I read this article by @adam_hartung in Forbes. The snippet below really rang true so I thought I would share:

The marketing department at Wal-Mart does all the market research on customers, trends and advertising – traditional and on-line.  Marketing is the organization charged with looking outside, learning and adapting the organization to any market shifts. In this role marketing is expected to identify new competitors, new market solutions that are working better, and adapt the organization to shifting market needs.  It is responsible for being the eyes and ears of the organization, and then think up new solutions addressing these external inputs.  That’s why it needs to report to the CEO, so it can drive toward new solutions which can revitalize the organization and keep it growing with new market trends.

But now, it’s been shot.  Reporting to sales, marketing’s role directed at driving same store sales is purely limiting the function to defending and extending the success formula that has produced lackluster results for 12 years.  Marketing is no longer in a position to adapt Wal-Mart.  Instead, it is tasked to find ways to do more, better, faster, cheaper under the leadership of the sales organization.

When faced with market shifts, winning companies adapt.  Look at how skillfully Amazon has moved from book seller to general merchandise seller to offering a consumer electronic device

Unfortunately, too many businesses react to market shifts like Wal-Mart.  They hunker down, do more of the same and re-organize to “increase focus” on the traditional business as results suffer.  Instead of adapting the company hopes more focus on execution will somehow improve results.

Have you seen this in your own company? How have you combatted it?

The 2nd annual Rocky Mountain ProductCamp is history.  150 attendees, 12 sessions, 1 unkeynote, and lots of information sharing.  It was quite a day. Despite the positives, it is the learnings that I’d like to focus on over a series of posts.  Primarily what I learned is ProductCamp guidelines and best practices are just that - no more no less.  Some of the topics I hope to cover in this series include:

• Charging vs. not-charging at ProductCamp
• The two-foot rule
• ProductCamp management and organization
• unFormat
• Topics

This post reviews the effects of charging vs. not charging admission at ProductCamp. I strongly like the idea of a free event, monetarily at least.  After organizing 2 relatively successful camps my opinion is being swayed by the customer.  In 2010 Rocky Mountain ProductCamp had 184 registrants and a 30% no-show rate.  This I learned was the norm.  Okay, let’s try this again and see what happens.  In 2011 we got 272 registrants and our no-show rate rose to around 55%.  At the end of the 2011 camp we polled those that remained about whether a small “fee” would dissuade them from coming.  Nobody likes to pay, but the consensus was a $5 - $10 fee would not be too much of a burden nor would it keep many away. Registration fees have been used at other ProductCamps as a way to increase their appearance rates and also try to keep the camp independent. 

Never satisfied with the obvious solution I have to spin it around and make sure there isn’t something obvious being missed.  One thing I am beginning to wonder is if there is a difference between the larger “markets” (e.g. Austin or Silicon Valley) where the event creates its own gravity and a smaller event (e.g. Denver, Utah or Minnesota) that might not have the pull to create critical mass. 

In the larger market, ProductCamp could be viewed as the place where all the Product people in the know go to be seen.  In a smaller or fledgling area where the value and traction hasn’t quite taken hold there is less of a draw on the day to attend.  A registrant registers to hold their spot and makes an audible call that morning.  On some level they weigh the pros and cons of going.  How do the uncertain benefits of a user-organized event and uncertain vote-on-the-day-of topics stack up against playing a round of golf or watching the kid’s soccer game? 

One way to ferret this out was to just do a quick plot of the registration dates vs. the no-show numbers.  The results are shown in the figure below.  What you see is that on 11 registrants who signed up on August 18th did not attend the event.  The large spike on August 18-19 could be forgiven by the fact that this is over 2 months before the actual event. Maybe they forgot despite the reminder emails or their plans changed.  Life happens.  I don’t have as neat of an explanation for those who registered on October 25-26.

Would you charge or not charge? Why?

The joys of starting a new job:

• Introductions to a sea of new faces.  There will be a test tomorrow.
• IT tosses you a computer and a 'unique' password - There you go bud!  Good Luck.
• Password hell - what uses that initial password and what other sites need to have one established
• Email configuration -
  
  • I'm 50 e-mails behind and I haven't even been in the office 50 minutes. 
  • A green field opportunity to improve upon the last system I had, except I don't know what folders to create, what rules to implement, or even how to configure my signature. 
• What's my address and phone number?
• Utilities -
  
  • Need to install Adobe reader
  • Need to install Apple Quicktime viewer
  • Need to install Firefox and ditch IE
  • Printer? Where and how
  • What about screen capture tools, browser bookmarks, e-mail contacts
• Working around IT - desktop alerts, screensaver and password protection.  It's the little things to improve workflow. Ssshh, they don't like that.
• TLA's - In addition to the new names and faces now there is a new language I've got to decipher.
• The Intranet - where in this organically grown resource do you find
  
  • Org charts
  • Company Policies
  • Corporate forms and paperwork
  • Procedures
  • Data
  • Stats, etc
• Where's the coffee?
• Leading to where's the bathroom

The first day is quite eventful but the possibilities are endless.  Here's to going forward.

Rocky Mountain ProductCamp is coming up quickly on October 29th.  Before things got too chaotic, I managed to visit Booyah Online Advertising agency. This segment of "On the Road With Rocky Mountain ProductCamp" is an interview with Jamie Duklas (@jduklas), the Director of Social Media at Booyah!

Jamie had some interesting insight regarding social media.  He advised that potential clients should step back and think about their ultimate goal.  Depending on your budget and intentions you may find that paid search will yield a greater result.  (For more on that, check out this post with Trada's VP of Marketing, Bill Quinn.)

After establishing that social media is really the way to go, Jamie advises starting with Facebook.  Even if you are a B2B product or company, with over 700 million users on Facebook, this is where you will find your customers.

You will want to get your 'liker' numbers into the 3K - 10K+ range.  Less than that your are not talking to anyone.  As you increase beyond 3K you'll stand a greater chance of interacting with your community.

The important point to remember with social media is that the conversations are happening.  They may or may not be occurring on your Facebook/Twitter environment.  By taking a proactive approach you can interact with your customer base.  In the instance of customer negativity you can address the complaint early and possibly convert them into an advocate.

Don't take the 3-monkey approach.

Jamie has proposed a session at Rocky Mountai ProductCamp on Social Media.  If you found this interesting register today and join us on October 29th. Maybe this topic will be discussed more.

Is your marketing department seen as a revenue generator or a cost center?  I sat down with Bill Quinn, Vice President of Marketing at Trada to learn a little more about his session proposal for Rocky Mountain ProductCamp on October 29th.

This interview was a quick recap of an earlier session Bill gave on Marketing Funnels.

Some key take aways include:

• [2:30] "In order to market effectively, you have to measure everything.  The awesome thing about marketing these days is that you can measure everything."
• [3:10] Discussion of the funnel dynamics and how to make the funnel pay off
• [10:30] Trada’s looking for a Digital Marketing Manager. Interested? Catch Bill or someone else from Trada at Rocky Mountain ProductCamp.
• [11:00] Bill's RMPCamp topic proposal and that “ProductCamp is all about learning from one another”

Care to share your funnel experiences or best ways to measure your marketing ROI, add a comment or join us on October 29th and share with the group.

I attended the innagural ProductCamp Utah on September 10th.  Ryan Money (@rmoney) gave a keynote called "Because Kills."  Frankly, I found myself skeptical of his content for the first 10 minutes of the talk.  It was very entertaining, but wasn't sure how it related to Product Management.  Then he hit the nerve.  In the video below Ryan addresses the situation that product managers sometimes have to deal with [07:30].  Development comes back with something "horrible."  Digging into this:

Q: Why do we do it this __________ way?
A: Because.  Because that is how we've always done it.

If you stop at because and you don't keep on drilling into that then you won't realize the innovation.

Due to time limitations on YouTube, I had to split this into two sections.  Total time = 22 minutes.  Total presentation time was close to an hour.  Second part is below.  I encourage you watch it as well.

The big take-away from the second video was a quote from Jeff Bezo's on having a product fail.

On the day you decide to give up on it [project], what happens?  Your operating margins go up because you stop investing in something that wasn't working.  Is that really such a bad day?" [04:30]

In the end, Ryan did a great job of tying it all together.  In summary for the talk [10:15]:

• Think outside the box
• Take passion and reward people trying and giving it their best

Are you making a point to remember this in your daily activities?  When was the last time you questioned the status quo?

Last week I sat down with Mike Thompson, co-owner of Boulder Creek Winery to talk with him about product development and how engaging his customers has resulted in benefits all around.

1. Marketing - January is the slowest month for wine sales at BCW. This brings their best customers into the winery, keeps BCW top of mind during that dead period between the holidays and Valentines Day.
2. Stickiness - Creates a feeling of investment, contribution, and loyalty by their customers. If you have a hand in creating a wine wouldn’t you want to serve it and the story of how you helped create it to potential guests?
3. Sales - As Mike indicates in the video, nearly 20% this wine is sold before it even goes in the bottle.
4. Exceptional Quality - Listening to their customers, BCW is sure to select the best according to their customers tastes, literally.
5. Finally, reading between the lines, BCW is not asking its customers to create the final blend. They are asked to rate the best ingredients. BCW then creates a couple different blends from them and again asks them to rate them. The customer is in the position to indicate to BCW what it likes. BCW is in the business of providing a product that offers exceptional value and flavor according to their customer’s tastes.

This response is to @VFigatelix post on training product managers and her experience. I tried to enter the commentary in the blog's post but was unsuccessful. So rather than waste the thoughts...

Veronica, I remember seeing and appreciating your tweets. I was a little disappointed when they stopped because there were good points in them; points that probably might entice me to spend the money and attend a pragmatic course. This was an excellent marketing plug for them that was missed. Contained in your post are some meta issues, IMO. These would include:

• Public relations
  This topic is becoming a case study. I've seen some tweets and spoken to other PM's about it. You've now got a blog post on the topic as well. A simple apology could have shortened the commentary (regardless of thinking behind it). This is a shame.
• Intellectual property
  I can see Pragmatic's initial reaction. The thing is, in today's economy knowledge is cheap. The secret sauce is what you do with it. Pragmatic is very good at its execution. That cannot be replicated through tweets or even having the materials. Having people such as you evangelizing the message and value adds credence to their offering. It is a mental shift we are all going to have to undergo. It used to be startups were in stealth mode until they could make a big splash. Today it is get input early and iterate as quick as possible. Information sharing is not a bad thing. Your competition will get it regardless.
• Product management "community"
  Product management is fractured. Is there a "community"? I see one around ProductCamps and on Twitter. While Pragmatic and Brainmates may be two instructional organizations and seemingly competitors, they carry weight and influence. The knowledge transfer between the teams can elevate the profession as a whole. It would be great if there could be more of a definitive PMBOK that current PMs could refer to and future PMs could use to come up to speed on more quickly.
• Collective intelligence
  Product management knowledge is disseminated in a haphazard manner. Read this book, take that course, and attend some conference. Over time you acquire a set of tools. There is no guarantee that others have those same sets. Say Kano to a group of PMs and you'll get about 50% recognition. This kind of training and nebulous knowledge makes it hard to quantify what companies should expect from their PMs and what separates the good from the bad.

Each of the meta questions above could go into greater depth, but this is not the right place. In short, thanks for sharing your experience. The discussion is a chance for improvement.

1. Who stands to lose the most financially
2. Who understand the value of the product or service
3. When it breaks, who has to fix it or who do you call to have it repaired

Rocky Mountain ProductCamp is October 29th.  With the few weeks remaining I thought I would get some different perspectives on product management, product marketing, and product development.  Today I had the opportunity to ask Brad Feld a few questions about product management.  For those that are not familiar with Brad, he is the managing director at the Foundry Group which is a Boulder based venture capital firm.  He has also written two books - Do More Faster and Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist.

Brad recently wrote a blog post about Competition.  This post and some of the promised follow on posts look to be great product management discussion topics. Today Brad shared his views on -

• [00:55] Product Management's roots
• [02:00] CEO of the Team
• [05:25] Product Management in the Front Range
• [05:55] Skills
• [07:15] Evolution in the company as it grows
• [08:30] Organizational placement
• [09:10] How to break into Product Management

While I would have liked to have drilled more into any of these topics, however the 15 minutes promised were quickly exhausted.  I also wanted to respect Brad's time during a working vacation.

For more check out:

• This Week in Venture Capital - Brad Feld, Managing Director at Foundry Group
• Great Entrepreneurs  Are Obsessed With The Product