Product Chats Podcast

"Data is the key to your success in this. Getting data about how your product is being used, getting data about the market and or customers or potential customers validation points on that data is absolutely crucial." - Mike Smart

• Strategic Planning Insights: Mike delves into the critical aspects of strategic planning for the year 2024, focusing on market dynamics, customer validation, and the crucial role of data analysis.
• Four Pillars of Success: He elaborates on the four pillars of strategic planning: aligning with business strategy, in-depth market research, rigorous data analysis, and the efficient use of technology and resources.
• Expectation Management: Emphasizing communication, Mike discusses the importance of managing expectations throughout the planning process.

"As a product leader, you want to be able to come to the table with information that will get you heard. Sometimes it's less storytelling, more data, and really knowing your audience and knowing who you are working with and the way in which they will receive information best." - Josey Borman

In this episode of the Pragmatic Product Chat Series, we are joined by Josey Borman, an EdTech expert and a firm believer in the power of education in product. Having transitioned from being a high school social studies teacher to a product and content development executive in EdTech, Josey brings a unique perspective on leadership, product management, and partnerships.

Key Takeaways:
- The Role of Data: Josey emphasizes the importance of data in making informed decisions, particularly in the area of product management and in deciding potential partnerships.
- Team Management: Josey shares insights on leadership, focusing on understanding audience diversity, nurturing team dynamics, and building relationships for success.
- Exploring Partnerships: Josey provides a detailed approach on exploring partnerships, considering strategic goals, core competencies, and the readiness of the organization to take on new initiatives.

Tune in to this episode to gain insight into Josey's unique approach to product management, leadership, and partnerships. Want to learn more about using data in product practices and decisions? Take our Insight course to turn your data into product strategies.

• Focus on Outcomes, Not Outputs: Learn why focusing on outcomes, rather than mere outputs, is crucial for a successful product launch.
• The Blueprint for Success: Discover Dave’s expertise in establishing clear objectives and fostering collaboration for effective product launches.
• Building Launch Expertise: Understand how BrainKraft equips organizations with structured approaches and governance for repeated launch success.
• Role of PMO: Dive into the critical role of the Program Management Office in ensuring consistent implementation of launch processes across various business units.
• Use Your Resources: Dave shares actionable tips for defining clear launch objectives and highlights BrainKraft's resources for further guidance.

• Keyword Planning: Find out how to use Google's keyword tools to figure out what your competitors are up to and spot trends before they take off.
• Ad Insights: Discover how to see every ad your competitor has run using tools like Google's Ads Transparency Center and similar features on Meta and LinkedIn.
• Staying Alert: Learn to set up Google Alerts in a way that most businesses miss, keeping you informed about your competitors and industry shifts.
• Tech Scouting: Use builtwith.com to learn what tech your competitors are using and how it can give you an edge, whether you're competing or looking for potential clients.

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

• Personalization and Customer Data: Learn how personalization shapes buying decisions and why customer data is key to understanding different customer groups.
• Customer Segmentation: Discover various methods of categorizing customers based on their behaviors and attitudes, and the importance of regular evaluation.
• AI-Driven Personalization: Explore practical examples of how AI and machine learning contribute to personalization, like reducing customer churn and recommending products.
• Evaluating Model Success: Understand the need for measuring the performance of personalization models using different metrics and KPIs to align with business goals.
• Building a Strong Personalization Engine: Get actionable advice for creating a data-driven personalization engine that improves customer satisfaction and business growth.

• How influencer marketing is “word-of-mouth at scale” due to loyal niche audiences
• Vetting influencers carefully to avoid fraud and ensure an authentic audience
• Developing genuine relationships and allowing creative freedom for best results
• Measuring influencer impact through trackable links and other metrics
• Case studies of successful influencer campaigns and partnerships
• Why micro-influencers can sometimes outperform celebrity influencers

• Gain a thorough understanding of your buyers and how they like to buy so you can build product marketing strategies that deliver results.
• Align across go-to-market teams by effectively sharing and leveraging your buyer knowledge to prioritize the right product marketing strategies.
• Measure your strategies against the metrics that matter most to your organizations, focusing on outcomes and impact, not vanity.

• The role of collaboration in maximizing the benefits of collective effort, and how inviting diverse strengths in a team can lead to better problem-solving and innovation.
• The difference between “nice” and “kind”
• Why genuine listening and giving others the benefit of the doubt are steps towards understanding and practicing kindness.
• Exploring new tools to measure kindness to offer a glimpse into assessing and enhancing the compassionate culture within teams.

• How to gain alignment in an organization for marketing efforts
• Leveraging the 30, 60, 90 feedback rule
• What it means to use agile marketing plans
• Key components of positioning to communicate value
• Finding growth areas

• Strategies for creating inclusive and secure environments
• The importance of modeling vulnerability and admitting mistakes
• Practical ways to assess and measure psychological safety
• The role of working agreements in establishing behavioral norms
• The impact of psychological safety on team productivity and individual well-being

• Mastering the Pragmatic Framework
• Building and sharing market expertise
• Uncovering strategic opportunities
• Implementation of market-driven strategies

• The myths of internal product management
• The difference between internal and external product management
• How leaders can empower internal product managers

• Sunsetting a product is not passive; it requires investment and must be prioritized against other business activities.
• Just like a product launch process, there must be a process for its end-of-life.
• Metrics to monitor to know when sunsetting is the best next step.
• End-of-life phases: "end of sale," "end of support," and "end of life.”

• How to uncover strategic opportunities in your market.
• Ways to define your product team roles and responsibilities effectively.
• How to prioritize actual vs. desired business goals.
• Techniques to engage with the market for win/loss analysis.
• Understanding buyer and user personas for a human-centered approach.

1. Why identifying a prospect urgency is a powerful approach to segmentation
2. The four levels of urgency: urgent, non-urgent, currently met, and none 
3. The role of core competencies when prioritizing segments
4. What whales & fire extinguishers can teach us about segmentation

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

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• Generative AI as a Collaborative Partner: The role of AI as a remarkable technology that assists in positioning, persona development, problem identification, and marketing language.
• AI and Human Balance: A discussion on the differentiation and value addition through human expertise in the AI-driven content era.
• Future Potential: The acceleration of innovation in product management and marketing and the potential risks and cautions.
• Prompt Engineering: How generative AI aids in structuring questions, experimenting, and increasing efficacy in discovery processes.
• Prompt Engineering and Discovery Process: Exploring how generative AI aids in structuring questions, experimenting, and increasing efficacy in discovery processes.
• Workshop Highlights: An overview of AI for Product Professionals, a hands-on training workshop focusing on mastering ChatGPT and prompt engineering.

• An understanding of AI and its capabilities and limitations.
• Strategies to streamline workflows
• Advance prompt engineering tactics to apply in practical scenarios

• Pragmatic's Legacy: The transformation from a small visionary idea into a global institution, driven by consistency, passion, and deep knowledge of a market problem.
• Challenges in Product Management: The ongoing struggle to balance daily operations with strategic thinking and the consistent issue known as the "tyranny of the urgent."
• Reflections on Career and Industry: From the rise of agile and SaaS to personal career decisions, reflections on changes, growth, and the intersection of product and brand.
• Pragmatic's Alumni Connection: The powerful alumni base makes Pragmatic's community unique and engaging.
• The Art of Writing: Rebecca's journey as a head copywriter, the secret to good copy, and the joy of crafting precise positioning statements.

• Understand the role of pricing fences in implementing price segmentation
• Learn how pricing fences can be applied in different scenarios
• Discover the underlying principles, various methodologies, and real-world applications

"You do not just want to copy and paste what you're taking out of AI and use it as the final product” - Dan Corbin

• AI can synthesize data and automate repetitive tasks, but isn't a replacement for user research or specialists.
• Use AI to collaborate with cross-functional partners, not circumvent them.
• Balance the opportunities of AI with thoughtful human validation to boost innovation while ensuring quality.

• How AI influences the way product executives and C-suite leaders think about product strategy and new product development
• The pros and cons of using a trained model versus public models
• How to stay a step ahead in AI

I think elevator music exists for a reason, but isn't really what you should strive for” - Kirsten Butzow

1. What to say instead of common corporate jargon
2. Why corporate speak drifts out to the marketplace
3. Why you shouldn’t work 110%

“Differentiation only matters to a customer in as much as they perceive that it matters,” Dan Balcauski.

• Why product managers should deeply understand pricing
• Where people go wrong when they are working on pricing strategy
• How to establish a clear understanding of how your customer's value that’s not based on opinion
• The role of competitive analysis in building a pricing strategy
• Why Dan doesn’t recommend freemiums (but does recommend free trials)

"Understanding precisely why your users are happy or frustrated should inform the product roadmap and your continuous improvement efforts are likely to enhance your company's reputation." - Evan Klein

• Benefits of a strong user experience
• The purpose and how to conduct a key driver analysis
• Why humans (not machines or AI) should be responsible for thematic analyses
• Risks of data quality and reliability
• Who should conduct customer interviews and other best practices

Unlock Your Product Management Potential
Dive into Pragmatic Institute's Foundations course to master market understanding and product building. Earn a PMC certification and access invaluable tools and resources.
 Ideal for aspiring and seasoned product managers.
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In this episode of Pragmatic Live, our very own Diane Pierson, Pragmatic Institute instructor, is joined by Joe Douress, published author and managing director for Brittish Medical Publishing for the Americas, to discuss how to better leverage subscription models at the right time to ensure customer and revenue retention.

Don't forget! - Each and every Friday, we hold live AMA's that you can take part in!

Visit pragmaticinstitute.com to learn more.

Watch our previous sessions HERE.

“Your best messaging is often going to be the messaging that a customer gives to you.” -  Aneri Shah

• The vital importance of deeply understanding your buyers for successful product marketing.
• How and where to utilize the voice of the customer
• The real value of in-product communication
• How she uses AI to help with messaging

“Even one conversation with one customer can be so impactful to what we can deliver.” - Daniel Alleyne

• The pervasive nature of imposter syndrome in product roles, particularly among those who have followed non-traditional paths, and its role in fostering ongoing learning and personal growth.
• Effective strategies to underline the importance of market research and secure buy-in from stakeholders and leaders.
• Approaches to building trust within organizations to garner the time and resources necessary for comprehensive market research.
• Techniques to continually demonstrate value during the market research process, ensuring sustained support and investment.

“Break the communication barriers to your organization with data.” - Paul Meresanu

• Using data to make decisions when choosing a path for a product or starting a new product?
• How to encode and decode qualitative data
• Tools for managing qualitative data

Your product roadmap serves as more than just a mere document. It acts as a powerful conduit, effectively communicating your vision and strategy to key stakeholders, partners, and customers. Neglecting to provide realistic, relevant, and up-to-date information within your roadmap can lead to missed opportunities, wasted time, and potential revenue loss.

• Provides practical examples and insights on creating roadmap clarity
• Explains setting realistic timelines
• Demonstrates collaborative tools

“I would love for marketers to get involved in a couple of sales demos and commit to it, not just listen in. I think that would be uncomfortable for a lot of people, and that means that you're learning.” - Ross Cranwell

• How product marketers can build credibility
• The unique challenges B2B product marketers face (especially when trying to connect marketing efforts to revenue)
• Why product marketers should participate in sales calls

In this great throwback episode, pricing guru and long-time Pragmatic partner Mark Stiving covers three key methods you can use to get the most profitable products to the market as quickly as possible.

Want to learn more about pricing your product for success? Take Price from Pragmatic Institute. Learn more and register today.

"Your customers are looking at your product and asking for discounts. The key is to demonstrate the value of your product so that they understand the price is justified." 

- Mark Stiving, Chief Pricing Officer for Impact Pricing

In this episode of the Pragmatic Live, host Rebecca Kalogeris, Vice President of Product at Pragmatic Institute, interviews Mark Stiving, Ph.D., Chief Pricing Officer for Impact Pricing, who shares six ways to raise product prices effectively. 

They discuss pricing strategies such as focusing on products that are add-ons, using market segmentation to adjust prices, and creating a new product version by taking away some features and charging a lower price. These strategies can help companies increase revenue without causing too much disruption or risking losing customers.

The conversation contains valuable insights and practical tips to help professionals elevate their products, company, and career. Tune in to this episode to learn more about effective pricing strategies and take your product management skills to the next level.

Do you want to learn how to be more market-driven? Enroll in Foundations

You’ll learn how to understand the market and its problems, use that knowledge to build and sell products people want to buy, and master the Pragmatic Framework to bring successful products to market.

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“We're not looking for the learning itself; we're looking for that behavior. We want that application. That is where the real value is for any organization or business.” - Erica Sutula

• What is instructional design
• How Pragmatic helps students implement their training after they’ve completed a course
• The impact collaborative learning has on outcomes
• What is problem-based learning
• Why certification exams help with the long-term transfer of knowledge and skills

“The secret is not to pick the squeakiest wheel, but to actually find the thing that's going to add the most business value and customer value if we release it out to the market.” - Erik Johnson

• The three common pitfalls of market research
• How Aha! prevents market research from getting lost in digital drawers
• The three-prong test to validate and prioritize problems (and a tool to help)
• Aha!’s product value scorecard and idea portal
• How to effectively bring market insights to the development and design teams
• How to get buy-in for a new roadmapping tool

“Use that user empathy superpower with your engineers. See that they are your partners, not your resources.” - Kirsten Van Detta

• What engineers need from product managers
• Communication strategies to better collaborate with engineers
• Why advocating for the product is also advocating for your team
• How to repair your relationship with the engineering team if it isn’t ideal

• The limitations and capabilities of GPT-3 and GPT-4
• The applications for generative AI, evaluative AI and interactive AI
• An example of how Delibr uses AI to build PRD
• Prompt engineering approaches

“I teach the pricing class, and we like to say that people don't want to feel punished when it comes to price—they want to feel rewarded." - Todd Middlebrook

• Netflix’s latest changes and the impact
• The reaction in the market to the password-sharing crackdown
• Why businesses should avoid making customers feel like they are being punished with pricing changes
• The ways Netflix could approach the policy change differently
• How Netflix could improve its messaging and policy launch moving forward to earn goodwill with current and future customers

“Data in a spreadsheet is going to have a limited effect. How you tell the story and how you convey that to members of the leadership team in a way that is easily digestible and makes it clear how they can act on it is vitally important. If the feedback is only shared with the CEO or with one department, then you're leaving a lot of opportunities on the table.” - Evan Klein.

• How to implement systematic feedback processes
• Who should be included in customer satisfaction surveys and interviews
• How to share customer insights in a way the company will feel empowered to act on them
• Benefits of hiring a third-party voice of customer services
• Best practices for approaching win/loss interviews
• How to encourage customers to provide feedback and respond to survey or interview requests
• How employee feedback programs contribute to improving customer experience

"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

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.