APIs: Opening up Business and Providing Avenues for Growth

April 4, 2013 Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA) Santa Clara, CA Panel Discussion

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May 2012 SVPMA Event Recap

May 2012 Event Recap Silicon Valley Product Management Association

Strategic Planning for More Effective Product Management with Brian Lawley, CEO and Founder, 280 Group

By Cindy F. Solomon, CPM, CPMM

Brian Lawley, former president of the SVPMA, is the CEO and Founder of the 280 Group, a relentless evangelist for the product management profession, product manager excellence and purveyor of rigorous product management education and training, opened his presentation asking if any of the over 100 attendees knew a product management joke – surely an oxymoron!

Someone in the audience actually shared a joke (yes, product managers must maintain a sense of humor), and Brian topped it with another. Brian proceeded to provide a highly interactive presentation, engaging the audience in contributing their ideas and examples of case studies that related to his slides. He covered the foundations of strategic planning, including what strategy is (and is not). He used the AIPMM’s Seven Phase Product Lifecycle framework as a foundation to walk through the process that every product travels through regardless of type or industry. He went into depth on strategic planning tools and techniques that can be applied by product managers in order to manage their products more effectively.

Beginning with an attempt to define strategy, Brian critiqued the standard definitions from Merriam Webster “a careful plan or method” and dictionary.com “a series of maneuvers for obtaining specific goals.” He cited Michael E. Porter’s 1996 Harvard Business Review article entitled, “What is Strategy?” Porter refers to operational effectiveness (OE) as the means of performing similar activities better than rivals and strategic positioning as the means to perform activities in a different way. Brian said that operational effectiveness however necessary is not a strategy. In order to create unique and valuable positioning, different sets of activities are involved. Strategy requires tradeoffs, including choosing what not to do. Strategy must fit within the corporate mission, business objectives and other company activities.

Lawley went on to name strategies and invited the audience to call out companies that employed them, such as

• Razor and blades - give away the razor, sell the blades. i.e. HP with printers/cartridges
• Land grab - be everywhere you can be. Common with emerging markets. HotMail, Facebook, Twitter
• Low cost provider – i.e. Dell computer had no premium products; was the lowest cost but not the lowest price
• Premium brand & price – (need we say it…Apple) Bentley, Rolex
• First mover advantage – establish early i.e. Verisign SSL certificate

There was much conversation about the disadvantages of being first in the market such as the efforts and resources required to educate and create a market that hasn’t previously existed and then defend that market against entries that have the advantage of learning from mistakes. Brian pointed out how Apple, although credited with being first, actually waits until there is a market, and then improves on the user experience. With the iPod there were other mp3 players, but Apple recognized the need for iTunes, similarly there were previous smart phones and tablets, not to mention micro-computers before Apple entered. It was recognized that being a market follower and doing it better is a powerful strategy.

After defining strategy and discussing examples, Brian gave an overview of the AIPMM Seven Phase Product Lifecycle Framework. Brian explained that the AIPMM framework is a vendor independent worldwide standard that takes into account best practices used in a wide range of companies and industries and ensures that the most modern and up-to-date challenges faced in product management and product marketing are addressed. The framework is part of the AIPMM Product Management Body of Knowledge (ProdBOK), which was developed with input from over fifty experts and is endorsed by more than half a dozen training and consulting companies. The AIPMM introduced the Product Management Life Cycle framework to drive continuous improvement of products and processes within any organization viewing continuous improvement of products as an ongoing effort best evaluated once a formal product management and marketing process is defined and implemented. The framework includes seven distinct product phases, from Conceive to End of Life, and covers every aspect that needs to be addressed for every product or service during the overall lifecycle.


Brian said that whether you realize it or not, every product passes through these seven phases from inception to retirement. Oftentimes one or more of the phases are ignored, shortchanged or not focused on, resulting in a less-than-optimal result for the company and its customers. In many cases product management and/or product marketing are only involved in one phase, and no one is watching the “Whole Product” concept that the customer ultimately perceives as what they are buying. By being aware of and prepared for all seven phases, a company maximizes its chances for delighting its customers and increasing its profits.

The seven phase model uses a phase-gate approach. Although this is described as a phase-gate process (also referred to as waterfall) the notion of Agile development fits in and can be used effectively – the company or team just goes through the phases more rapidly with a smaller set of features for each sprint. They are still doing required tasks in each phase and must pass through the corresponding gate. A phase is a stage in the product lifecycle and the gate is the critical decision point or milestone that marks the end of one phase and starting of another. Brian has a mnemonic to remember the phases: “Clever Product Developers Question Lousy Market Requirements.” The 7 phases are Conceive, Plan, Develop, Qualify, Launch, Market, and Retire (the AIPMM version references the Market phase as the Deliver phase.)

Mapping strategy to each phase, in the conceive phase which includes brainstorming or crowd sourcing ideas, prioritizing and choosing ideas, make sure that the ideas fit within the capabilities of the company and immediately eliminate the ideas that the company cannot implement effectively with current resources and organization.

The PLAN phase includes all the upfront market and competitive space research and data capturing, creation of the business case including the market needs and product description, and documentation of the roadmap. Strategic upfront thinking prior to development necessitates a holistic view of the market place and guarantees that products won’t be built that are set up to fail.

In the DEVELOPMENT phase of the actual engineering, tradeoffs and feature schedule and plan, you continue to monitor the market and adjust strategy to guide development.

The QUALIFY phase gets the product in the hands of lots of customers, both internal and external to develop pricing and value propositions aligned with the strategy.

The LAUNCH phase includes properly timing the announcement of the product into the various channels of distribution, customizing messaging and narrative of the product for segmented targets, guaranteeing availability and exposure in the market.

The market or DELIVER phase encompasses ongoing programs and iteration of the market activities and strategy to measure the Return on Investment and optimize revenue.

The RETIRE phase includes end of life planning aligned with the rolling out of new versions and planned obsolescence. Each phase requires strategic planning aligned with what you’re trying to achieve and specific actionable objectives to achieve them.

Brian went on to discuss concepts including market opportunity assessment, using the product lifecycle to determine the most effective strategy, the VMOST framework, the BCG Matrix, the Chasm model, SWOT analysis, Porter's models, the McKinsey matrix, Kotler’s strategic pricing models and the Optimal Product Process. Brian spoke about the nine key documents that align with the seven phases of a product lifecycle that are part of the 280 Group’s Product Management Lifecycle Toolkit. At the end of the talk, Brian gave away one of each of his books, as well as the Product Management Lifecycle Toolkit and everyone got a copy of the Optimal Product Process book.

Cindy F. Solomon is Founder of the Global Product Management, creator of the ProdMgmtTalk mobile app and organizer of Startup Product Talks SF. Join in weekly #prodmgmttalk http://www.prodmgmttalk.com Follow @ProdMgmtTalk and @CindyFSolomon Contact: cindy@prodmgmttalk.com

What Every Product Manager Needs to Know about UX

January 2012 SVPMA Event Recap
“What Every Product Manager Needs to Know about UX” with Glen Lipka, Vice President of User Experience
By Cindy F. Solomon


Glen Lipka is the Vice President of User Experience at Marketo where he was the first non-founder employee and ran product management and UX for several years of the company’s development. Prior to Marketo, Glen was a Senior UI Designer at Intuit, Director of User Experience at Adchemy and started his career running a thirty-person web development company in NYC during the Internet bubble. Glen has been a pioneer in websites and web applications for over 15 years, pushing the envelope in interactivity on public facing websites to Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for businesses. He speaks frequently on all aspects of building great products on the web, including NYU Stern School of Business and Stanford University.


In an informal, inviting and humorous style, Glen spoke to the packed audience at the Network Meeting Center at the TechMart in Santa Clara on January 4, 2012. Lipka acknowledged that most companies do not have a strong UX department and most products do not have a pleasant user experience. His definition of user experience, which he repeated several times during the presentation is; “User experience, specifically “design” is just a decision.” He suggested that who makes the decisions is not necessarily a specific designer, but rather an accumulation of all the decisions that got made by everyone in the company.


There is decision in any design process and who is making these decisions really matters, it might be engineering people, an end-user, a manager or a researcher, etc. but at the end of the day, according to Lipka, the designer is the one who writes the PRD (Product Document Requirements). The UX designer and the Product Manager roles might overlap. At Marketo, UX sits in the middle of engineering in order to iterate with a lot of people. Design doesn’t stop when the product is handed off to engineering, rather it continues until the product ships. PMs should be a dedicated position that works actively with marketing to provide comprehensive MRDs (Marketing Requirement Documents) that include the competitive landscape, packaging, go to market strategy and research. Lipka suggested that an ideal structure of the team is flat so that everyone is working as peers together to collaborate with specific responsibilities. The Product Manager must determine “What is the real problem we are trying to solve.”


Key Takeaways from Lipka’s visual presentation:


Get a direct interaction with users, learn from them, (e.g. make up-front calls), understand their problems, what they are trying to achieve, why they didn't choose your product, etc. but don't let them define the actual requirements, people are terrible about their own perception... If you ask customers, they will tell you answers to your questions – but they don’t know why they operate in certain ways. It’s better to observe customers in their natural habitats to see what they do. Let users teach you their job and show you how they use the product in their own world.


Accept the fact that people don’t read – they skim at best. The fewer words in your instructions, the better. Enable people to use the product and learn directly from hands on experience. Pay attention to important distinctions to remove frictions in the product that frustrate the user from using the product with ease. Respect the “Halloween principle” where there is an irregular, but repeatable interruption by doorbell. Build in reinforcement of where users left off within the product so they can easily return without requiring additional effort.


"A picture is worth a thousand words" visual PRDs not only explain complex ideas or UI concepts, but also help to convey ergonomic features which are difficult to describe with words yet critical for the user experience (e.g. moving / manipulating objects on a page)


Remove blockers. Address the overall user experience, from product design to support and observe what happens in worse case scenarios when things go wrong and take that information in to the total experience. - i.e. The way to handle things that go wrong is more important than the way to handle things when they go right.


Over-invest in support. The reality is that in order to make things better, they might have to get worse first. Product Managers must be the leaders to enable this process, to have the vision for how much better it will be if the deconstruction process can proceed.


Don’t bend users. Don’t make users bend to our ways of doing things. There are only so many ways to do something, so give users the options to do it their own way and they will think it is customized to their specific work process. He used the example of how Marketo changed a flowchart by analyzing a kinetic gesture to make using the product fun – instead of clicking and pointing, they changed it to grabbing and dropping, which was unique amongst competitive products within a business application.


Consistency is better. Don’t always optimize for what’s perfect. Stay consistent so there is less to learn. He cited examples of scenarios where details were left out in order to ship in time and those details were the ones people loved. Because users don't have the same perspective as the designers, small improvements are often perceived as better than one big one in their direct experience – they have no idea how much work is required to produce either improvement and they don’t care.


Everyone responds to fun - build fun stuff into your B2B product, user experience and content messaging. Corporate people are desperate to be treated like human beings and if it's an authentic voice, they will respond to it. How much more will they use a product that enables their required work to be accomplished in a more enjoyable way?


Cindy F. Solomon is Founder of the Global Product Management Talk on Twitter, host of Tools of the Trade and Product Camp Radio, and creator of the ProdMgmtTalk mobile application. Join in the weekly #prodmgmttalk http://www.prodmgmttalk.com

The Marketing Side of Agile at the SVPMA

Please Retweet: Report on: Marketing Side of #Agile w/@browncompany @svpma http://bit.ly/ozCmwH @prodmgmttalk


Around 60 people attended the September 7, 2011 meeting of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association meeting held at Tech Mart in Santa Clara. Ron Brown presented “The Marketing Side of Agile: 10 Secrets for Success.” 

Ron Brown is a patent holder, corporate spokesperson, and author of the book, Anticipate, The Architecture of Small Team Innovation and Product Success, on promoting creativity and innovation at the team level. Brown is currently the CEO of United Keys, Inc. 

Ron’s career spans three industries. One third of his career was in the packaged goods advertising industry where he learned principles of professional creative problem solving. The second third he spent in high-tech hardware and software companies, where he learned about supply chains and distribution channels. One third has been within Silicon Valley internet startups. His career includes experience at Nestle, international ad agencies J. Walter Thompson and BBDO. At JWT, Brown managed the HP computers and printers businesses. As VP Corporate Marketing at Wyse Technology, he gained global channels, distribution, and corporate marketing experience. As president at eFax.com, he built one of the fastest growing consumer internet sites.  

Brown said that the failure rate for new product entries has been increasing. Whereas 50 years ago, most new products were successful, twenty years ago the failure rate was 50%, while it is 70% in today’s business environment. He set out to discover what knowledge leading companies have about new product innovation that distinguishes them from their industry peers. He started by digging through 60 years of industry research about product success, then he interviewed developers and managers from a wide range of companies.  

Brown defines “leading companies” as those that generate over twice as much revenue from new products compared to their industry peers. Specifically, the successful companies generate 49% of sales from new products compared to 22% of sales from new products in other companies. They must always have a fresh flow of “new” products in new categories at any given time. In contrast, most companies lose a tremendous amount of time and money on internal costs that result in poor moral and failed products while their competitors get stronger.  

The successful companies spend much more time figuring out how to be more innovative than the unsuccessful ones, because they recognize that innovation is key to winning in the market. Small development teams must have freedom and resources to be effective. Brown discovered that engineers operating from the Agile manifesto talk to customers regularly, although they may not recognize that customers are fickle and that product management skills are necessary to determine how to convert customer input into features, explicit product descriptions and strategic positioning.  

Brown isolated 10 core strategies of leading companies that are not readily apparent, including the ability to anticipate what customers want and deliver new products by thinking like customers and understanding human behavior and motivation.

1. Leading companies make entrepreneurial teams the focal point of their strategy.  
A major obstacle to innovation is the entrenchment of linear development processes such as Waterfall that result in late stage rework with associated risks. The benefits of Agile are reduced risk, increased product/market fit, decreased time to market.

Brown defines Agile teams as
- small cross-functional teams
- that are self-regulating and
- self-governing, and are
- empowered to make strategic decisions

2. Leading companies push decision making to the edges of the organization close to customers.  
The higher up in the organizational chart of the manager charged with decision making power, the less awareness they have of the day to day issues, patterns of problems, and understanding of the end users’ needs, wants and pains.

3. Leading companies employ development techniques tailored for the “fuzzy” front end.
Early stages of a development cycle are referred to as the “fuzzy” front end. This is the phase when the company is first conceiving and considering an opportunity before determining if it is worth developing. The creative development process takes an idea and works it into a tangible product. However, manufacturing control processes don’t apply to creative thinking. Total Quality Management (TQM) or  statistically based manufacturing techniques developed by W.Edwards Deming are not conducive to pre-revenue activities. Even Six Sigma, although flexible, doesn’t translate well when attempting to formulate an idea properly. Development and manufacturing don’t occur on the same continuum, although they are often depicted visually as if they have the same characteristics and implementation strategy. Development formulates an idea and implements, while manufacturing replicates and scales – each requires unique skill sets, orientations and management technique.

4. Leading companies commit to customer immersion and problem detection techniques.
Seven out of ten product failures result from poor customer input procedures. Customers are not rational and buyers may not know why they buy. Brown cited a 2008 Microsoft commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld going to live with “average” people in their homes. When Gates asked Jerry why they were doing it, Seinfeld suggested that they needed to understand what it was like to be a regular person, since they were too removed. This is a literal example of customer immersion, which came from social anthropology and ethnography. Living with customers provides insights into the customer moment to moment experience in their own environment. Direct observation provides insights into customer motivation, pain and behavior.  Once you start thinking like a customer, you can anticipate what they want which provides a strong competitive advantage. VCs ask whether startups are an aspirin or a vitamin. An aspirin kills pain while a vitamin prevents pain. Leading companies solve important problems exclusively by finding the screaming baby and urgently solving the problem.

5. Leading companies develop creative problem solving skills at all levels.
Brown cited a study that showed that projects were nine times more productive and quicker to market if managers had proven high levels of creativity as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator creativity index. Everyone, regardless of inherent tendencies, can be trained in creative thinking skills which improve with practice.

6. Leading companies generate meaningful ideas from the entire value chain.
A supply chain includes the network of vendors required to bring the product to market. Each component in the supply chain has an associated cost which must be kept as low as possible for financial accountability. In order to differentiate, marketing recognizes that each component can be positioned as a source of value to the customer. Porter defined this perspective as the value chain. Leading companies reinforce brand trust at every opportunity in the value chain even bringing suppliers into the action as early as possible to identify potential for innovation.  Proctor and Gamble has a program called “Connect and Develop” which looks outside the company to discover at least 50% of new product concepts. McDonalds added menu items such as the BigMac and Egg McMuffin from franchisee suggestions.

7. Leading companies emphasize superior implementation throughout the organization.
Taking a concept from an idea into a finished project requires an ability to implement well in an elegant way. Innovation is a process, not a chance endeavor, which requires structure. The structure of innovation is comprised of identifying the idea, developing the strategic direction that the idea should be taken in, and executing on that strategy.  Strategy turns an idea into an invention, providing it with form and function.  Execution turns the invention into a product that customers can purchase and utilize. Implementation equals strategy plus execution.

8. Leading companies utilize business models for strategic planning.
Brown referenced management writer Joan Magretta, as the guru of business models. She defined a business model as “the story that explains how an enterprise works.” Peter Drucker described the business model as the answer to the questions: Who is your customer, what does the customer value, and how do you deliver value at an appropriate cost?

Making money occurs one transaction at a time. A business model for a new product is a strategic document focused on transaction level value creation. A transaction is an exchange of value between the company and the customer. A product is a vehicle for a transaction. The dynamics of the business transaction between the company and the customer must be understood and analyzed in order to be enhanced and refined. This focus on transactions is referred to as “unit economics” since it is concerned with value creation rather than production costs. Business models are also designed to generate stories, since stories are what customers buy and fuel word of mouth communications. Business models fail when the narrative isn’t believable and when the numbers don’t add up.

9. Leading companies recognize the importance of precise messaging.
Differentiation is the tip of the arrow and the value proposition seals the deal. The positioning presentation has to be razor sharp and repeated often.  The USP is the unique selling proposition which describes the qualities unique to the product in a tangible way that differentiates it from the competition and motivates a large audience to take action. It must be tangible so the audience can experience the benefit through their senses to measure its performance. Products that demonstrate their value are easier to communicate and sell. The USP = Benefit + Differentiation + Motivation.

The strategic positioning statement defines the target audience, describes character or personality of the brand, and provides the reason why.  The reason why is important because it establishes the credibility and the believability for the benefit claim. Brand character projects an attitude and reinforces the main claim with a feeling. Drama, storytelling and emotional component are effective aspects of the statement. Strategic Positioning Statement = Target + USP + Brand + Why

10. Leading companies measure and track key decisions.
Brown described a simple Audit on a slide with 4 boxes within a square, each box pointing to the next box in counter-clockwise direction. Starting with the Idea in the top left box, pointing down to Critical Success Factors, which points to Audit in bottom right, pointing up to Track in top right, which continues to point to the Idea. Critical Success Factors focus on the most important areas to get to the very heart of both what is to be achieved and how it will be achieved. Feedback mechanisms measure and track progress, provide insights for continual improvement and correction, simplify and speed up decision making, enhance communication and collaboration, consistently include team members disparately located. Identifying rules, best practices, critical success factors, appropriate metrics and feedback mechanisms contribute to design thinking for constantly iterating business models in leading companies.

In short order, Brown identified the keys to successful leading companies as those that show their teams how to collect and process customer input more effectively, develop creative problem solving skills, use business models to stay on course, and measure and track progress.  

Ron will be speaking at the Global Product Management Talk on Twitter on February 6, 2012. Join in the twitter talk weekly Mondays 4:00-5:00 PM PT @prodmgmttalk  #prodmgmttalk

Global Product Management Talk^TM is a weekly mini-product camp Socratic discussion (on Twitter) of pre-posted questions (on Facebook) with live audio of thought leader and co-hosts commenting (on Blogtalkradio). 

Please Retweet: Report on: Marketing Side of #Agile w/ @browncompany @svpma http://bit.ly/ozCmwH @prodmgmttalk

Gamification and the SVPMA

July, 2011 Report from the Silicon Valley Product Management Association


At the July 6, 2011 meeting of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association meeting held at Tech Mart in Santa Clara, Rajat Paharia presented “Gamification: why it’s important and what it means for your product.” 



Gamification is an emerging trend that is influencing product design and marketing programs. If you haven’t heard about it yet, and you are in product marketing or product management, you will. Simply, gamification is adding elements of game mechanics into marketing programs and actual products to more deeply engage the user. These principles are becoming ubiquitously applied to everything from physical therapy, to social sites such as Foursquare, numerous loyalty programs, and user training by Microsoft. Nissan even developed an in-dashboard game to motivate fuel efficient driving behavior, and Atlassian Greenhopper employs it in new-user product training.

Rajat Paharia is the founder and Chief Product Officer of Bunchball. Rajat’s skill set combines a unique understanding of technology and design that stems from a four year career at design firm IDEO where he was co-director of the Software Experiences Practice. While there, he worked with clients including ATT Wireless, Avaya, Microsoft, McDonald’s, HP and Philips. Prior to IDEO, Rajat worked at Philips Consumer Electronics, IBM Research and ViewStar. He has a Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, with a focus on Human Computer Interaction, and an undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley.

Rajat started in gamification back in 2007. Before Bunchball, he spent several years at a design firm called IDEO where one of his favorite quotes was 'Innovation = Invention + Opportunity'. So in 2007, after having spent 2 years as a social gaming company, Bunchball realized the power of game mechanics “(the Invention) and decided to attack the Opportunity to (a) take game mechanics out of the gaming world and (b) provide them as a web service that anyone could integrate quickly and easily." 

Rajat presented many examples and case studies of companies that have incorporated various aspects of gamification techniques into their customer facing strategies and the thinking as well as the process involved to arrive at successful implementation.  He identified media companies like USA Network, community sites like MySpace, B2B publishers like UBM TechWeb and product brands like Chiquita which have all jumped on the bandwagon to utilize “gamification” to drive participation, engagement and loyalty starting in 2010. However, his company, Bunchball, was revved and selling gaming solutions for several years before the big brands were ready. He spoke about the difficulty of being ahead of the market in recognizing the value of solutions before the market is ready to engage in the conversation.

Bunchball started as a social gaming site to give people something to do.  They pivoted (which means they failed and tried something else) before the mainstream realized the power of gaming and the market appeared. Rajat identified an “innovation adoption curve” of new approaches which appears to be fairly predictable in retrospect, based on his company’s direct experience. It starts with a trend of successful implementation within the consumer market.  When it reaches what appears to be a sustainable success rate, it’s picked up by mainstream media, entertainment businesses and consumer communities a few years later. Ultimately, the idea makes its way into the enterprise and onto the corporate intranet.

He used the example of “social media” starting with the explosive growth of MySpace circa 2005/06 which provided evidence that social could drive meaningful engagement and revenue for business. That set the bar for every consumer facing website to add an aspect of social into their online features. But it required several more years before social was integrated at the enterprise level with platforms like Salesforce Chatter, Yammer, Socialcast and Rypple.

Bunchball bore the battle scars in discovering that a giant consumer role model must provide successful precedence before enterprise will buy into a trend, no matter what potential benefits are identified.  The learning curve must be ascended and the early adopters must be sacrificed to pave the way for widespread adoption of new techniques. The mainstream media has to write about it so business can grasp dramatic effects.  Fortunately, Rajat and Bunchball survived three years of “trying to move the needle by educating companies about the art of gamification.”  Recently, a Gartner report found that more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application by 2014 – seven years after Bunchball’s first customer was knocking on their door asking for a gamification platform before it was even completed.

When asked about the positive side effects of increased gamification, Rajat answered, "Business owners realize that their customers aren't just passive recipients, but active participants with needs and desires for reward, status, achievement, competition and self-expression. And that by satisfying those needs, they can create happy, engaged customers while at the same time driving real business goals."

Rajat referenced Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which draws on research in psychology, economics and sociology.  Pink shows that intrinsic motivators are more powerful than external.  People prefer activities where they can pursue three things:

1. Autonomy: People want to have control over their work.
2. Mastery: People want to get better at what they do.
3. Purpose: People want to be part of something that is bigger than they are.

Rajat added that the ability to measure and visualize progress within a context is important to the game experience. He asked the audience the question, “Should you gamify anything?” The answer is “No.” He identified areas that make sense, but not every experience will lend itself to being gamified, nor is every situation appropriate just because it can be done.  An obvious example is providing incentives to sales organizations, where gamification has always been intrinsic, but not framed specifically as gamification. He provided three questions to think about whether it makes sense to gamify:

1. What is the core user experience you are trying to gamify?
2. What is meaningful to users?
3. What is good for my business?

The answers differ depending on the type of business, the stage in the sales process, the call to action, the KPIs and the measurement of success.  He suggested that WIIFM is the key qualifier to recognize and answer. “Whats In It For Me?” What is the intrinsic, core, compelling reason why users will want to engage?  What reaction will users have and what experience will users derive immediately and on many different subjective and subliminal levels?

Begin by thinking about specific results that could be produced:
1. Tracking individual users’ activities and assigning a score to each.
2. Providing a list of every user and score next to their name indicating how valuable and how much progress has been achieved.
3. Game mechanics that will drive those numbers (scores) achieved by users and attach value to specific activities.

Businesses quantify success by acquisition, activation and retention.  Rajat offered some concepts to drive user’s increased engagement within a site, product or service.

1. Reward users with points that they can accrue over time. For brands, points are a good way to get consumers to complete certain tasks. Brands can capitalize on this notion and use points to drive different behaviors within a site or application by using them as status indicators, allowing points to unlock access to content, or making them valid for virtual goods and gifting.

2. Provide milestones so they can achieve different levels with mastery. Businesses can use levels within their websites to regulate access to certain parts of a site or as a way to recognize reaching a milestone to honor frequent users and engagement.

3. Challenge users directly with competition to achieve scores. Configure challenges based on actions that you're tracking, and reward your users for reaching milestones with trophies, badges, and achievements. For example, a business could challenge users to beat a high score in an online game. If a user achieves the high score, they would be commended and receive a badge, which will attach to their profile.

4. Provide virtual goods, badges or rewards. Virtual goods are non-physical objects that can be purchased for use in online communities and/or games. They help a game economy become more effective over time. Users can purchase virtual goods like clothing or decorations to create an identity for their virtual self (avatar) while comparing and showing off with their friends. "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" gamified its site and now allows users to create their own avatars. Users have the ability to style their avatar with virtual goods -- the more they buy, the better their avatar looks.

5. Enable users to challenge each other beyond being challenged by the game. Once everyone has done the activity, the user with the highest score wins a reward, while the losers receive a consolation prize. Team competitions are also a possibility. For example, when Bravo gamified "Top Chef All-Stars" with the "Virtual Top Chef Game," users chose their favorite "chef'testant" and were broken up into teams accordingly. Team members were then able to simultaneously earn points for themselves and their team through challenges for a chance to win shared and individual prizes.

6. Provide leaderboards so users can measure their progress against others. Leaderboards are used to track and display desired actions, using competition to drive valuable behavior. If users know that scoring points could land them a spot at the top of the chart, they will engage more and work harder to earn points. They are motivated to see their name in lights!

7.  Recognize the reality of user fatigue over time.  Make sure the core experience is dynamic and evolving so it is constantly refreshing.  The pursuit is to keep users at all levels engaged in the game in a never ending process, continually adding new challenges and new content.

The complexity of implementing game mechanics depends on multiple factors, including a business's content, audience, goal, and the type of tactics it wants to use. Regardless of the level of complication, if a gaming program is well-executed, an organization can expect to see an increase in key metrics such as time spent on the site, page views, and return visits.



---Cindy F. Solomon is Founder and Co-host of the Global Product Management Talk, the weekly mini-product camp Socratic discussion of Product Management thought leaders and international product managers via Twitter and audio commentary. @prodmgmttalk http://www.prodmgmttalk.com 

April Event Review: The Quest to be Market-Driven

April, 2011 Report from the Silicon Valley Product Management Association

At the April 6, 2011 meeting of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association meeting held at Tech Mart in Santa Clara, Mike Gospe presented “The Quest to be Market-driven: what product managers and product marketers need to do to become the customers’ advocate.”

Mike Gospe is an accomplished leader, marketing strategist and corporate executive. He is co-founder of KickStart Alliance, a sales and marketing leadership consulting team where he drives integrated marketing and voice-of-the customer programs, including Customer Advisory Board (CAB) meetings. He’s the author of “Marketing Campaign Development“, a faculty member of San Francisco State University where he teaches the course “Essentials of Integrated Marketing” and a frequent guest speaker at companies, marketing associations and university business schools. His talk addressed the subject matter of his newly published book, “The Marketing High Ground”.

Mike began his career with an engineering perspective having obtained a BSEE from Santa Clara University in semiconductor fabrication.  Early in his career when he was involved with a marketing project at Hewlett Packard, he kept running into trouble with confrontational engineers.  When he mentioned his degree, the engineers said they would have been nicer had they known his background.  
Gospe’s message is that whoever understands the customer best, wins. He wants to ensure that product managers provide information so that the best product decisions are always made.  This requires taking responsibility for understanding customers, their pain points, and their buying process better than ever before. For businesses to thrive in the 21st century, product managers and product marketers must become the definitive source of customer knowledge.

Gospe presented his process for arriving at the ability to illustrate the persona as a reflection of the target market, craft a clear positioning statement that defines and differentiates the product or service, and design a set of relevant use-case scenarios and key messaging to engage the persona.

He said that it sounds cliché to be “market driven”, although it’s a topical idea.  Everyone says they are market driven, when in fact they’re not.  

He asked the audience for a show of hands on the following questions:
What kinds of organizations are we in?
Who thought our product management organization was undervalued?
Who felt the role we’re in is underappreciated.  
Do we feel like we’re on the receiving end of whatever engineering dishes out?
Who finds ourselves defending roadmaps only to be swayed by those that yell the loudest?

“While these three best practices are simple, they should not be taken lightly. They require serious attention, and it takes practice to get them right. Consider them tools marketers can use to drive internal conversations so that the best product, roadmap, and campaign decisions will always be made.” 


Gospe's presentation encompassed examples of implementing the following tools:

·        Personas: To better understand and empathize with the target audience.

·        Positioning Statement: To better understand your value and differentiation from competitive

alternatives

·        Message Box: To better communicate your value and relevance of your use cases to the

target audiences

Gospe defined the “marketing high ground” as a special place where you know the market so well, so deeply, that you become acknowledged and valued internally as the “customers' advocate.” With this knowledge comes confidence in understanding the target customer and producing impactful lead generation campaigns. No longer are debates driven by random opinions; they are founded on customer use cases, market data, and customer feedback. This is what it takes to earn, then command, a seat at the leadership table.

In Gospe’s own words from his forthcoming book:
“Traditionally, certainly in Silicon Valley, companies are founded by technologists.  Executive staff members, engineering, operations and sales leaders are often added long before a marketer.  And who can argue success when a company’s products continue to sell without the aid of a marketing leader?

“The answer is not to suggest that a marketer should overstep or replace the leadership of engineering or sales. Instead, the real long-lasting value a marketer can bring is to rise to the role of leading the executive team, and by extension the rest of the organization, to the high ground.  In companies where no one owns the high ground, it often looks like:

·         Marketing and sales departments are unaligned, lack clear goals and objectives

·         Engineering and product management teams work in silos, focused on isolated features

·         Frustrated marketers have to continually rewrite messaging that is never accurate

·         Marketing campaigns are poorly executed and don’t produce quality inquiries and leads

·         Decisions are made based on “whoever yells the loudest” instead of an aligned and focussed team effort

Gospe presented the tools that will gain respect for marketing:

5. Share, communicate, evangelize

4. The Message Box

3. Positioning Statement

2. Customer & Product Use Cases

1. Personas

Start by answering these questions:
1. Who are we targeting?
2. What are they trying to do?
3. Why is our solution best?
4. What’s our story?
5. How will we execute our vision?

Tips on how to begin

1.Become the customers’ advocate by knowing what questions to ask

2.Help colleagues by guiding them through these best practice exercises

3.Challenge assumptions, but diplomatically and constructively

4.Don’t frame your recommendations on personal opinion

5.Lead by example

1. Create a Persona: a fictional representation of a very real market segment that enables marketing empathy with the target market so that messaging matches up with creative approaches to cut through the clutter.

Who they are: Identify a target segment
Focus on responsibilities:

·         What problems do they have?

·         What goals, objectives do they share?

Where they work:

·         New prospects or current customers?

·         Classify the ideal company

Why they are a good target:

·         Add psychographics

What are they thinking?

·         Do they need to be educated?

Evidence they are a good target

·         Name, age, gender

·         Title/responsibilities

·         Role in the purchase process

·         Attitude

·         Reputation

·         Values

·         Fears

·         Pet peeves

·         Information sources

                                   2. Build a Positioning Statement:  

                                   Many marketers throw a multitude of features and benefits at prospects 

                                   requiring them to sort out what’s really important. More is not better. Hone a                                                      

                                   simple statement that identifies the target market (via the persona), names 

                                   the product and maps it to an appropriate category, prioritizes a benefit 

                                   most relevant to the persona, and clearly distinguishes its uniqueness 

                                   against the nearest competitive alternative.

Positioning Statement Format
To: (target persona)__________________________
(product name)_____________________________ is the one
(category) _________________________________ that
(key customer benefit) _______________________ unlike
(nearest competitive alternative)________________ competitor

3. Draft Your Story

The Message Box tool challenges the marketing team to develop a crisp story to engage the prospect in a dialog focusing more on the prospect than it is about the product. Marketers must first show they understand the problem the customer is facing, then offer a set of criteria that can be used to solve the problem.  Then and only then should marketers tell prospects how and why their products are better than any alternative. The story ends with an affirmation of the value provided and how other customers have benefited from the products and services.

Questions to answer:


What’s our story?  
Because nobody likes to be sold to, messaging must have relevance. Messaging must tell a story.

What makes a good business story?
Tell the customer use case story. Engage the persona with a problem or opportunity they care about.  Offer some thought leadership on how the hero can restore balance. Tell how and why your solution will help them
prevail. Highlight the value and rewards they’ll receive from using your products or services.



Gospe’s message is that market-driven does not mean marketing-driven.  The high ground must not be limited to just marketers and product managers. The journey to the high ground begins by helping the team get comfortable with these initial steps. Socialize the output and align the organization by using the persona to better understand and empathize with the target audience. Use the positioning statement to better understand your value and differentiation from competitive alternatives. Apply the message box to better communicate your value and relevance of your use cases to the target audiences. He left us with a challenge to engage these best practices, evangelize their use and encourage others to participate.