Propositions Product Management Journal

Issue 2 of our Product Management Journal focuses on Propositions.

It’s part of a series of Journals that provide articles, insights and best practice to help product managers and product marketers with technology-based products. All are available here.

Why should I buy from you?

If a customer asks this question are you confident that you have a convincing answer?

The answer is your proposition – a clear statement of the benefits a customer gets from your ‘complete’ solution – not just the product features.

The journal contains 5 articles to help you build sharper propositions that really work.

Developing a Proposition

If you’re not sure where to start our 3-step guide can help.

A proposition should be a clear statement of the benefits a specific group of customers gets from your solution. It should focus on how the benefits address what customers really want and what differentiates you from the competition.

Persona profiling

Personas are made-up profiles of characters that represent the people that buy or use your product.

Using Personas is a powerful tool for ‘getting under the skin’ of customers to really understand what they value. They can help get everyone in your business aligned and help answer questions about which features to develop and how to market to customers. You may even hear your team making comments like “Picky Penelope wouldn’t like that, but Enthusiastic Ed would love this approach” when teams begin to live them.

This article explains the basics of personas.

Thinking big

This article discusses developing propositions for big-ticket items. These are large expensive products, usually sold to other businesses, that often require custom/bespoke work to make the sale.

Handling the complexity of project delivery and understanding the value of your proposition is a big challenge for product managers with these types of products.

Listen and learn

It should come as no surprise that getting high-quality insights about your customers and the market is vital to create good propositions. But getting real and high-quality insights can be hard. Establishing a range of ‘listening posts’ is one very effective way.

There are many types of listening posts, ranging from your sales force to trade shows, industry forums, and customer visits. Every one of these has the potential to provide valuable insights. But all have a different level of cost associated with them and variable credibility.

Read the article to learn more or see our blog on listening posts.

Insight: The power of a proposition

In many product management jobs, it may not be clear who owns the proposition for your product and it’s easy to get distracted by firefighting and day-to-day issues.

However, someone must own the proposition for a product.

This insight talks about how owning the proposition is a very powerful position in any business – one we think product managers should actively embrace.

Read the Journal

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