Average Salary: $124,895 (US) Senior Product Manager roles differer from company to company, and depending on what type of products they’re working with. Today, there are a multitude of new roles that encompass broader responsibilities and get product managers and marketers out of the day-to-day grind. Here’s how to use this doc and get the most out of it: Review the competencies and expectations for your level and (at least) the level above yours Search 71,818 available Product Manager jobs at Product Manager with Ladders. Essentially, they’re all the same. Generally, a Senior Product Manager will manage a group of products rather than just one, which means overseeing several Product Managers. For example, if you’re going to help car rental companies compete with the likes of Uber and Lyft, it’s your responsibility is to identify the obstacles have to be eliminated (for the renter and the car rental company) to create a similar customer experience. Your job is simply to figure out how the car rental companies plan to solve it and why, and educate the surrogate users (and all other disciplines) to ensure the relevant products in your portfolio are properly aimed. But if you’re targeting utilities owned by cities and municipalities, the end game is public perception and transparency. A good product manager takes initiative. I n an earlier newsletter, I wrote about product management career paths and why we should create opportunities for PMs who don’t necessarily want to become senior managers. Sales manager. Product Manager expectations by level These are the key areas of performance that are most important to product manager roles at Intercom along with the competencies and expectations for each. It’s just as valuable to healthcare providers as it is to retailers and banks.”. This is because you need to cultivate the ability to think independently, lead by example, effectively analyze complex, interdependent factors, and develop a sense of accountability on serious decisions. Product vs. managerial career paths. One of the most important factors in moving up the product manager career ladder is the ability to manage people. Before you answer the question, consider the following: If you’re targeting investor-owned utilities, the name of the game is ultimately financial return to shareholders. Being detailed oriented with the desire to deliver as well as knowing what is the next thing you should work on (prioritization) are key. The role is part entrepreneurial and part general management, and individuals who prefer to operate with a high degree of responsibility and independence enjoy working in this position a great deal. A key factor in moving up the product manager career ladder is how you manage people. Look for ways to demonstrate product leader skills to the broader organization: champion a company-wide initiative that isn’t only about your product; volunteer for cross-functional task forces; speak at user conferences; mentor junior folks in other departments; guest-write a company blog post; do an internal lunch-time talk about product strategy or customer interviewing techniques. Being responsible for managing different people cross-functionally and cross-departmentally require strong communication and leadership skills. The Product Manager may also be involved in marketing, or iterating once the product is released. And that makes you a highly promotable asset to any organization. In case your next employer deals with larger product lines, you may be requested to have specialized degrees. They are in a position to coach or directly lead other junior PMs and work closely with product leaders in the organization to execute on product strategy. Today, there are far more options on the career ladder for those who don’t have director or VP aspirations. The product management career ladder has far more options today than it did years ago, but the single biggest key to climbing that career ladder hasn’t changed. Median base salary: $121,780; Product marketing manager has both a high base salary and a high career opportunities rating with a 3.9. Those along the people management path exhibit their mastery through their ability to effectively mentor and coach their team, their ability to drive strong operational results through team members, and their ability to coalesce and align the team along a broad vision encompassing all of the individual product areas. I do think that there is a Project Management role that does make a natural rung on the Business Analysis career ladder, though not a mandatory one. For example, there are over 109,000 open product manager jobs on LinkedIn. To be a solid PM, create product initiatives that support the company’s strategy. Reports their metrics and status to the team … It’s You. Then you have to determine how big that problem is in the car rental market and how much it’s worth to your organization to solve – without defining the product solution! This is an entry-level product role and your first step on the PM career path. Career Ladders The above slides showcase the specific product management titles and career … Strategic. Brand manager. Since this job is pretty much a roller coaster ride, you need to be able to deal with stressful, unexpected situations while you remain a great team player at all times. “Who wouldn’t love new product X? Don’t let your product management career aspirations be consumed with “becoming strategic.” The definition of “strategic” is about results: delivering solutions that have strategic value to the customer, which in turn delivers strategic value to your organization in the form of growth, profitability and competitive position. What utility wouldn’t love that? Junior PMs are responsible for smaller scale features that contribute to the strategy of a product driven by a mid-level or senior PM. The first rung of the product management ladder usually carries a title like product owner, product analyst, business analyst, or product manager. Consulting. Deliver, Market & Sell Solutions With Strategic Customer Value. Modern product management has its roots in the 1930s when Neil H. McElroy drafted a memo at Procter & Gamble to justify hiring for a new role: the first product managers. It takes mastery of all three layers of the customer organization, and contributions from all roles involved, to deliver, market and sell solutions with strategic value. 1.  Tactical – The Surrogate User/Job Expert. The career progression of a product manager gradually points to leadership roles. The best of Agile Insider delivered to your inbox Take a look, From HiPPOthesis Driven to Hypothesis Driven, How To Know Where To Go: Directional Inputs For Your Product. 4. Other areas of study include management, marketing, public relations, statistics, and advertising. The good news is that you only need one manager career ladder for the whole company: it’s possible for one to work across Go To Market, Finance and Ops, and even Engineering, Product … Your products may ultimately work no differently for one industry than they do for all others. Product marketing manager. An important part of a director’s job is to leverage the strengths of their product teams for the benefit of the company while coaching individual product managers to excel. Operational. and get thought-leading articles and best practices delivered directly to your inbox so you can adopt a more strategic approach to product management, product marketing and sales enablement. Broadly this is someone who operates independently, leads the work of a product development team and is responsible for a product or customer journey. Product Manager Career Path, 6 Different Roles 1. A junior product manager is an entry-level product role and the first step on the product manager career path. Responsible for execution of their product. Public relations manager. Product Management Career Ladders Sachin Rekhi @sachinrekhi www.sachinrekhi.com Entrepreneur, Product Guy, and Software Engineer Senior Product Manager. Tends to skew operationally, managing the project, handling metrics, sometimes focusing on P&L of their feature, if the feature has direct revenue ties. In this role, it’s not your job to figure out how the products will solve it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track the job outlook for product managers, although there are many open positions in the field. The Chief Product Officer can also be known as Chief Innovation Officer. Responsible for a feature or set of features, ensures that their products fit into the overall strategy for the larger product or product groups. A bad manager has a lot of excuses. The most common job title, this can span a wide gamut of experience, responsibility, and skills. A career in product management is rich in challenges and opportunities to learn and to contribute to the success of an organization. You don’t necessarily start at the beginning, nor do you always make it all the way to the finish line - but this is pretty much the whole journey: * Associate PM / Junior PM - very little or no prior PM experience is required. Rushil Goel, VP of Product at Samsara, wanted to build a product team to help scale their company. Community manager. There is more focus on building better processes and optimizing existing ones, strengthening overall team performance and building consensus across the entire organization in addition to overlooking the recruitment efforts to ensure a high performing team is built. I received a lot of feedback on that article, including a surprising number of you who, like me, prefer staying close to the product over ascending the executive ladder. Master each of these customer domains and the next rung on the product management career ladder awaits. In B2B product management, tactical, operational and strategic refer to layers in the customer organization – not your job responsibilities. Before your mind wanders too far, let’s set the record straight. The truth is, a successful product manager career will require as much knowledge as you can bring to bear, across as wide a range of subjects and disciplines as possible. Many project managers take this role on the project manager career ladder. Master each of these customer domains and the next rung on the product management career ladder awaits.When the product management/marketing profession was in its childhood, upward mobility options were few: director and VP. While other product managers are operating more on execution level, senior PMs begin to look more at the broader product process and gradually become the voice for the product team to senior management. The typical entry-level job in product management is a product owner, product analyst, business analyst, technical product manager, etc. Responsibilities include budgeting for the product organization, ensuring strategic product decisions align with business objectives and protecting the product team from internal politics. Product Manager Career Path (Click on image to modify online) What is product management? While the product team is tactical, you are mainly strategic. You are responsible for the entire lifecycle of a product, the go-to person for the team and the glue between developers and other team members. It is an executive, responsible for all product-related activities in a corporation. It’s a really good resource and fascinating look at their approach to product management. Promotions manager. Managing large product portfolios comes with much greater responsibility, which requires the ability to mentor and communicate effectively. Product Manager. Mastering the operational customer domain means that your focus shifts from tactical user needs to departmental business goals, metrics, obstacles that make those goals difficult to achieve – and for your organization, the market value of removing those obstacles. If so, why, and what’s the relative value in each market segment? They are the team’s advocates and the ambassadors of the entire product strategy. Good analytical abilities and outstanding time management are must-haves. If you know what it takes to make customers successful and you can consistently deliver the solutions, everyone wins. Senior PMs perform most of the same duties as a junior and mid-level PM, just with higher-impact, higher-visibility products. All of them have one thing in common. So, in all of these roles, your job is to ultimately be the surrogate user and work closely with engineers to ensure your products help people succeed at their job. PMs must have common business sense, marketing knowledge and be comfortable when dealing with numbers. It also helps build decision-making abilities and allows the professional to master the art of leadership. What is the Product Manager’s Career Path? Work on leadership . Experience required: 3-4 years Average Salary: 50-65K Other job titles: Advertising manager. If you know what it takes to make customers successful and you can consistently deliver the solutions, everyone wins. Learn what areas we focused on in our PM career ladder to ensure a strong team Career ladders make it clear to Product Managers what’s expected of the role and what’s expected of them to earn a promotion. Employees in this role have a complete understanding of a company’s products and develop marketing strategies to promote these products. The product management career ladder has far more options today than it did years ago, but the single biggest key to climbing that career ladder hasn’t changed. Assuming that most entry-level product managers know their products cold, mastering the tactical customer domain requires expertise in an area that’s even more important than the product – the job of the user. Junior/Associate Product Manager. The CPO can be an extension of the VP of Product or oversee multiple VPs of product rolling up to one product leader. Product manager. At this stage, you need direct product management experience and working years. on The Product Management Career Ladder: Tactical. Try: 20 Ways To Save Money Fast This is an entry-level product role and your first step on the PM career path. There are many different descriptions of what a Product Manager is. Deep product and market knowledge are required as well as the ability to step in and overcome stressful situations. Level One: The Tactical End User. Product Management Career Ladders 1. At the same time, the report notes that, while the demand for project management roles is increasing, the number o… Product Directors are often mentors for the rest of the product management team. Product Marketing Manager. In this process, they realized they would be able to create a career ladder and fully establish teams and ICs that would be able to help them reach their aggressive growth goals. They require more knowledge of the market and the customers than they do the products. In fact, less product knowledge may be more beneficial as you move up the food chain. But a product perspective doesn’t matter at this level. Typically a bachelor’s degree in business, computer science or economics is preferred or is mandatory. When HR managers hire for this position, they are looking for an understanding of what product management is and for your interest and passion. Having the skill set described is the first level and absolutely necessary. What is Product Management? Typically the position reports to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Mirror the three layers of the customer’s business and you’ll develop that expertise and climb the career ladder with less effort and better results. According to a report from the Product Management Institute, “Demand over the next 10 years for project managers is growing faster than demand for workers in other occupations.” The report projects that there will be almost 214,000 new project management-related jobs per year in the United States. To reach this point in your product manager career path, you’ll likely need to come in with some professional experience. The VP role enables the product organization at the high level and is the intermediary from the perspective of the business, C-level stakeholders and board of directors. You are the ambassador of the product. A PM’s background may be based on another branch of education, the product manager career path could involve other degrees if the products are heavily focused on those types of industries. It’s your chance to prove how well you take all parties into account, blend and evaluate the different perspectives to eventually arrive at a clear decision. I know what you’re thinking. What comes next, is applying it. And that makes you a highly promotable asset to any organization. The Product Owner career ladder enables the professional to fully appreciate the importance of effective and efficient communication between the various stakeholders. You start demonstrating your empathy for the user, discovering your passion to identify opportunities and bringing multiple people together to work on the same goal. ... marketing and sales in manager, director and VP roles. And with that in mind, as long as you are willing to be a lifelong learner, you can blaze a path into product management with just about any type of academic background. Here’s the deal. But because it’s the most common title what’s important … How well have your product management, strategy and marketing teams mastered the customer domain? Contact Proficientz to learn how our framework, product management training programs and consulting services help you deliver, market and sell higher value solutions with stronger customer domain knowledge. In order to successfully get there, you need to have a good understanding of the market as well as the competition that awaits. If you get clear answers to those three questions, and there are several layers to each, you have essentially identified larger scale business needs, their quantifiable value, and their strategic impact to the customer organization. What is expected here is the fundamental understanding of product management as well as being a thirsty learner. But John breaks it down in a way that really illustrates how product managers need to think as they move up in their careers. They are responsible for bringing the necessary transparency to the team on decisions taking place at the higher levels of the business and the market. The most fundamental skill required is a deep understanding of each user’s job role — key job responsibilities, how people in those jobs are measured (quantitatively), and most importantly, how they perform their job responsibilities. You are significantly less involved with the hands-on activities related to the product development process. Join Ladders to find the latest Product Manager jobs at Product Manager and get noticed by over 90,000 recruiters. 3.  Strategic – The Surrogate Executive/Industry Expert, When you reach the third rung on the product management career ladder, the terms “generic” and “everyone” need to be eliminated from your vocabulary. Product strategy managers, market segment managers, solution marketing managers, and portfolio managers, to name a few. You’re responsible for it from its first fuzzy idea, to concrete concept, through production, launch, and all the way to maturity stage. What matters most is the executive buyer’s perspective and how he or she perceives the dynamics of their industry and how those dynamics are shaping the strategy of their organization. When the product management/marketing profession was in its childhood, upward mobility options were few: director and VP. 2.  Operational – The Surrogate Department Head/Business Expert. Volunteer your help for the hard stuff, even if it isn’t directly transcribed in your job description. Many companies have project management needs, even if they don’t want to hire a full-time project manager. Now that you’ve mastered the job responsibilities of the users, it’s time to step into the shoes of a department head: What’s being asked of him or her, why, and how does it impact the strategy of the customer organization? Direct product management experience is not necessarily needed, but it is expected you can clearly demonstrate your communication, collaboration, and prioritization skills. That user job knowledge is the key to delivering high-value functionality in your products – and it’s ultimately the stair step that gets you to the next rung on the product management career ladder. Career ladders make it clear to product managers what’s expected of the role. When Your “Good” Ideas fail, Don’t Blame the Customer. Depending on the product, technical understanding may be necessary. Being a product manager requires taking responsibility. In The Importance Of A Clear Career Path For Product Managers the Intercom team links to their Product Manager expectations by level (PDF). The Marketing Career Path - Step 2 | Marketing Manager. Eventbrite - Product School presents The Product Manager Career Ladder by Verve VP Product - Tuesday, June 9, 2020 - Find event and ticket information. Social media manager. Manage the product team and give formal direction. What is … In this post, we’ll take a look at six common roles a product manager might find themselves in throughout their product management career: Associate Product Manager; Product Manager; Senior Product Manager; Director of Product; VP of Product; Chief Product Officer and Beyond; Associate Product Manager There is more than one product manager career path for gaining these skills and earning the responsibility that come with being a product manager. A director-level role entails profound leadership experience and the ability to build and trust a team to deliver the necessary work without getting in their way. You’re dealing with product portfolio, ensuring staffing resources, budget, as well as research are being invested in the areas that will provide the desired outcome. Clear, quantifiable answers to those questions are the key to mastering the strategic customer domain. 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