Publications
-
By John Mansour on July 19, 2022
White Paper: Product Portfolio Strategy
How It Drives a Chain Reaction of Success Across Product Management, Product Marketing, Sales & Customer Success In any team sport, the ultimate goal is to outscore every opponent and win the game. Every position on the team has a role in helping the team score or preventing opponents from scoring, but they have to […]
-
By John Mansour on July 18, 2022
Win-Loss Analysis: Effort vs. Results
Here are some general rules of thumb in the enterprise B2B space when it comes to win-loss analysis. No scientific data here, just many years of sales experience. When You Win The majority of your wins happen because: When You Lose Most deals are lost for the exact opposite reasons listed above. When the Product […]
-
By John Mansour on July 7, 2022
Metrics for Product Managers – The Only 3 You Should Care About
I’ve read a number of articles lately about suggested metrics for product managers, especially ones they should track for their products, and I’m absolutely mortified. It seems like the list of metrics keeps growing, only because we find new things that can be measured. But as the list gets longer, the metrics seem to have […]
-
By John Mansour on July 6, 2022
Can You Give Me an Overview of Your Product?
I’ll never forget it. This was the best product overview / demo I’ve ever been given. I paid twice as much as I intended and couldn’t have been happier. The moral of the story…product positioning is 80% buyer, 20% product. Before business backpacks were a thing, I was in the market for a new laptop […]
-
By John Mansour on June 23, 2022
PROS & CONS: Product Management and Product Marketing Reporting to the Same Executive
Let’s get the obvious out of the way right up front. If product management and product marketing are on the same page with complementary agendas, and both are executing well, reporting structures don’t matter. In some organizations though, that’s a BIG IF! It’s worth a look-see to examine the pros and cons of having product […]
-
By John Mansour on June 22, 2022
Proficientz Launches Product Management University for B2B
Three Dedicated Schools For Product Success & Career Growth ROCK HILL, SC (PRWEB) JUNE 22, 2022 Proficientz, Inc. announced today the launch of Product Management University for B2B with three dedicated schools: The School of Product Management The School of Product Marketing The School of Product Demos. Each school offers basic and advanced training programs accompanied […]
-
By John Mansour on May 19, 2022
VP of Product Marketing: Your 5-Point Plan for the First 100 Days
Congratulations! You’ve just landed your first VP of Product Marketing job and expectations are through the roof. No pressure! Here’s a 5-point plan for your first 100 days. The objective is to get you playing offense right out of the gate. The First Thing You’re NOT Going to Do! The first thing you’re NOT going […]
-
By John Mansour on May 9, 2022
Are You Just Building User Stories or Improving User Job Performance?
Let’s net it out on user stories! Your product has two goals: Goal #2 can’t be met without accomplishing goal #1. If you’re on board so far, pause your reading for a minute and go look at your backlog of user stories. I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that 95% or more of your […]
-
By John Mansour on May 4, 2022
Web-Based Demos Are Grounding You on This One Thing
In the enterprise B2B space, it’s hard to imagine a world where discovery calls and sales demos aren’t done via web meeting. Web-based demos are here to stay! If you’re in a sales engineer, picture this…3-4 cities a week, all the planes, trains, automobiles and hotels you can take. And this… one demo a day, […]
-
By John Mansour on April 13, 2022
You’re Trying to Sell Value. Buyers Want to Talk Product.
As a salesperson, it gets beat into your head in every pipeline review, every team meeting and every sales training session. Sell value, not features! Then comes demo day on your next opportunity and you’ve got the value pitch all teed up, except your audience wants to talk product. It’s 20-questions as soon as the […]