PMs need to set their teammates up for success
Keep in mind how customer problems and product initiatives impact the team
There is no doubt: solving customer pain points is one of the most important purposes of a PM’s job. But don’t lose sight of the fact that your colleagues have pain points, too. Sometimes, customer problems are best manifested through problems that your own teammates are experiencing. Similarly, new features and other big product changes require setting your team up for success before your customers can reap the value of those changes.
I also want to mention that many companies have PMs solely focused on internal products. I’m bringing this up because when you are managing an internal product, your teammates are essentially your customers. If a company has a data processing operation, there is likely a PM responsible for streamlining that process, where users are data processors and are to be treated like end customers!
As a PM, it is your job maximize business value. It just so happens that customer value is one of the biggest determinants of business value (you especially think this way if you are in a customer-facing product role). It is important to keep in mind that everything happening with your product — big releases, engineering changes and bugs — impacts everyone internally.
Here are some examples of pain points that customers can run into that quickly become pain points for your own team:
A global bug impacting all customers is not just a problem for customers — it is now a problem for the CS team that needs to field 100s of messages from customers reporting the issue and asking when a resolution will occur.
Backend instability does not merely impact power users who might be experiencing slowness in the app — your sales team relies on the app working perfectly so they can show off everything it can do and close sales. (As a note, some companies have separate environments for the sales team so they can avoid issues like these.)
A competitor releases a feature similar to your own, but has a differentiator that makes customers think, “Why doesn’t my current feature offer this?” That question does not always remain in the customer’s head — account and customer success managers might hear from them next. And when they do, PMs get the next Slack message with the question “Are we able to offer this?”
From a strategic standpoint, big changes you have planned for your product don’t only impact the customer — teammates are impacted as well:
Rolling out a game-changing feature only enabled for certain pricing packages? Your sales team needs to be aware of those implications so they can reach out to customers who are thinking about upgrading and include this functionality in upcoming demos.
Marketing needs to get content (blogs, landing pages, emails, social media campaigns, etc.) ready ahead of big releases, so they need to be alerted well in advance so they have enough time.
Thinking about how what you are working on impacts others is central to the PM role. It’s not enough to merely think about your customers. As a PM, you must let internal stakeholders know about important information that impacts them. This requires thinking ahead and constantly utilizing strategy and planning skills. I could argue there is no better way to maximize business value than to set your teammates up for success day in, day out.