Six Essential Skills Every New Product Manager Must Master

In this fast-moving and technologically advancing world, companies need to continuously create new products/services to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers. A product manager plays a crucial role here.

What does a Product Manager do?

To ensure the product meets and exceeds customer expectations and the business remains competitive, a product manager is expected to deeply understand the industry and customer preferences and then come up with a strategy to solve customer problems in a differentiated way.
A product manager develops a strategy and vision for a product/service, liaises with teams from other departments to achieve the vision, and defines the product’s roadmap, strategy, and features to meet the end-users’ requirements and needs. As a matter of fact, a product manager handles all the processes required for conceptualizing, developing, marketing, and maintaining the lifecycle of a product/service.

What are the important skills every product manager should have?

To rise to the top 10 percent of the crowd in product management, you must exhibit, or be willing to develop, the following six skills over time. 

Skill 1: A knack for problem-solving

The primary reason companies make a new product or refine an existing one is to find a solution to the problem their customers are confronting. As a product manager, you must demonstrate that you have a knack for problem-solving. One of your duties is to define the use of your product and match that with your customer personas to be sure you are targeting the right consumers. More importantly, you should be able to come up with real solutions to the problems that customers need help with. In some circumstances, it may require adding new features to the existing product so as to enhance its performance or create an entirely new product. 
Good problem-solving skills will help you understand your customer problems, create products that will help solve them, and make strategic decisions for the course of action you need to take to develop and launch such a product. 

Skill 2: A general understanding of the product design and development

It is imperative that you familiarize yourself with the product design and development processes. This doesn’t mean that you are required to study product design at the university before you can become a product manager, but you will certainly benefit from some rudimentary knowledge about product research, solution ideation, market research, competition research, product development, launch, and marketing. You may need to learn more about these processes throughout your career, but it pays to have an idea of how they work. 

Skill 3: Business acumen and strategic thinking

Having an MBA can be of advantage in developing your business and strategic thinking, but it is not a compulsory prerequisite for becoming a product manager. At the barest minimum, you must show that you fully understand the benefits of creating a new product or improving the existing ones to your organization. You want to ensure that your organization’s goals or visions are in alignment with the product(s) you are managing. In case of strategic thinking, you must be able to come up with great ideas or suggestions aimed at advancing the objectives of your organization, organize meetings, and hold sensible discussions about the opportunities your organization should take advantage of. You should be able to identify the right stakeholders that can be included in managing a product lifecycle and outline the most appropriate procedures for designing, developing, launching, and marketing the product.  

Skill 4:The ability to analyze and interpret data

A lot of data is generated in the course of managing a product lifecycle. Hence, it is your responsibility to properly analyze the data and interpret it in a simple, logical, and understandable way so that everyone can grasp the outcome of your research and work. If you are a tech product manager, there is a possibility that some of the people you will be working with might be non-technical, and it becomes your duty to simplify everything for them. Most executives cannot interpret data. As a product manager, it is your job to make sure that they understand everything. 

Skill 5: Excellent interpersonal skills

Product management is a team-based field which indicates that you will be required to work with many professionals from various departments. As a product manager, you will be liaising with members of sales, marketing, legal, engineering, manufacturing, HR, procurement, distribution teams, and some external stakeholders. So, you must exhibit great ability to manage interpersonal relationships. You should also be able to communicate your ideas clearly to others and display a nature of resiliency and compromise. Most of the time, to get your job done, you will be required to negotiate with others and seek some consensus. You need those people’s support to be able to successfully carry out your duty as a product manager.

Skill 6: Customer empathy

Last but not least is customer empathy. In fact, it is the most important attribute every product manager should embody. Being sympathetic with your organization’s customers means that you will carefully consider their pain points, champion the development of products/services that will help them overcome their problems, and work with them to see that they derive maximum satisfaction from using those products/services.