 Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar, where we'll be talking about how to stand out as a B2B product manager. Let's get started. A little something about me. My name is Richa Bala. Currently, I'm based in Amsterdam, where I work for Booking.com, one of the world's largest online travel agencies. A lot of you might not know this, but Booking.com is actually a two-way marketplace, meaning that there is, of course, a really strong consumer side of the business which travelers like you and me can use to book our hotel stays and our flights. But there's also a very prominent partner side of the business, or a B2B side of the business, which is where I work. I work on a reservation side, which means that whenever you go and book your stay through Booking.com, my job is to ensure that that reservation information gets communicated to the property you're staying at immediately. So they're aware of your upcoming visit and they can prepare for your visit accordingly. Before moving to Booking.com, I was based in a city in India called Hyderabad where I used to work for a B2B SaaS company called Gainsight. Gainsight is a customer success platform and I managed their customer experience suite of products. Before Gainsight, I also spent a couple of years at Standard & Poor's S&P Global, which is best known as one of the top three big three credit rating agencies. I worked at S&P for their credit analysis business as a product manager and also in their cross-reference business. As you might have gathered by now, I've spent a pretty significant part of my career working as a product manager for B2B products, which is why the topic today is especially very close to my heart. Now, what can you expect as outcomes of this webinar? Essentially three things. Firstly, we'll try to understand what is it about B2B product management that makes it so unique and different from B2C products. Secondly, we'll try to understand what are the skills needed for B2B product management and is it even the right fit for you. Thirdly and lastly, we'll touch upon what are the little things that you can do to take your B2B product management skills to the next level. How can you scale your skills? In the first section of the webinar, we'll try to uncover and answer the first two questions. What is it about B2B product management that makes it so unique and is it even the right fit for you? To answer this question, we'll go through the customer journey of a B2B product. We'll try to understand how is it different from the customer journey of a B2C product and also the skills that are necessary for a B2B PM in order to succeed in each stage. In the interest of time, we'll not cover the entire lifecycle in a lot of depth. We'll only try to understand the most prominent differences between B2B product management and B2C product management as it relates to this lifecycle. Alright, so let's get started. We'll begin our analysis by looking at the consideration and evaluation stage of the lifecycle, where essentially the customer is out in the market looking for a new product and at this stage the customer is evaluating the different options available to them. At this stage, what makes B2B product management so unique is the concept of the user versus the buyer persona. To better understand this, let's talk about Spotify or Netflix as an example. Who is a user and who is a buyer for Spotify? As a Spotify user, I am the buyer meaning I pay for my Spotify subscription out of my own pocket and I'm also the user. So it's safe to say that for most B2C products, the user persona is also the buyer persona, but that's not always the case for most B2B products. For B2B products, the user persona is typically the end user who is also most focused on the operational and tactical excellence and ease of use of the product, whereas the buyer persona is usually somebody more strategic, somebody who's more interested in more higher level strategic goals like return on investment. Is this product going to help my company save time, save money, make money? So essentially a successful B2B PM understands that a successful product appeals not just to the end user but also the buyer persona. And so a successful B2B PM is able to prioritize problems and outcomes that alleviate concerns of both of these different personas. Next is the purchase stage where the customer is actually in the process of purchasing a new product. Here there are two very essential differences that arise between B2B and B2C product management. The first is the concept of ACV or average contract value. And the second is the presence of a sales team. Let's tackle them one by one. What is meant by ACV? ACV refers to average contract value or the average value of the average monetary value that another business is paying to your product or to your company in exchange of your product or your service. The B2C equivalent of this is average order value or AUV and how you can better understand that is by understanding essentially the cart value when you're checking out or buying something off of Amazon or any other e-commerce platform. Generally speaking, ACV or average contract value of B2B products tends to be much, much higher than the average order value of a consumer product. It usually runs in millions, which is why number one, there is usually a sales team present for most B2B products which is responsible for converting new customers, new leads to potential customers. This is also the reason why the sales cycle for B2B products tends to be much longer. And this phase also is highly evaluative and competitive because your customers are really evaluating your products against your competitors to finalize the product which has the best return on investment. A successful B2B PM understands that it's very crucial to support the sales team during the stage and so a B2B PM makes extra effort to ensure that they understand the sales process how leads are generated and move through the pipeline and the crucial role that sales teams play in the success of a B2B product. A successful B2B PM also educates the sales team about the clear product market fit so they help the sales team understand who the right persona or who the right business is to target for their products and also onboard them and educate them about product updates and enhancements. The next stage of the customer lifecycle that we'll be talking about today is the onboarding phase. This is the phase after which, this is the phase after your customer has essentially purchased your product and now they are getting ready to use your product. This is also one of the biggest differences that exist between B2C and B2B product management. On the B2B site, there exists a huge post sales team which are responsible for continued relationship with the customer after the sales is done. The relationship that your post sales team share with the customer is highly crucial. It's very high touch, meaning it's very hands-on and highly personalized. Usually this manifests in the form of an account management team which are usually in touch with your customer throughout the lifetime that they are your customers and also customer success teams and professional services team that ensure that your customer get the most value out of your B2B product. On the other hand, the post sales relationship of most consumer products is likely more tech touch, meaning it's a lot more transactional. Whereas in B2B products, the post sales relationship is highly high touch and far more personalized. A successful B2B PM understands that the post sales team play a very crucial role in the success of your product. They view their post sales team as a treasure trove of insights that they can get from these teams as far as understanding what's working well for the product and what's not working well for the product, what the unaddressed needs of the customers are. Next, we'll talk about the phase of the customer journey where your customer is actually using your product. This is the use and experience part of the lifecycle. One of the most prominent experiences that both B2B and B2C PMs face in this stage is feature requests coming from customers. As you can see, feature requests are common in both B2B and B2C products and your customers usually land up saying something like, we're not going to buy your product unless you build this for us or we're not going to renew our contract with you unless you improve this or you incorporate this into your roadmap. However, in B2B products because the average contract value or the ACV is so high, the feedback from your customers tends to have a greater influence on your roadmap than in B2C. And what this means for a successful B2B PM is successful B2B PMs have, again, a very clear understanding of their product market fit because if there is no clear product market fit, you keep having this leaky bucket of your customers joining and your product not being the right fit for them. Successful B2B PMs also have a very, very clear definition of the product vision and strategy that is not only well understood by their internal stakeholders, but also by their external stakeholders, meaning their customers. Successful B2B PMs also understand that decision making needs to be multi-dimensional, meaning that decisions cannot be made on opinions alone or on data alone. It has to be a well-oiled balance between the two. And of course, keeping a constant pulse on customer pain points and needs always helps because PMs are then better able to anticipate and prioritize some of these feature requests. Lastly, we'll talk about loyalty and advocacy. For your customers to be loyal to you to continuously renew their contracts with you and to be advocates for you, as a BM, you need to have a high level of user empathy for the customers of your product. However, in B2B, this developing user empathy is extremely challenging. This happens essentially because of two reasons. Firstly, your end users and your customers are multi-disciplinary. What I mean by that is no two users of your B2B product are the same. They could be different on the basis of the content of the work that they do, their organizational structure, the level of engagement that they might have with your product. The second thing is that they might not always be able to readily provide their transparent feedback about your product. And again, this can be because there's a severe time crunch or because they're dealing with sensitive data and for that reason they're not allowed to share transparent feedback with you. Another thing to keep in mind is because most of the B2B products are somehow geared towards operational excellence, enhancements cannot have a steep learning curve because otherwise they tend to disrupt the workflow of your users. And so a successful B2B PM understands that yes, building user empathy requires a lot more conscious effort and product discovery needs to be done in a lot of creative ways involving different ways of research, alternate data sources, etc. Successful B2B PMs also understand that the release cadence needs to be well-paced, it cannot be too aggressive and changes cannot be too radical, they have to be iterative in nature. Customers need to be trained about big changes that are coming up, especially on cold floors. Now we're nearing towards the end of the first section of the webinar. I think it's fair to say that in summary, B2B product management tends to be a lot more high-touch, a lot more personalized, but it's also more risk-averse and more expensive as compared with B2C product management. And thus, a successful B2B product manager in summary requires these five critical skills in that toolkit, the ability to communicate constantly and clearly, the ability to prioritize effectively, the ability to minimize risks, the ability to build trust and convince smart people around them, and the ability to develop high empathy. So let's tackle the second section of the webinar where we'll touch upon what can you do as a B2B PM to scale your B2B product management skills. How we go about this section is we'll individually review each of the skills that I called out previously. And then because there's a ton of really valuable information on the internet about what you can do to take each of these skills to the next level, I'll call out that one single thing that was the game changer personally in my career. And I'll also explain why it worked for me and then what you can do to successfully implement that recommendation. We'll start with how can B2B product managers minimize risks. The best way to do this is to have a focus group of experts and meet with them at a regular cadence. What I mean by a focus group of experts is basically representatives for your product from individual departments within your company. And it's even better if you're able to include some customers into this focus group. The idea with this focus group is to meet with them at a regular cadence and have a continued discussion going on about some of the ideas, some of the problems and the solutions you're working on. Why this works really well is that your idea gets better at each stage of the development life cycle. And you're also able to build a group of advocates for your product who can then ensure that your product is set up for success and it's being built in the right way. The next skill to focus on is how can B2B PMs communicate effectively. Again, there's a ton of really valuable information on the internet. But what was really the game changer for me was being able to proactively anticipate and prepare for the types of questions different stakeholders ask you and basically be proactively prepared for answers of those questions. And what worked really well for me was a stakeholder map. A sample of the stakeholder map is already available on your screen. This exercise really helped me tremendously in anticipating and better communicating my message. The next skill to focus on is how to prioritize effectively. Again, the game changer for me personally was having a very clear definition of what the product mission, what the product vision strategy and the North Star was and ensuring that the stakeholders around me were all aligned around that common mission and vision. This helps because your stakeholders also know and understand what is important for you and then they are able to support you in executing that product vision. Next up, how to build trust with your stakeholders. The game changer here is really shadowing your users or asking them to demo to you how they use your product. This is really crucial because it really dispels a lot of notion for you as a PM and shows you how your products are actually being used by your end users. That knowledge is extremely crucial in ensuring that you make the right decisions about solving the right problems. And lastly, how to develop high empathy. For me personally, what worked really well was taking a genuine interest in how my stakeholders day to day looks like and understanding their motivations and fears. For this specific scenario, one book that really helped me tremendously was The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. I highly recommend this book because it has a lot of actionable tips and tricks in better ensuring that you're able to build a better relationship with your stakeholders and you're able to communicate and collaborate. And that was it guys. Thank you so much for attending the webinar today. I hope that these tips and tricks proved to be successful and useful to you. And I'm always up for a conversation. My LinkedIn is right here. So let me know if the conversation of the webinar today was useful to you. Thank you and have a great day.