AMA: BILL Senior Director of Product Management, Tara Wellington on Product Management Skills

Product management skills are a little tough to nail down, because unlike engineering or design, there is not one set of skills that work for all product managers. Product management needs can be different by industry, company, organization, teams, etc. However, there are 5 key skill categories that I have seen be consistent across most PM roles - product execution, customer insights, data-driven decision making, influencing others, product strategy. At BILL we define these 5 key areas with sub- ...Read More

Retaining good talent can be hard - especially when your budget is tight and competitors are able to offer your PMs more money and new experiences where they can learn. In order to retain good talent there are 3 key steps you need to take for EVERY employee on your team. Step 1: Understand what motivates your employee Not all employees want the same thing or need the same thing in a job. This also may change for an employee overtime. Step 2: Discuss how you can deliver on this motivation with yo ...Read More

If you had to only have one, I think it is easier to have soft skills and then learn the hard skills. I have done a lot of hiring for product managers both out of college and out of customer service who did not have any hard product skills. What they did have was: Empathy Customer focus Communication Passion Focus Curiosity If a potential hire has all of these things, I can teach them the practice of product management. However, if a candidate has none of these things, but is a very technical pr ...Read More

The process that I go through when setting a vision when I join a new company is: Listen & Learn Research & Optionality Draft & Edit Share Listen & Learn It is very hard to write a product vision with no context. When I start at a new company, I try not to make any decisions for 30 days. I start by doing a listening tour around the company. I ask everyone the same set of questions - and always finish with "who else do you think I should talk to?" The goal of this 30 days is to le ...Read More

Product leadership is a delicate mix between hard and soft skills - and soft skills are required in any leadership position. Hard Skills: The further you move up the management chain in product, the more the hard skills move from being just product management skills to more general management skills. When you are leading product teams you can't just think about the product or your specific area. You have to think about how the product fits into the ecosystem of the company. This can look differe ...Read More

Storytelling. Communication is a prerequisite for any PM, but storytelling is communication with impact at its core. When you move from just communication into storytelling, you move from sharing information to inspiring, motivating, influencing, and activating your audience. For PMs, they need to be able to: Influence Activate Motivate Inspire This is how PMs deliver high quality products. PMs can't deliver value alone - they need their team to deliver. And when teams are delivering from a plac ...Read More

The role that UX plays in product management can vary depending on what type of PM role you are in. If you are working on a platform team building ML models or a growth team dedicated to pricing, the role of UX may not be as prominent as it would be if you are on a feature or workflow team. However, I would argue that it is always a key skill that PMs need in any role - and is just as important as analytic skills. Behind UX is ultimately the question, "How is the customer going to interact with ...Read More

There are 3 main skills that product managers are known for that I think ALL members of an organization can benefit from: Customer empathy Communication Collaboration Customer Empathy: While this is a key skill all product managers should have - it is something that EVERYONE in the organization can benefit from. Ensuring that the company is thinking about the customer from all directions translates into a more customer centric company. And solving for the customer almost always translates into h ...Read More