Product Managers always have to be on the lookout for new feature ideas to improve the product that they are responsible for. Where do you think the PMs get the ideas for these features or enhancements? A great product manager should always listen to E.M.U.C.
- Employees
- Metrics
- Users
- Clients
Listen To Employees
Sometimes good ideas are not very far away from you. You just have to keep an open mindset. A good product manager makes it a habit to keep his ears wide open to hear feedback on his work from almost everyone. A lot of good ideas come from your peers in the organization. They are usually the same people that work with you on a daily basis. These people can be grouped into a broad range termed as Employees of the organization you work in. These guys could be your coworkers, management, and you yourselves.
Listen To Metrics
A good product manager always has metrics of his product ready. A great product manager acts on it by analyzing the data and identifying potential areas where changes can be made to improve them. A good example of such a scenario would be when a product manager while reviewing his metrics identifies a group of users dropping off from the check-out process at a certain step. His next logical step is to hear what the metrics are trying to convey. In this situation, it is quite obvious that something needs to change during the checkout process to increase conversion.
Listen To Users
A product always revolves around its end users making it absolutely necessary to be user-centric while planning features for your product. This sometimes can be a bit tricky as there are multiple channels to receive feedback from a user. A user can post their feedback via :
- Social Channels
- Support Forums
- Support Calls
- App Store Reviews
- Blog Reviews
- E-mails
- Face To Face etc
A good product manager is quite capable in streamlining all these channels and extract what matters most to make improvements to the product.
Listen To Clients
As you all know product managers can be classified into three main groups
- Internal Product Managers
- Consumer Product Manager
- Business to Business Product Manager (SaaS PM)
Clients are usually part of Business To Business product managers only.
