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

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 product manager, I think it is extremely difficult to coach someone to care about the customer or to communicate better. Product managers need to AT LEAST have customer focus, basic communication skills, and a passion to learn and solve problems to be able to succeed in product management.

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 different for different companies, but some examples are: * Is the company aligned on the customer target - i.e. is the product team building for the same customer to sales team is going after? * Is the onboarding process self serve enough or is it too burdensome on the CX team to implement everything? * What is the impact of the product quality on the support teams? * Is the product fulfilling the competitive differentiation that the marketing and strategy teams are seeing as the largest opportunity? The main hard skills that are required for Product Leadership are: * Product strategy * Product vision * Organizational structure * Team building / PM hiring * Ability to learn the market * Business/Data fluency * Goal setting Nice to haves hard skills are: * Basic understanding of UX, tech, analytics tools the company uses * Deep market expertise Soft Skills: I would argue that soft skills are a non-negotiable skill set for PMs at every level. This is because PMs cannot complete anything alone. The main thing that changes as you move up in product leadership is the sphere of influence you have or are expected to have. The main soft skills that are required for Product Leadership are: * Communication * Empathy * Ability to influence others * People management Nice to have soft skills are: * Storytelling * Ability to motivate and inspire teams * Public speaking GREAT product leaders have both the must haves and nice to haves. However, there are some product leaders that are not great public speakers or didn't start the role with deep market expertise and are able to be successful.

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 this product/experience?" This is an important question to think through no matter what type of product role you are in. Ultimately it helps ground you in what value or impact you want to deliver to the customer - which is critical for internal customers and external customers. If you think about some of the key metrics that PMs are usually using in analytics: * Conversion * Adoption * Engagement * Retention These metrics can help you understand "what" is happening and help to pinpoint problem areas. UX and UX research is usually much better at helping you understand the "why" of what is happening. And once you find an area you want to address, often times UX is one of the key levers that you have to address the problem. While most PMs are working directly with a UX partner, it is important for PMs to: (1) Deeply understand the UX of their product (2) Have a basic understanding of key UX concepts (brand and style guide, grids and layouts, design system, navigation patterns, negative space, accessibility) These two skill sets will help ensure UX gets the attention and prioritization it deserves, as well as improve your relationship with your UX partners. One great example of this was when we worked on WordPress onboarding at GoDaddy. We used analytics to see that only a small percentage of customers who purchased the Managed WordPress product ever got visitors to their website. Once we understood the analytics and saw where the problems were, we had to find out why. We started with UX research and saw that many customers couldn't figure out how to get a template installed. We then worked with the UX team to design an onboarding that brought template installation to the front of the flow - and made it very visual so customers could find a template they liked. Then we worked with engineering to build it. In this example, the analytical skills were valuable however, they only got us part of the way. UX helped us close the gap to know what to fix and how to solve the customer problem.

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 higher brand trust - one of the key ways to drive long term business value. Communication: In my experience, 90% of the challenges I face at work (and probably at home!) come back to communication. Communication is key in planning, expectation setting, alignment, strategy, process, and so on. From finance to customer service to product to engineering - ensuring there is alignment and expectations are set - is key to a high functioning team. All of this is dependent on high quality communication. Collaboration: Product managers know collaboration well - since they cannot deliver a product or customer value without their partners in design, engineering, and so on. Their success is 100% dependent on their ability to work with others to deliver a unified product experience. While this is true for product managers, it is true for most roles. if you have employees at your company, that means there is a group of people trying to get something done together. And without collaboration skills, this becomes much harder.

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 place of motivation and inspiration, their work is just BETTER. In Marty Cagan's book Inspired he discusses the concepts of missionaries vs. mercenaries. Mercenaries build whatever they're told to build. Missionaries are true believers in the vision and are committed to solving problems for their customers. Storytelling is one of the best tools for turning Mercenaries into Missionaries.

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 your employee * Have regular discussions with your employee so they know that you understand what they need and are working to deliver on it on a regular basis. * Step 3: Document the plan and progress * You should have a documented development plan with your employee for a few reasons. * You want them to know that you understand what they need and working to deliver it. * You can set expectations with them on what they need to do to deliver it. * Writing it down makes it feel real * You can track and document progress and show momentum. If the employee wants something that is not possible for you to deliver, try to see what other motivators they may have. Maybe they say the only thing they need is $$ and you have no budget. You could discuss with them the option to learn a new skill or expand their scope - which may be helpful on their resume at a later date. You have to assume most high performers are not going to stay at one company forever, so helping them plan their career for when they do move on, is one way you can help retain them for longer in the short term. Some employees may not be entirely open about their motivations. One example of this is money motivation. I have seen many times that people say they are not motivated by money (because they truly are motivated by other things as well), but then get a much higher offer somewhere else and can't say no. I ALWAYS have total compensation discussions with my employees even if they say they are not motivated by money. It is a good way to show your employees that you value them - even when you can't always immediately change their pay. Top Employee Motivators Below are the top motivators in my career. It may be helpful to discuss multiple motivators with your employees so you have more levers to help them stay. * Pay * Base salary * Stock * Bonus * Learning * New product * New market * New function * New level * Growth * New title * Larger scope * Management opportunities * Safety * Job security * Predictability * Consistency * FUN * Like the people they work with * Like their manager * Like the company culture * Mission * Feel passion for the company mission * Feel passion for the customers

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-skills that are critical for each area: * Product Execution * Ability to drive product execution to deliver high quality products to customers. Requires strong project management skills and a focus on partnership for eng planning, dependency mapping, and risk mitigation. Requires ability to manage execution through the product lifecycle from discovery, definition, and scoping, through execution, long range improvement and partnering with GTM, CX and others for effective launches. * Customer Insights * Ability to discover, analyze, and translate customer insights (customers interviews, research, voice of the customer, customer data, etc); into actionable plans, establishing continuous customer feedback loops all the way through measuring customer satisfaction (qual) post launch. * Data Driven Decision Making * Ability to design and execute roadmaps, experiments and decisions that map to and drive customer and business outcomes based on usage data and customer behavior using product analytics techniques. * Influencing Others * Ability to lead cross-functional development teams, manage stakeholder alignment and expectations, resolve conflicts and dependencies and collaborate effectively. * Product Strategy * Ability to define goals and OKRs. Ability to conduct opportunity identification and sizing, market & competitive research, financial modeling, building business case for new features and products, identify and deliver business outcomes. All of these areas include both hard and soft skills. However, influencing others and product execution have the highest focus area for soft skills as they require lots of storytelling, communication, and collaboration to be effective.

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 learn: * The product * The culture * The problems that people perceive need to be addressed * The customer * The business * The market Research & Optionality After about 30 days - and usually between 50-100 interviews around the company - you can get a pretty good idea of where you want to focus. Once you have some rough ideas of the focus areas, you can start to move into more targeted research. When I am doing a product vision, I usually have 4 main research focus areas: * Market opportunity (TAM, competitors, differentiators) * Customer target (who exactly is this vision for) * Product value prop (what is the key value of the product in the vision) * Product execution (understand what needs to change in the product to achieve this value prop) I start with looking into existing research the company has already done, then usually try to do at least 2 new research studies (1) Existing customer interviews, (2) Prospect customer quant survey, and if possible (3) Market / expert interviews. One I get through the initial research, I start to develop the options that we have. Then use the research to help me understand which option i want to recommend. Draft & Edit I then draft the options and the recommendations with supporting evidence from the research. For vision work, I like to work with design to have some visual elements to make the vision more tangible. Then I share the work as early as possible in draft form with key stakeholders. This helps to make sure that people have a chance to feel like part of the process, as well as get their expert opinions. I make edits to incorporate their feedback where it makes sense. Share Once I have edited the vision with feedback and updates (this helps with the alignment process) - I share with stakeholders in order of importance. By importance, I mean in order of importance to the next step of the sharing. I would start with CEO, then executives, then product and eng leadership, the revenue leadership, then managers, then the company. And check at each stage how the reaction is before moving to the next phase. Then repeat and make the vision as visible and connected to the work as possible. This helps to ensure the vision doesn't just go into a drawer and not have any impact. You want people thinking about the vision on a regular basis. Some ways to do this are: Start every all hands with a slide on it, ask people how their product plans will help reach the vision, set goals that are related to the vision, use the same language from the vision in product initiatives.