Jeff Chow

As B2B products have evolved to be much more customer centric and "consumer grade" the expectations of product management are largely the same and infact, a lot of consumer PMs are finding great success in B2B by bringing their techniques and experience and applying them to B2B. You may have heard the term "product led growth" in many SaaS businesses. In reality this just translates to a consumer principle of product/market fit and validation through organic growth vs. a traditional enterprise top down / RFP process play. For PMs - one big difference in B2B is customer specific revenue is a new dimension to product prioritization. You are often faced with prioritizing a single feature request that is tied to a large customer with a large revenue footprint but that feature may overall rank lower in total customer impact. So B2B PMs often have to reconcile the tension between driving near term revenue vs. broad feature impact.

The great news is Product is still a growing and evolving function and there are tons of opportunities and an appetite to look at non traditional career paths into product. In fact in most organizations that I've been part of, there are many people wearing the 'product hat' who dont have the PM title. What I look for * Have worked with a product team: This isn't a necessity, but whether you're in QA, Support, Marketing, if you actually work with product you have a realistic view of what a PM's day to day is. I've found those who have not have a bit of a idealized view of what a PM's day to day is usually are shocked with the chaos and intensity that comes with the role. * Great problem solving: This can be exhibited in any other role, but if you are a able to work a problem into solvable chunks and not just jump into solutioning, you have the right mindset to be a PM * Culture Carrier: So much of being a PM is to help teams coalesce and work better together to be excited to solve problems together. Generally those who have a natural skill to bring people together make great PMs * Growth Mindset: People who have a great growth mindset are setup really well in the PM role as no PM role is the same, being adaptable, self reflective and looking at constant personal improvement are key indicators for success * A passion for products: There's a certain type of person that is quick to see the nuances and changes of a product they use or are passionate about. Those that are passionate about the products they use, notice the tweaks, question the whys of it already are on their way to building the product muscle. One last piece of advice is to look for an internal role. A lot of the traits above are not so easily conveyed in an interview (and def not a resume!). I've hired some of the very best product leaders from internal transfers including from Marketing, QA and Support and seeing that person in action and displaying the above traits has made all the difference in the world.

As I mentioned in the past question, B2B PM's are very good at the nuances of product priortiization given the additional dimensions coming from larger more influential customers. The healthy tension of near term revenue vs. overall growth truly helps a PM be stronger at prioritization. Related, many B2B PMs are very well versed at listening to the customer. This may be sitting in on a sales or customer success call or just hearing from account teams specific feature requests from customers. Often times consumer product deals with large audiences where you can lose sight of the actual user vs. the large numbers or overly rely on synthesized insights from research. B2B PMs also have a lot more practice internally to work on communication. Translating features for sales and customer success every day helps hone communication skills and how you have to adapt to different audiences and contexts. To be clear, all of these skills (prioritization, customer centricity, communication) are a necessity for a Consumer PM to succeed, but I've found that in the B2B space there's a more natural path to honing those skills.

In the past, many successful consumer products could be successful by executing off of a single approach. You may have been an SEO driven org that was ok with an inferior UX but converted really well. You could be a high UX driven org where word of mouth spread based on the quality of the product, but the growth funnels may have been less optimized. Now the consumer expectations are so high and the competition of mindshare is so intense that you do have to stick the landing and adopt the full suite of approaches right out of the gate to drive consumer adoption. This includes a deeper blend of metrics based growth drivers, intuition based vision, ux forward customer centricity. What has stayed constant is not having to release all of the features at once, you can have a thoughtful simple product to market but the experience, critical user journeys and growth flywheels have to be really thought out. Based on that some things that are happening within expectations of the Product Team * Organizations are embracing product as team of varying skillsets - no longer are there just generalists, but more of a focus on what a PM's particular strenghts are (are you data centric, ux centrc etc). And more importantly how do you complement each unique skillset with another PM such that the product org is well rounded. This is demanding some level of self awareness of PMs to assess where their passions and strengths are. (note: even strong generalists have a secret strength and passion!) * PM as pace setter and team builder. Thankfully we're moving away from Product as the all knowing decider of everything and instead focusing on the PM as a team builder and pace setter. Building great product is a team sport and everyone has to contribute their special skills to making the magic happen. PMs are being asked to really be adept at bringing people together, communicating clearly the problems to solve and fostering an environment of collaboration to solve those problems. The tension here is PMs are also pace setters so being able balance decisioning and fostering an inclusive collaborative environment is the true skill

There are really 3 types of consumer companies * The bigs: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Airbnb, Spotify etc - these are mega corporations that have achieved product market fit and are now monetizing at an incredible scale. In general their orgs are huge, processes are locked in, and PMs have very thin surface areas to work on and usually there is limited innovation vs optimization opportunities. But you are also working on products that literally touch hundreds of millions of users daily. * Hyper scale companies: these are companies that have found product market fit AND have achieved escape velocity meaning users are adopting their solution and there is exponential growth. Consumers are very fickle and building the best mouse trap doesnt mean you will succeed. So often times, it's not clear how consumers chose this company but when they do it's rare and growth is astronomical. In these cases, hyperscale companies are VERY messy and growing pains are very real. Re-orgs are constant, quick shifts in resources are there and usually there's challenges with leadership growing from hands on to scaled communicators that lead to growing pains. But the energy and excitement and sense of team is undeniable. Also for the PM its a rare opportunity of being able to constantly revisit all aspects of your skills (people leadership, process shifts, product strategy) while having the opportunity to drive major growth within an org. * Product/Market Fit seekers: These are orgs that have yet to achieve either a product market fit or a growth flywheel. The organizations are generally smaller, you are working more closely together, process usually will not get in the way and PMs own very large aspects of the product but there's no guarantee even if you execute flawlessly that the product will succeed (see fickle consumers!). So companies at this stage tend to pivot more often, have large tensions on how long you give a specific strategies a chance if the metrics arent showing growth. Advice I typically give to PMs exploring new opportunities, especially in the consumer space * Understand where you want to grow as a PM. Depending on that, all stages of a company offer big opportunities. But you first have to be honest with yourself at what skills you're looking to hone * Understand what energizes you. Consumer is a great opportunity to build things you'd love to use. In product market fit seeking org, this is especially important as you are still trying to find your way so being passionate about the mission or product is key to unlock the solution. * Is it clear which stage this company is in. More often than not, I see PMs assume the consumer company is at hyper scale, but is actually still searching for product market fit and growth flywheels. Make sure you ask the right questions to undersand where they're truly at. * Level of work/life balance. this again is a personal choice, but you do need to be honest with yourself how much you want to give to this company. Some people thrive in highly intense, give it your all, enviornments (where a hyper scale or product market fit seeking company would work great), others want more structure and rhythm to their days (where the bigs can offer consistency and less chaos). Theres no wrong answer, just right fit. Note I didn't mention comp or equity. This usually is the first thing people think of and is 100% a valid quesiton, but I've found over my career, the best outcomes I've had was more aligned to my growth, understanding what I needed from an org at that point in my career vs just joining the next 'rocketship'

From a career ladder perspective, the typical career path is * PM/Senior PM working within a specific team and demonstrating ability to execute, deliver and prioritize * Group PM managing multiple Product Managers and their respective teams usually driven by an expansion of remit / impact area * Director/Sr. Director Representing product stragegy and roadmap and influencing decisions at the peer and executive level * VP+ owning full product or business lines, accountable for key metrics Generally your career growth in Product is very closely aligned to the size of business impact. As your impact grows, so do the size of your team to deliver on that impact and the key strategic muscle to prioritize and deliver on that impact. A typical consumer path is generally surface ownership expansion. As you grow your career, the more of the product (and thus impact) you own. An example would be on a classic core experience team, you may start owning search as a PM, then own Search and Navigation as a GPM with ~2 teams below you, to ulitmately owning the full core experience (Search, Nav, Home etc). Within this growth, you typically grow your team and also go from owning a single clearly defined metric that is easily measureable to a metric more closely aligned to the companies top line KPI but can be more difficult to measure direct impact. There are also specialized cases like AI/ML work for personalization and recommendation engines where you can grow your career but your surface ownership stays the same, but the business impact grows.

In general, all PMs are responsible for impact and pace of execution for their area. As you grow in career, the size of impact and area of focus expands, but the same goals are true. The difference being as your remit grows, you are now expanding to running multiple teams and working with broader stakeholders. For those going up for director, that means a couple things: * People leadership: Is your team executing well through good product prioritization and impactful delivery. This is displayed through a balance of mentorship of your Product Managers as well as partnerships with your design and engineering peers. * Are you as a leader clearing a path for your teams success: Part of setting pace is being quick to triage competing priorities and identifying any impediments in the path to your teams success. A big part of that is clearly representing the work to various stakeholders (executives, other product teams etc). * Does the broader organization understand the goals and impact your area is focused on. This is key to making sure your teams focus is aligned with the broader organization usually represented through articulating the overall strategy and goals of the group to other product teams or leadership. The single trait that seems like one that differentiates a Director skill from a GPM or Senior PM skill is your ability as a communicator. At Director, you are not just articulating the why and what to your design and engineering partners and Product reports, but you are more often doing the same to other areas of the org and most importantly articulating that to stakeholders beyond your immediate manager (be it a VP, CPO etc). The output of this is a better understanding of your groups vision and direction, how that ties to your specific areas of focus and all the way down to empowering your teams to more deeply understand their purpose and often times key tradeoffs being made.

One key skill gap that is quickly closing but still exists is the ability to creatively solve holistic problems for customers. The challenge is B2B PMs often times work so closely with customers that its hard to resist just building exactly what the customer is asking for. The challenge is products become unweidly w/o having a POV on how to syntesize multiple asks into thematic areas and then creatively solve those problems so the product can scale. What I've found is the breakdown is not on the PM's creative problem solving skills but instead * Creative collaboration: PMs need to foster a creative collaborative environment with their Eng and Design partners to embrace the up front customer problem and truly try to solve those problems together vs. just delivering the literal ask. * Thinking at-scale: Consumer PMs because they are focused on growing user numbers to astronomical heights tend to always think at scale. B2B PM's with a clearer line of sight to near term revenue or growth goals, often times dont naturally prioritize higher investments in growth.