Summary: <br> <br> This is a listener suggested episode, which I love doing. I enjoy receiving requests from listeners asking for specific topics to explore. Several people have had questions about B2B product management. A B2B company sells its products to other organizations while a B2C company provides its products to consumers.<br> To explore this topic, I asked Jeff Lash to join us. Jeff is a recognized thought leader in product management, with over a decade of experience in the development of Web-based products and SaaS systems. His product management career includes both new product launches and major turnarounds of existing product lines, as well as creation of the product management role into organizations. He has significant expertise in customer understanding, new product innovation, agile product management, user experience design, and product development processes. He is a Vice President at SiriusDecisions, a research and advisory company for B2B organizations.<br> While the focus of our discussion is on product management for B2B companies, there are tips and practices B2C product managers will find valuable too.<br> <br> Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators<br> Summary of some questions discussed:<br> <br> * How does B2B product management differ from B2C? The B2B product group is like a smaller business in a larger business. B2B product managers are generally responsible for an entire product while a B2C product manager may be responsible for a portion of a product, for example, the Search capability of a product. While there are many similarities, I’m starting to see some trends in differences, such as with the importance of user experience design. Also, B2B product managers are more involved in enabling and helping the sales team be successful.<br> <br> <br> <br> * How do B2B sales models impact product management? Direct or indirect sale channels are part of the B2B product manager’s tools and responsibilities. Product Management is interlocked with the Marketing and Sales function of an organization. Product managers can get overloaded by Sales and sucked into helping too much with questions and customer calls instead of doing the work of product management. Organizations that excel have balance. They have clear responsibilities for product managers in terms of how they support Sales and well-communicated ground rules. Also, Product Marketing exists as a function to transfer knowledge of the product to rest of the organization. We see alignment between the executives responsible for Product Management, Marketing, and Sales.<br> <br> <br> <br> * How do buying roles impact product management? This is a key difference with B2B product management compared to B2C. In a B2B environment, there are multiple buyers, such as Decision Maker, Champion, Influencer, and GateKeeper, in addition to the actual users of the product. Product managers need to address personas for each of the roles involved in the buying process and also help Sales understand these roles and vice-versa.<br> <br> <br> <br> * How can product managers avoid the “one-off” practice that some B2B organizations find themselves in – customizing a product for each customer? Organizational culture is a key influencer to this situation. Some cultures permit sales professionals to write new product capabilities into customer contracts and then product management has to find a way to satisfy the expectations created by Sales. This is a poor practice. Executives need to be in alignment and have a clear means of addressing specific customer requests. One technique is to have an agreed upon percentage of product management and development resources to respond to requests from Sales. For example, 20% of the roadmap is set aside to be sales opportunity driven. Also, when new product functionality is needed to “close” a deal or keep a customer,
