Product Chats Podcast

"In an environment where there is not good collaboration, ultimately, you don’t leverage the expertise of everyone. You’re leaving all these superpowers on the table because people aren’t talking. The key to innovative ideas is leveraging the talents of a whole group.” - Teresa Brazen

• Why you should bring in design earlier in the development process
• How designers and product managers approach the development process differently
• Navigating the conflict between desirability, viability and feasibility

“The first market we have to sell to is our executive team” - Steve Gaylor

• The challenges product professionals will face when trying to implement change in their role and company
• How to get buy-in from the executive team to build a market-driven culture
• Why capturing market data will help you prevent emotional or political conversations with stakeholders in the company
• How to manage through influence versus authority

This podcast has some strong language, so if you've got any little ones around, you might want to pop in some headphones.

• Hiring the right product manager for your team starts with understanding exactly what your company needs, not simply “what makes a good product manager.”
• The key quality Matt looks for during an interview with a prospective product manager
• Why you should switch from clarifying the role of product management to clarifying the goal of product management
• How to incorporate different frameworks into the hiring process

“The first success criteria for positioning I use is if all the key constituents within the client organization have clarity and a united point of view on what the brand and the company stand for. The second is if the salesforce feels energized. The ultimate metric is business success, such as customer acquisition or growth.” - Ulli Appelbaum

• Ulli’s systematic approach to branding and positioning, including internal stakeholder interviews, competition analysis, and customer research.
• Types of positioning deliverables after completing initial research
• Why positioning can help you when things don’t go according to plan
• How to measure the success of positioning work
• Common problems that occur in positioning projects

This episode is from our latest Product Chat webinar >> watch the webinar

When it comes to the planning, execution and effectiveness of a launch, understanding the key components and their function within teams and processes is essential. Each phase of a launch brings its own very specific challenges and being able to execute and navigate while remaining on track can be challenging. So how can you best identify the key elements of a launch and utilize evaluation to ensure you’re building upon each launch successfully.

Join us as we welcome Trishna Sharma, Product Manager of Meta for a conversation on how to look at the key components of a successful product launch and evaluation techniques you can utilize to ensure you are driving powerful outcomes.

In this conversation Trishna will share:

• The key components of what drives a successful launch according to a PM
• How to plan and execute launch strategies that remain streamlined and on track
• Metrics and Data Insights you can look to, to measure success and efficiency
• How to conduct evaluation techniques post-launch to ensure you are consistently improving

“There are several things that can challenge a launch, but forgetting about some of the teams that are necessary for a launch can have a massive impact.” - Diane Pierson

• The people and teams that should be involved in a launch—but often aren’t
• Why you should use a launch readiness assessment rather than a launch checklist
• How to not lose control of a launch
• Why are product marketing managers often overlooked in the launch process

“My hope is that for product leaders and product managers is that in five years time you look back and you say, ‘tools like this have allowed me to free up my time so that I can do more high value work.’” - Paul Young

• The limitations of ChatGPT in its current version
• How ChatGPT can help product managers in their role
• Whether or not they are hopeful for new AI tools like ChatGPT

“Just because you may be a bigger company or the acquiring company doesn't mean you do everything right. Learn from the people that you're buying from.” - Frank Tait

• When to build, buy or partner in the context of a merger or acquisition
• The three stages of determining whether or not to buy a company
• The value of a gap analysis during an acquisition or merger
• How to apply the Pragmatic Framework to M&A build a shared mission and understanding
• The role of positioning and segmentation during an M&A process

Are your market research efforts providing meaningful insights? Have you accurately identified the needs of your market? Do your cross-functional team members understand your market well enough to win their trust – and get the sale?

Join us as Pragmatic Institute and Diane Pierson, visiting instructor and founder of Innovate on Purpose welcome Scott Lien, CEO and co-founder of GrandPad. Scott will share how to leverage market research to build powerful positioning and ways to utilize Pragmatic principles in the real world to gain a strategic advantage.

In this conversation Scott will also discuss:

• What kinds of market research will help you build better positioning
• Practical ways to conduct research with limited budgets and time
• How to drive market knowledge into every product and marketing decision to drive better results
• How to align with leadership to successfully jumpstart your positioning workflow

“I am pleading for everybody, working in any job, at the start of every one of your projects to say, ‘are we date-driven or are we scope-driven?’ Then, when something unforeseen comes our way, we will gleefully and joyfully make the adjustments and celebrate and move forward.

• How to determine if a perceived cultural issue is actually rooted in a problem with workflow
• Why unexpected rework is a sign of a workflow problem
• Why starting with customer data will bring clarity to workflows
• The importance of agreeing to adjust either scope or date deadlines to better manage resource and time constraints

“The whole point of doing a positioning document is to clearly and concisely say, ‘who are we solving problems for? What are those particular problems, and why do those people care so much that we solve those problems for them?’”

• Why position documents are essential for the entire organization and why it makes the product team’s job easier
• What to include in a positioning document and why the order of the sections is so important
• How many positioning documents should you create per product
• Who should own the positioning document

“I think every company should be thinking about is create a product-led growth strategy. You don't have to implement it. You don't have to say, "this is how we're going to run our company." But I think if you step back to think about what it would look like if we use product-led growth in our company, you would probably build much better products.” - Mark Stiving

• Companies moving toward usage-based pricing
• What is product-led growth
• Why net-dollar retention is the single most important KPI
• The importance of compensation for the sales team that grows customers
• Pricing and AI

Steve Goodyear, the founder of Realizer Services, is the first person to earn a PMC VIII certification.

Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing for Pragmatic Institute, and Steve discuss the variety of courses offered through Pragmatic Institute, and how each plays a role in elevating the work he does at his company.

They discuss

• How the courses help Steve answer the question: "How do I turn professional services into more of a product."
• His lessons from the Design course
• How he uses the Pragmatic Alumni Community to build his network and talk through ideas.

Additional Resources

Foundations on Demand

Begin your product training experience with the course Foundations. Even better, this course is both live and on-demand. You’ll also gain your membership to the growing and active Pragmatic Alumni Community.

Course Overview:

• Understand the market and the problems it faces
• Use market knowledge to build and sell products people want to buy
• Master the Pragmatic Framework and the activities needed to bring a successful product to market
• Learn to listen to the market, prioritize projects and drive result

Learn More

In this episode, Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing for Pragmatic Institute, hosts Sandy Orlando, the senior VP of product management at CDK Global, an automotive retailing software company. Sandy explains that her objective with NIHITO visits is to listen to the customer rather than to talk to the customer, and to test a hypothesis without trying to inform it. She said that while building personas people try to prescribe a conclusion and then prove it rather than exploring.

When done well, personas can lead a product team to create solutions that lead customers to desired outcomes. At times, she said she's received feedback from customers that she didn't deliver one single thing the customer asked for but instead delivered exactly what they needed.

This episode is from our latest Product Chat webinar >> watch the webinar

With 2022 coming to an end and rumbles of the macro environment creating some potentially tough hurdles for businesses in 2023, companies must be laser-focused on what is most important for success in the coming year. This is why product managers and leaders must hone in on areas that create resilience and deliver the highest value and greatest impact for their organizations, employees and, most importantly, their users and customers.

Join us as we welcome Kirsten Van Detta, senior product manager at LinkedIn, for a conversation on what key concepts product professionals should be focusing on to fuel their 2023 and how being ruthless in your prioritization can serve as your biggest ally.

This episode is from our latest Product Chat webinar >> watch the webinar

Join us as we welcome Sandi Olson, Senior Marketing Content Manager at Microsoft for a conversation on how utilizing the right asset assessment techniques can help you to analyze, prioritize and make forward-thinking pivots before your competitors.

In this conversation Sandi will share:

• How to approach asset assessment through a lens that allows you to revive, streamline and support any business strategy
• Ways you can utilize assessment to better integrate positioning and messaging
• How healthy asset hygiene enhances strategy development
• Archive, archive, archive
• Tools and processes you can leverage to ensure you are finding meaningful opportunities within your assets

Validating market problems isn’t about listening only to the noisy 20 percent of the market. Instead, it’s about understanding the needs of the quiet 80 percent too. Without validation, product teams can invest valuable time and resources into an idea that is destined to fall flat.

In this episode of Pragmatic Live, Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing for Pragmatic Institute, interviews Pragmatic instructor Terry Sadowski who candidly shares his experience with a launch failure.

They discuss:

• How pressure and novelty can cause you to ignore established processes that protect against launch failures
• The ways hindsight reveals all the missteps overlooked in a moment of excitement and energy
• How to move forward after a big failed launch
• Key advice to avoid a failed launch

Want to learn more about effective launches?

Launch is a course that helps you create a more strategic approach to exceed your business objectives. Learn to execute successful launches that align your entire organization around the same strategies and goals.

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• Three pillars of a successful business
• Why the market can make or break any product
• What makes a great market
• How to drive alignment in a company
• How to get out of the “one more feature” trap
• The difference between strategy and execution

“Just because you hit the metrics for a couple of months doesn’t mean you will be instantly promoted. You need to hit those standards and maintain those standards for a period of time. For the more advanced roles, we want them to maintain those standards for a year. Others maintain those higher standards for six months, etc.” - Corban Wells

• How to define product manager and product owner
• Building development and career paths for product professionals based on KPIs
• How clear expectations for each role improve one-on-ones and make the feedback more objective

“Product teams should stay out of the how and focus on the what, who and why. If we can bring all that context to the table and then we can give our development teams the space to think creatively. To start with a blank canvas. It is a best practice to have a separation of duties between the how and the what.” - Amy Graham

• The importance of having clarity around roles and responsibilities and understanding what type of team you have (e.g., high market knowledge vs dependent)
• How to build trust and collaboration between product and development
• Some of the key areas where teamwork starts to break down in companies.

This episode is from our latest Product Chat webinar >> watch the webinar

Join us as we welcome Anand Arivukkarasu, Product Leader (formerly of FB) for a conversation on how you can use measurement to ensure success throughout every stage of the product lifecycle.

In this conversation, Anand will share:

• Key KPIs and metrics you should be paying attention to through the development, GTM, growth and product end-of-life phases
• Ways to apply measurement to employ strategies and align stakeholders
• How to utilize metrics to gain buy-in for current and future initiatives
• How to decipher insights between the metrics to ensure you are staying ahead of the curve

“It's useful to look at metrics, but metrics are a lot more useful and meaningful if we frame them around why we're measuring that thing to begin with. You want to measure a thing because it's meaningful. And OKRs are how teams put meaning behind the measurement.” - Paul Young

• The qualities of a good objective
• Why you might have multiple key results for each objective
• Why you should set a confidence score (on a scale of 1-10) and why every objective should be difficult but not impossible
• The difference between OKR and KPI
• How many OKRs should you have on your team

What’s the hallmark of a strong product team? Anna Turner, VP of Products at Paycor said there are two: being market-driven and stewardship of time and resources.

• What to look for when hiring a product manager
• How product teams can leverage data to improve collaboration and decision-making in the organization
• Strategies for nurturing emerging leaders

“Win/Loss is a garbage-in, garbage-out exercise. There needs to be careful curation and vetting of the information in the program. Otherwise, information is going to be unreliable at best and misleading it worst.”

• The importance of getting strategic alignment before starting a win/loss program
• When is it appropriate to use open-ended or leading questions
• How to leverage data and then go beyond the data by bringing together cross-functional teams
• Determining how many win/loss interviews are sufficient for gathering insights

This episode is from our latest Product Chat webinar >> watch the webinar

• A framework for connecting business objectives to marketing executions
• Ways to use research to size, position and name your products/features
• A four-phased GTM approach to prove marketing value and reduce risk
• Ways to apply the same methodologies to create a product marketing function to utilize moving forward

“In the past, it's been a little bit of a nebulous process and people trying to grab from Lean Startup and all these different things that are not cohesive as a journey.” - Daniel Elizalde

1. Strategic alignment
2. Market discovery
3. User discovery
4. Solution planning
5. prototyping
6. Early adopter

• Why distribution strategy can be innovative
• Indirect or direct distribution strategy examples
• Integration as a distribution strategy
• Am outside-in approach to distribution strategy

"Distribution strategy is where you make it easy. You can build the greatest product in the world, but if people can’t find it and don’t know how to buy it, then it doesn’t matter what you built.” - Rich Nutinsky

• Examples when distribution strategy was an innovative disrupter in the market
• Distribution strategy for software companies
• The relationship between customer experience and distribution strategy

“Distinctive Competencies are rarely a product feature because a distinctive competency isn't easily copied and product features. If you come out with a new product feature today, your competitor could copy that within a few months.”

• What are distinctive competencies and why do they matter
• Examples of distinctive competencies at big brands (Disney, Amazon, LinkedIn, Zappos and Walmart)
• How to get more differentiation for your products

Win-loss analysis is a practice every company should be doing but not every company is doing it—at least not as effectively as they can be. Win-loss analysis can help your business in almost every facet—product strategy, marketing messaging, sales enablement, and more.

Andrew Peterson, Co-Founder of Clozd, the leader in win-loss analysis, explains how to optimize your win-loss analysis program.

Andrew has expert advice on the win-loss best practices to increase your win rate, whether it be getting started or leveling up your current program.

In this conversation Andrew will share:

• How to get started with a win-loss analysis program
• Tips to optimize your current program
• How to take the data you receive from your program and use it to implement necessary change 

“I have taken the classes before and have used so many of the concepts from the Framework at the various companies I've worked at, but to be able to get in there, teach it to so many different groups, companies and people with diverse backgrounds—It just shows the power in The Framework and the Foundations class,” —Dan Corbin, Pragmatic Instructor

• The five key sections in the Foundations course
• What makes the Pragmatic Framework powerful and effective
• The common challenges product professionals encounter
• How can students get the most out of the training when they enroll

“It is essential to adopt a structured approach to collecting buyer insights. Now, if companies decide just to do an ad-hoc buyer interview or win-loss interview, and it's not a more structured process, then companies will end up relying on anecdotal information and never truly understanding the buyer” — Diana Igua

• What win/loss programs provide to product managers, product marketers and sales teams
• Why a collection of conversations is more meaningful than one story
• How to establish a standardized and focused process for structuring win/loss research
• Why surveys aren’t an adequate replacement for win/loss interviews
• Two approaches to get target groups to engage with a win/loss interview

“Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a market to hire consultants, to tell executives that their idea is stupid.” - Paul Young

• What early warning signs did CNN+ ignore that might have indicated the product wouldn’t succeed
• The conversion rate you should expect going from a freemium model to a premium model
• Why you need both data and stories to effectively communicate market research

One of the largest struggles within product is articulating your organization’s unique abilities to deliver value to its market. But guess what, it’s also one of the most important! So how do you develop a successful path that combines innovation, proven methodology and sure-fire approaches to hone-in on the attributes and differentiators that set you apart from your competitors?

We got you covered.

Leon Stigter, Senior Technical PM at Amazon Web Services, covers topics on distinctive competencies and when and how innovation can become your biggest ally. In this discussion Leon will share:

• How you can find distinctive competencies and turn them into assets
• Why does “distinctive” matter in distinctive competencies?
• How to use marketing as a top asset when telling your story
• Why data is a key factor in your process

“Here’s how we define distinctive competencies: they are the unique attributes your organization has developed that allow you to deliver value into your market.” — Paul Young

• Distinctive competency as it relates to core competencies
• Examples of distinctive competencies: innovation, culture, customer intimacy, patent portfolio
• Why you can’t innovate like Apple >> Read More
• The consequence of assuming distinctive competencies without external validation
• Why technology isn’t a good distinctive competency
• How many (or few) distinctive competencies you should have in your organization
• The strategies for shifting distinctive competencies (the slow way and the fast way)

• Become market-driven by exploring concepts such as how to uncover strategic opportunities
• Define product team roles and responsibilities
• Prioritize actual vs. desired business goals
• Talk to and observe the market in action.

“We try to be pristine in our application of the definitions, and what it is we’re actually trying to accomplish can sometimes get lost in the shuffle” - Kirsten Butzow

• Sprints and how the market cares about usefulness and impact—not methodology
• Who is driving the release planning discussions
• How to collaborate for a launch
• Why requirements should start with data and market research
• The helpful role of a retrospective

“It's been a really interesting time to see such a high degree of camaraderie and cheerleading in the community because everyone is working on leveling something up; they want to grow their team; they wanna grow their influence; they wanna grow their own skill level.” — Georgina Donahue, Director of Community at Pragmatic Institute

• How the community helps connect alumni with jobs, candidates and innovative hiring strategies
• The types of engaging conversations happening in the community around building cross-functional teams and collaborating with other departments
• Masterclass opportunities exclusive to community members

• Become market-driven by exploring concepts such as how to uncover strategic opportunities
• Define product team roles and responsibilities
• Prioritize actual vs. desired business goals
• Talk to and observe the market in action.

This episode was recorded during our recent Product Chat Webinar.

Hear how should you approach your content endeavors, and where should you look to understand the best areas to focus your efforts and resources from Editorial and Metadata Leader at Netflix, Anjana Gopakumar.

“When your message is generic, instead of being for everyone, it turns into a piece of content for no one. So for me, specificity is always been really a key trait. To building that hero and then, also for me, is being real and genuine and authentic as I possibly can be."

• How to think beyond the inbound methodology
• Why distribution is the path to having a proactive marketing strategy
• The ways that content can build valuable relationships
• Vulnerability as a superpower and experimentation as a strength

“With video, whether you're using it for marketing or sales or just even information sharing, it's a human thing. You're building a human connection with someone. And what that serves to do is show your authenticity” - Ellen Grogan

• Why video is so powerful for building empathy and showing authenticity
• The challenges companies face when they start incorporating a video strategy
• Strategies for measuring success
• How to repurpose long-form videos in shorter formats

• Where to generate innovative and bold UX ideas
• How to delve into your users to understand patterns
• How to measure user efforts and KPI’s to pay attention to
• Ways to optimize UX experiences that increase both adoption and retention

Yes, Agile is typically associated with product and engineering teams, but the principles can be powerful when applied to the job search. In this episode of Pragmatic Live, Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing for Pragmatic Institute, interviews Pragmatic’s newest instructor Dan Corbin about his unique approach to finding jobs in products.

• The different stages of the job search
• Why an iterative approach can reduce feelings of failure
• How having a partner in the job search can help improve the experience

“The hardest part is looking at ourselves or looking at the way we're doing things and knowing whether or not it is the most effective way things could be done and remaining open to an alternative.” - David Bard

• Recent research on curiosity
• How you can encourage curiosity at your organization and on your teams
• Strategies to stimulate and exercise curiosity
• How humility can overcome the Einstellung Effect

This is part four of a four-part series with pricing expert and Pragmatic instructor Mark Stiving. Each new episode will feature a case study on current pricing trends.

• The reason why people buy the $6,000 hotel room at Disney: Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser
• Why Mark thinks the hotel Room is underpriced
• How comparison helps the buyer justify pricing structures

• Product Portfolio Worksheet
• Isoprofit Tables
• Pricing Ownership Matrix
• Value Matrix

• The three revenue buckets and how they drive prioritization
• The three levels to pull to create and capture more value
• Which growth strategies are best based on the life cycle of a product
• The four ways to grow revenue from a single customer

This is part three of a four-part series with pricing expert and Pragmatic instructor Mark Stiving. Each new episode will feature a case study on current pricing trends.

• The elements driving buyer behavior in the housing market.
• The reasons why Zillow stopped flipping houses. Answer: Labor shortage and “the winner's curse.”
• How we can apply lessons learned in the housing market to B2B and SAAS companies.

• Product Portfolio Worksheet
• Isoprofit Tables
• Pricing Ownership Matrix
• Value Matrix

• The three revenue buckets and how they drive prioritization
• The three levels to pull to create and capture more value
• Which growth strategies are best based on the life cycle of a product
• The four ways to grow revenue from a single customer

>>Enroll Today 

This is part two of a four-part series with pricing expert and Pragmatic instructor Mark Stiving. Each new episode will feature a case study on current pricing trends.

• Why we might notice changes in volume, features and quality more than price changes.
• How do we make changes that increase profits but don’t upset buyers or users?
• Why now might be the best time to experiment with pricing.

• Product Portfolio Worksheet
• Isoprofit Tables
• Pricing Ownership Matrix
• Value Matrix

• The three revenue buckets and how they drive prioritization
• The three levels to pull to create and capture more value
• Which growth strategies are best based on the life cycle of a product
• The four ways to grow revenue from a single customer

“It wouldn’t surprise me if these latest price increases won’t work out as well as previous ones,” - Mark Stiving

• How do we get different customers with different willingness to pay to still buy our product?
• The risk of offering ad-supported cheaper versions
• Why “good, better, best” options work so well in subscription services

• Product Portfolio Worksheet
• Isoprofit Tables
• Pricing Ownership Matrix
• Value Matrix

• The three revenue buckets and how they drive prioritization
• The three levels to pull to create and capture more value
• Which growth strategies are best based on the life cycle of a product
• The four ways to grow revenue from a single customer

“When they say you lost on price, that’s not a good enough answer. You have to peel the onion. You have to do the work to uncover the real answer"

• How the pricing structure or model can affect customer's value perceptions (For example, large one-time payments may seem riskier to new customers than smaller monthly payments)
• Why transparency in pricing can help win more buyers
• Why the concept “people buy, not companies” should inform selling strategies