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What do product managers get wrong about product differentiation?

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3 Answers
  1. Lizzy Masotta
    Lizzy Masotta

    Shopify Senior Product Lead | Formerly Salesforce, Google, Nest, Cisco Systems • 4y

    The most common mistake is to not think about it at all. It can be so challenging to get a product built and shipped at your company that Product Managers naturally become very internally focused. They have dependencies to manage across other teams, they have timeline pressure from leadership, there are technical challenges to work around, etc. On top of it all, most Product Managers don’t engage their Product Marketing counterpart until they are almost done building the thing. This should be av ...Read More

    1,399 Views
  2. Kara Gillis
    Kara Gillis

    Cortex VP of Product | Formerly Splunk, Deloitte • 4y

    Product differentiation != new features.

    New features can enhance differentiation, but these are not the same thing. For example, product differentiation can be predominantly delivered in the go-to-market if a product's "see-try-buy" motion is just inherently better than everything else available. The differentiation there is in the trial experience and ease of transaction - not necessarily in the latest feature.

    578 Views
  3. Preethy Vaidyanathan

    Matterport VP of Product • 3y

    Differentiation is not just a product team responsibility. However, as a product manager, you can help connect the dots from product differentiation to customer adoption and business value. Product feature differentiation is the internal metric. As a product manager, you focus on competitor feature matrix tables, technical deep-dives, SWOT analysis and more. However, the external more important metric is customer focus and sustained business value. Focus on differentiated features that drive cus ...Read More

    465 Views

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