Are your customers super humans - yet?
Here is a simple formula I have observed in successful utility products. Physical products as well as tech. My thinking originates from the basic concept of gaming even though I am not a gamer and have played maybe 2-3 video games growing up.
You (Game character) + Superpower = Extra “life”
Remember this game? Super Mario Bro. Game from the 90s.
Basically, The theme of this game is that as soon as Mario eats a mushroom, he gains a “superpower” and gets extra “life” to continue on in the game. You get additional super powers as you make progress in levels.
This similar concept is so very true for successful products, the ones we use on a day-to-day basis, that help us solve our needs.
Human + Super Power (thru a product) = Super Human
This morning while I am writing this post, I started looking at my phone to see my long-term use apps that I have to have on my phone and asked myself why?
Each time, each one of the apps, solved a particular need. These apps give me “superpowers”.
For example:
👉Calendly - the ease at which you can simply just send a link and allow someone to book time on your calendar. Without it, I’d have to go thru so much back and forth of finding the best time for both parties.
👉Venmo App: the ease of sending money! even small businesses have started accepting Venmo payments.
👉Calm App: the morning 10- minute guided meditation sessions. Being able to sit quietly in peace.
👉Canva app: Since I design the visuals for the Product Career Instagram page. the simplicity and ease of using the mobile app, editing the visuals, and switching to desktop.
These are just a few examples of apps that become part of our day-to-day.
Why do products become part of our day-to-day?
…because they give us superpowers!
As product managers, our job is to give these “superpowers” to our customers thru products and features, so it makes their lives easy.
Being “voice-of the customer” and understanding what your customers need and, be able to draft a narrative, and then influencing the stakeholders and engineers what to build and why to build – is really the essence of PM-ing.
Being a creator now, and creating PM/tech career content, I think a lot about how my content can help you “unblock” from your current state and help you get to the next steps. I apply similar thinking when creating content.
Another example:
👉Twitter recently launched a feature “super follow” that allows creators to monetize their content. people who are dedicated use the platform and generate a lot of content had to previously use the Twitter platform, only as a “top of the funnel” strategy and then take their audience to a secondary medium to get paid (such as a paid, community, newsletter, courses, other digital products, etc)
Now creators can get paid just for creating content on Twitter.
and Instagram followed — they are currently testing this feature, and have to launch to just top few creators.
This was a real problem that needed solving.
At the core, of it — a PM’s job is to identify these opportunities, find a solution and then influence teams to build.
Any product that can save its customers — time, money, effort and/or increase happiness quotient for your customers, will find its product-market fit.
What is your product’s superpower?
Does it make your customers superhumans?
👉How do you identify new features or product opportunities as a product manager?
✅ Very obvious first one is — Talk to your customers directly if you have access.
A popular quote from Steve Jobs goes like this: “Some people say to give the customers what they want, but that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.”
Talking to the customers doesn't necessarily mean asking what they want - it is to in fact understand their problems.
If you ask customers what they want, their response will likely be around what already exists in the market which may or may not be a good solution, so instead dig deeper into the challenges they are facing.
✅ Talk to the people, who talk to the customers (if you don’t have direct access to the customers.) These would be your sales, and customer success teams.
✅ Look at the data
Learn how to build hypotheses based on your data.
🔵 For aspiring PMs - PRO TIP - learn SQL and interpreting analytics. - Honing your data analytics skills can go long way and help you break into PM too.
✅ Chat with your cross-functional teammates - More often than not your team will have ideas and things they see in the product that can be improved.
✅ Use the product - Be the superuser of the product. Find gaps!
✍️Every product has 4 areas, I call it DOIC
D — Discovery - how do people find out about the product?
O — Onboarding - Once someone lands on your product’s landing page, who do you enable them to start using the product so that they can potentially become your customer?
💯 Cue - many products use a freemium model where they let you try the product for couple weeks for free.
I —In-App Experience - once the lead, has signed up to use your product, what is their experience like when using the product?
🔵 PRO-TIP - you can learn using tools like Hotjar to analyze how your customer is using the product.
C — Customer service - once a lead becomes your customer, how do you then continue to service them and retain them.
✅ Attend conferences that are relevant to your domain to stray up-date on best practices and learn deeply about your domain.
✅ Subscribe to niche material - With the rise of independent writing, you can subscribe to niche material and learn from industry experts and hence broaden your thinking horizon.
Hope you enjoyed today’s mini-training!
See you next Monday!
-Nazuk
I am experimenting with some free-flow writing every Monday and sharing my thoughts and learnings from my day-to-day work as a working PM. Feel free to connect with me on social media or write back to me with your thoughts. Would love to hear from you.