Creating a leading market company involves many factors, but at the core are the products, making product management essential for market leadership.
While everyone knows the basic roles of product management, there are key responsibilities in B2B product management that often go unnoticed. These responsibilities don’t typically fall under any other discipline, which creates a significant gap.
Before diving into these lesser-known responsibilities, let’s explore opportunities for product management teams to take a more prominent leadership role within an organization.
Developing a Market-Focused Product Management Discipline
The term “market” can be ambiguous. For some product managers, it means users, while for senior product executives, it refers to vertical or horizontal market segments. It can also mean user or buyer personas or customer departments like IT or HR. Here, we define markets as market segments, which are ways companies describe themselves, like being a retailer or a small business.
Most product organizations today are structured around products alone. This means if you have ten products targeting the same market segments, each product team views these segments differently, usually from a narrower perspective focused on user jobs rather than a strategic view of the customer organization.
To create a market-facing product management team, you should structure it so that 20% of its members act as market owners, similar to industry analysts for your market segments without direct product responsibilities. The remaining 80% should function in traditional product manager roles focused on products and users. This structure strengthens leadership by ensuring a more cohesive understanding of market dynamics.
Leading in Market and Customer Knowledge
The strategies of your target customers are influenced by their industry dynamics and current technology trends. Product management teams need to be the most knowledgeable about these aspects because they impact all product decisions, from strategic investments to the details in your sprint backlogs.
Gathering comprehensive market knowledge, including industry dynamics and customer strategies, can’t fall on every individual product manager, as this would result in fragmented views. Instead, the market owners in your product management team gather and share this knowledge, educating the entire team to ensure a unified understanding of the markets. This approach connects high-level business priorities with user needs and product requirements, ensuring everything built aligns with measurable customer outcomes.
Merging Company Strategy with Portfolio/Product Strategy
Clear differentiation between company goals and company strategy is crucial. For example, aiming to become a $1 billion company is a financial goal, not a strategy. Entering adjacent markets through acquisitions and product expansion is a strategic initiative supporting that goal.
There’s often a disconnect between company strategy and portfolio strategy because they speak different languages. However, there should be a natural alignment. The company’s financial goals define what you want to achieve. The strategic initiatives outline the first steps on how to get there. Following that, the portfolio strategy identifies the market segments and business solutions needed to meet these goals, and finally, the product solutions required for customer success.
The Chain Reaction of Success
When product management effectively integrates market knowledge, company strategy, and customer needs, it sets the foundation for the entire organization’s success. This alignment ensures that all departments—marketing, sales, customer experience—are working towards common goals. Customer success teams, for example, need to understand what customers are trying to achieve, the obstacles they face, and how to measure success to help configure products that meet these needs.
During the sales process, understanding the customer’s business goals and challenges helps in positioning, product demos, and negotiations, ultimately increasing win rates. Product marketing must convey the product’s value clearly to generate demand, while product design and engineering benefit from clear definitions of customer outcomes and obstacles.
The Essential Role of Product Management
If product management doesn’t lead, the company’s growth trajectory becomes inconsistent. When product management takes ownership of defining market segments and aligning product strategies, it results in predictable growth. Consistent and strategic product management practices create a foundation for success across the organization, from building and marketing products to selling and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Ultimately, product management is crucial for achieving and sustaining market leadership by ensuring that all aspects of product development and customer engagement are strategically aligned to deliver consistent value and growth.