occasional face-to-face conversations with people in customer organizations. If 5,000 people vote for a great new feature, Ion flux regulator, that doesn't tell you why it's important to them, how they expect it to work, and other critical details that bear directly on prioritization and design decisions.

Therefore, the phrase social product management does have weight and purpose, to the extent that social media are changing the way that PMs in the tech industry work. Me absolvo, it's not just another meaningless buzzword.

[Cross-posted at The Heretech.]

Reminder, open house on social PM is tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that the "open house" for product managers and product marketers is tomorrow at 4 PM PST at Forrester's office in Foster City, CA (click here for a map). As my earlier post explains, the intent is to kick off a series of informal conversations about topics of interest.

For this first open house, we'll be discussing how social media are changing the job descriptions, priorities, deliverables, and required skills for PMs. All are welcome, the event is free, just come on down.

The Heretech, episode 26: Brian Drummond on Agile at Yahoo!

Brian Drummond tells us how Agile adoption worked at Yahoo! How did it start? How did different teams share best practices? How do you make Agile the status quo in a big software company? Plus, news of the first PM open house at the Forrester office in Foster City, CA. (c) 2009 Tom Grant

New VPR for IT Management Software - Call For Submittals

By Peter O'Neill

We are just starting our research for the next Vendor Positioning Review of IT management software vendors. While they all accepted our emphasis on BT instead of IT, many vendors actually ridiculed our VPR methodology focus on the website when we started these reports (“our customers don’t care about the website, they talk to us”). But it must now be clear to everyone in the technology industry how important B2B digital media has become. Our most recent data shows that the percent of technology buyers that are most advanced in using social media, what we call the Creators and Critics, is nearly double that of the US population in general.

Our plan with this VPR report is to highlight an IT management software best practice in each of the categories that we evaluate. These are listed below and remember, it is all about how well you present business technology as opposed to just technology. Just as a reminder, we evaluate the positioning of both the corporation and the products as follows:

Corporate Positioning

Corporate strategy
	Vision
	Growth objectives
Corporate marketing
	Tagline
	Advertising
	Web site
Corporate sales
	Sales alignment
	Sales skills
	Channel/alliance management

Product Positioning

Product strategy
	Road map
	Implementation strategy
Product messaging
	Role-based targeting
	Business value communication
	Business issue resolution
	Business justification

 

So, here is in invitation. While we will be doing our own research, you have the chance now to influence our selection. If you think that your own website could qualify as a best practice, then let us know and point us to that page. If we agree, then we will highlight that page in our report. I look forward to hearing from you.  

Always keeping you informed!

Peter

Hello Everybody - Can I be of interest?

By Peter O'Neill

This is my first post on this blog, till now you could find me only on the Forrester Vendor Strategy Professional or IT Infrastructure and Operations pages, so I thought I would first introduce myself. I have been at Forrester for over 4 years now, worked at META Group prior to that and served 20 years in various positions and businesses at HP before moving to the dark side of our industry. I cover the content area of IT service management as well as vendor partnerships and go-to-market execution. I am also now the one European representative of the Technology Product Management and Marketing research team (quite an important factoid, I would suggest, as we move into the "Post American" era).

I am now assuming a new research focus and targeting my reports at a new role, one to be serviced within these pages. I will be building up research for one of my favorite marketing contributors, the Field Marketing Manager, that true marketing schizophrenic.

They are schizophrenic because the field think they are factory, while the factory thinks they are Sales. Their success depends on being effective at communicating both downstream, converting technology statements to business value propositions; and upstream, giving actionable feedback to product management on an ongoing basis. And by the way, we estimate that 40% of a vendor's marketing budget goes through their hands.

So, watch out for this research and feel free to let your field marketing colleagues know this is coming. All suggestions for research ideas, best practices, benchmarks are welcome. If you would like a copy of my new research agenda, just drop me a line.

 Always keeping you informed!

Peter

By Peter O'Neill

This is my first post on this blog, till now you could find me only on the Forrester Vendor Strategy Professional or IT Infrastructure and Operations pages, so I thought I would first introduce myself. I have been at Forrester for over 4 years now, worked at META Group prior to that and served 20 years in various positions and businesses at HP before moving to the dark side of our industry. I cover the content area of IT service management as well as vendor partnerships and go-to-market execution. I am also now the one European representative of the Technology Product Management and Marketing research team (quite an important factoid, I would suggest, as we move into the "Post American" era).

I am now assuming a new research focus and targeting my reports at a new role, one to be serviced within these pages. I will be building up research for one of my favorite marketing contributors, the Field Marketing Manager, that true marketing schizophrenic.

They are schizophrenic because the field think they are factory, while the factory thinks they are Sales. Their success depends on being effective at communicating both downstream, converting technology statements to business value propositions; and upstream, giving actionable feedback to product management on an ongoing basis. And by the way, we estimate that 40% of a vendor's marketing budget goes through their hands.

So, watch out for this research and feel free to let your field marketing colleagues know this is coming. All suggestions for research ideas, best practices, benchmarks are welcome. If you would like a copy of my new research agenda, just drop me a line.

 Always keeping you informed!

Peter

B2B Marketers: 2009 Forrester Groundswell Award Winners Offer Great Examples

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Moments ago, Josh Bernoff posted this year’s winners of the 2009 Forrester Groundswell awards on the Groundswell blog. If you scroll down to the middle of the post (be forewarned; it’s a long one) you will see the winners and finalists in the B2B category winners. The images are great to look at as well.

In my research, I see marketers approach social media with a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism. Most want to know which firms execute social pursuits well and what tangible outcomes occur. Take a look and I think you will agree that these winners show how B2B firms can lead the way in achieving real business results.

As social activity expands – and business people seek out peers online to exchange ideas and validate their purchase decisions – these award winners and finalists demonstrate 6 types of objectives B2B marketers can use to connect – and ultimately change their relationship – with customers. Briefly, here’s what those 6 objectives are and why our winners took home the prize:

1) Listen to what customers talk about.  Listening to prospects and buyers may seem boring, so B2B markers tend to overlook this objective as an important start to setting social strategy. Yet, researching and analyzing what customers talk about pays off in deeper insight that leads to measurable benefits. CDW teamed with Communispace to listen to customers who participate in its community and apply those lessons to their sales interactions. As a result CDW increased the average of their total customer purchase revenue by 17% when comparing June 2009 to June 2008.

2) Talk with your customers (not at them): Successful marketers turn online activity and content into rich conversations. Eloqua’s self-guided sales tool, called the Conversation, treats users to an interactive discussion that hones in on their most pressing marketing problems using a combination of tongue-in-cheek humor and straight talk. Between 18 and 20% of buyers who engaged with an integrated campaign featuring this tool became prospects for Eloqua’s solutions.

3) Energize your best customers to talk about you. In B2B, using social media to energize customers around user meetings and conferences is a great example of making social media produce results. Depite restrictions on travel due to the economy, Sonic Foundry boosted Unleash 2009 attendance by 15%, and created a healthy pipeline of opportunity riding in on the coattails of this event.

4) Help your customers support each other. Social tools will accelerate the transformation of support forums from simple question/answer tools to communities where business-minded individuals network, share best practices, and seek business-oriented advice. In EDR’s case, commonground — a communityfor environmental professionals – resulted in over 90% of its customers giving EDR’s service a big thumbs up.

5) Encourage your customers spread success. In B2B, community succeeds when participation gets customers in a market — or users within buying organizations — to help others to adopt a product or service. ComplianceOnline, which I have written about previously, demonstrates this very well by attracting 500,000 subscribers, allowing members to share/purchase each other’s services, and generating approximately 30% of MetricStream’s leads.

6) Embrace customer ideas and suggestions. Ask customers for their opinions and ideas, and you will likely be overwhelmed with a huge number of responses. This was a hard category to judge because most of the submissions seemed to prove this conventional wisdom. Archer Technologies stood apart because, in their entry, they talked about how 2400 members contributed 1529 ideas resulting in new mobile and continuity products. That’s how to use the social power of your customers to drive business.

Will you join me in congratulating our new, B2B Groundswell Award winners?  And thank all of those who participated, especially after I badgered — uh, “reminded” you to do so . . .

And let me know about other B2B examples you find winning in the groundswell; I’d love to hear — and share — more.

[Crossposted from B2B Marketing POSTs]

Live From Summit On Customer Engagement 2009

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Last week, the Customer Strategy Group is held its inaugural summit on customer engagement – an intimate, executive conference designed for B2B marketers who manage customer reference programs, advisory boards, and the emerging area of online communities.  I spoke to about 75 marketers and sponsors about “Understanding the Value of Customer Engagement”.

In my most recent blog post at B2B Marketing POSTs, I look at what I learned from the morning keynote sessions.

Sharing Lead Management Market Insights with the DemandGen Report

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Last week, the DemandGen Report published an article that highlighted my Lead Management Automation market overview report. As part of their recap, assistant editor, Amanda Ferrante, asked me a few questions that honed in on aspects of the market that I did not make central to my two main themes, namely: 1) that the market is far from mature and subject to change that represent some risk to B2B marketers and 2) therefore, B2B marketers should pick partners that can help mature their processes, as well as come up with innovation and easy-to-use features.

In the interview, as transcribed at B2B Marketing POSTs, we look at:

1. My projections for future growth, and the shape of the growth curve, in this market.
2. Whether I think lead management automation will achieve popularity/penetration similar to the saleforce automation (SFA) market.
3. When I see consolidation occuring, and what is the likely form that will take.
4. Why lead scoring and profiling features are critical and to what degree these capabilities should influence the solution a company chooses.
5. Best practices I recommend for those adopting lead managment automation.
6. What is the best way to achieve alignment between sales and marketing, and how can LMA help achieve this goal.
7. Factors to prioritize when selecting vendors.

Please let me know what you think.

PM open house at Forrester's Foster City office on 11/05

On Thursday, November 5th, from 4:00 to 5:30 PM, Forrester Research is hosting an informal discussion about product management and product marketing issues. This session is the first in what we hope will be a series of conversations about these topics, scheduled at Forrester’s Bay Area office in Foster City.

The topic for this kick-off session is how social media is changing the job description for product managers and product marketers. I'll lead the discussion on this topic, since I just did an all-day workshop about "social product management."

The operative word in that last sentence is discussion. If you want to be pummeled with PowerPoints, look elsewhere. We want to host discussions among product managers and product marketers. Our role is to provide insights from our research, and give you a chance to meet and speak with your peers.

We’re very interested in hearing what topics you’d like us to cover. Forrester’s analysts covering the tech industry can provide information on a variety of topics—from requirements to market development, from Agile to SMBs, from B2B marketing best practices to supporting the salesforce. However, we’re more interested in developing a series of informal conversations on the topics that matter most for you. Please send us your suggestions.

Please RSVP with Marsha Versen (mversen@forrester.com, 650.581.3851) if you are interested in attending. All are welcome to join us, but we’d appreciate the RSVP so that we know if we’re going to run into space restrictions. If you have questions about the event, don't hesitate to contact me (tgrant@forrester.com, 650.581.3846).

Forrester's Northern California office is at 950 Tower Lane, Suite 1200, Foster City, CA. (Click here for a map.) 

Workshop on "social product management" is done!

Had some great conversations with the workshop attendees on how PM teams are incorporating social media into their customer and market intelligence (including, but not limited to, requirements). Thanks to all who attended.

Interestingly, we spent a good deal of time talking about the type of questions people ask. In trying to make sense of both social media and PM deliverables, I made a distinction between problem-centric questions, which center on the customer, and product-centric questions, which (as the name implies) focus on the vendor's products and services.

In the technology industry, people are far more used to posing product-centric questions. Gradually, companies are learning the importance of the problem-related questions. However, it's easy to slip from one into the other. It reminds me of how I used to struggle with guitar fingering. As a novice player, I would concentrate for a while on keeping my fingers straight on the frets. Inevitably, as I started to think about other things (strumming, rhythm, etc.), I'd start to roll my fingers slightly to the side, which made it harder to hit the notes I was trying to reach.

Problem-centric questions are a lot like good fingering: it takes time, experience, and discipline to reach the point when you shake free of the bad habits. Obviously, there's a time and a place for product-centric questions, but not every time.

[Cross-posted at The Heretech.]