Dealing With Many Products
I’m currently dealing with numerous products. On any given day, while I’m not responsible for all of them, I’m trying to think across four lines (or “suites” if you prefer), with a total of 11 products. Isn’t it confusing?
Not really.
Well, I’m still in “ramp-up” mode — learning the technology that drives each product is quite a task, especially when the architects are super, wicked, incredibly smart. It makes my head spin a little bit sometimes, but I’m getting to the core; the concepts / foundations that drive each of the products.
So, how have I decided to step in to this newly created job in a small company and attempt to “productize” and “manage” these products? By breaking them down. And…realizing that the majority of them don’t have a huge feature set. Some do, but there are several people at the company picking up slack, because they know the technical inner workings like I never will.
There’s trade-offs in fast productization in a small company. At least from what I’ve found. Do we need full product-by-product competitive analysis? Not yet, really. Complete brand-friendly 3-5 page positioning statements? Not from what I’ve seen.
Much of my attention is being focused on core activities. Making sure we have the right docs, data sheets that explain features & benefits, technical docs (since the majority of our products require technical know-how on the client side), and sales proposal copy.
I want to make sure Sales knows our product suites, the tech stack, and how our products can benefit prospects. Aside from knowing how much to charge, all the other things (positioning, pain point explanation, product demographics, etc…) will fall into place when they are needed.
I suppose the moral here is, when working quickly, make sure you know what you need to work on and why prior to starting the task.
