 Hey everyone, my name is Gopika and today I'll be speaking about how to be a B2B product manager Before I jump straight into the topic. Let me give you a very quick Overview into my background So I'm originally from India. I've lived studied and worked across Italy the United States, Spain and Berlin, Germany where I'm currently based out of I've built products for companies such as Zolando, Wayfair, Festo, Hungary and PopExo And my background is primarily in business. I studied Masters in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Assade Business and Law School in Barcelona So let's jump straight into the topic Which is how to be a B2B product manager? Over the next Minutes or hours We'll be covering a few main topics that Fall within how to become a B2B product manager Firstly, I'll take you through the differences between B2B and B2C product management the essential skills that Is required to exceed or be successful in a role such as this and Lastly, I'll take you through some of the common pitfalls. That's more common In my opinion in B2B product management as well so This talk is for someone who either wants to move from B2C product management to more B2B As well as someone who's completely new to the field of product and wants to get their posterity in this field so Let's look at this image first which basically is the same whether you're building products for B2C or B2B you have a Vision you have the strategy that you need to apply to achieve that vision and Lastly, you have a product manager trying to navigate through all the possible ways to reach that vision So no matter what the sector we use the same tools and frameworks to build and ship products So we all follow the 4d processes as though it's a Bible We use many such frameworks such as Amazon's thinking backwards framework to communicate discuss and gain alignment and Lastly, we keep users at the center of all our decision-making And although there is a massive overlap between these two kinds of product management Few areas have a much higher focus depending on whether you're building for businesses or for end customers So let's jump straight into the first sub topic, which is the key differences between B2B and B2C so as mentioned and The underlying process of Building or working with both these kinds of products is largely the same But based on my experience, I have noticed some key differences between when you build products for businesses or customers one of the main Areas that I've seen this Difference lying Firstly is in the way that we build personas So in B2B and B2C personas are designed a little differently from each other In B2C, you must focus on the person as an individual. So you look at things like age Gender income hobbies, etc. And how how they spend their time where they're located and so on Whereas in B2B, it's more about the organization and the company. So you look at things like For how long has this company been established? What are the capabilities of this company? What's the department size? What products are they specialized in? Are they a single product brand a multi-product brand and so on and Especially for B2B the end User and the consumer is quite different from the buyer. So It's it actually gets tricky. You're building for someone who might not actually pay for the product at someone else So it actually requires a lot more conscious effort to build up empathy with with customers and users in the B2B space the second main difference that I've seen between these two types of product management is In the product experience So for consumer products success is typically measured about getting users to love your product But when you look at an enterprise setting the buyer and The user as I mentioned is different personas. So For enterprise product success is about enabling your end users to deliver more value to their business by using your product I've also noticed in in B2B setting improving workflow efficiency is far more important than just better user experience and almost always building new features takes priority over improving existing user experience and lastly, I've seen something that's Quite unique in the B2B setting is your strong relationship with the sales team So we all know that one of product managers main Job is to gain alignment with multiple stakeholders but in the B2B setting one of your key stakeholders as a product manager is to really be very much aligned with what With the sales team. So consumer products rely on marketing and advertising and word of mouth and B2B The main tool is the sales people So they need to think about us as PM's need to think about the sales Team as just another customer. So if the sales team is say going to make more money We need to think about how we can help them achieve that goal We also need to make sure the value proposition that we're building For is the same thing that the sales team is communicating to the end users while they're selling it and as product manager is one of the main things you need to do In order to better this relationship that the sales team is to understand the sales process Understand how leads are generated and move through the pipeline And also understand this valuable information that the sales Teams are getting from the end users since they're in such direct contact with them So it's it's definitely one of one of the really Important points or important things to note while working in a B2B setting in the B2B setting that you will notice this stakeholder being Far more like has a far more weight than than your other stakeholders so Now that we've spoken about the key differences between Products in a B2B and a B2C setting Let's jump straight into the key skills required to excel in this role the first one is Understanding your user base and while it sounds very very simple and straightforward As you can recall in a B2B setting you're not learning about a person but about a business So you need to learn and cohort users based on different aspects of how they're on the business So let me give you an example here at one of the companies that I was working at we were developing a supplier tooling product For brands that are selling on our platform So one of the ways that we use to segment our users is by the resources they have and the reason When I say resources it means their internal Capabilities and we segmented companies based on the internal capabilities and the reason is because we didn't want to deliver a Product that's beyond their capabilities So we didn't want to deliver a product That's nice to look at but it's not helpful when put to use because the end-users didn't have the Knowledge or the know-how to use the specific product So you can take other you can take other ways to cohort your product or your sorry your users So one is through revenue You can also look at their organizational structure. How is their? Organization team house their org structure divided is it based on our people focusing on specific countries are people specific? focusing on specific categories Because these insights will help you deliver and build your product even better because you will design your product based on their business structures So understanding and really segmenting your user base is quite actually one of the most important factors in a B2B setting So let's move on to the second main skill that's required for a PM to excel in a B2B setting so Usually in the B2C case The intersection that a product management a product manager works in is the intersection of business engineering user experience Research and so on but in a B2B case, especially if you're working with the data or a dashboard product What's really necessary is to have this domain knowledge about data and data science Let's take an example So let's imagine you're building a dashboard product that depicts the performance of a customer's business through interactive visualization Sounds easy, right? You just have a few numbers a chart You don't really you don't really need much for what and what's What a PM needs to know is that it's not just about the data and Some building a chart but you need to understand the close proximity between design and data infrastructure So the way you design and visualize a chart or a table dictates how the Infrastructure is built whether you need a single table multiple tables How are the interactions between the tables and so on so a PM in this field needs to do have a deep appreciation for what is possible and will be soon be possible if They were to take the full advantage of the flow of data If you're building and this is specifically for someone building a data product You need to know And learn that building products with data also requires a data strategy And this is above what a business strategy is so a data strategy is the way and your plan That you develop to understand how data is generated how data can be used to improve the product and and also use this in your products and Also use data To improve your products long-term success So in other words a data product manager or a product manager working with data and dashboard products Makes decisions that get the flywheel moving with data While you don't need to understand the nitty-gritty details and and technicalities What is helpful in a really a collaborative discussion with your back-end engineers or data engineers is To learn and know the know-how of what kind of infrastructure is required to support the product And what is the complexity and costs associated with scaling the data? And yes data scientists or engineers will always be around to answer your questions But again in order to be an active participant in these discussions And to also understand the trade-offs you make by making one decision involving data versus the other Learning about the infrastructure and learning about the trade-offs will help you develop better in this role So that's the second most important and critical skill that a product manager in this field needs to have Lastly it is as we mentioned right at the beginning of this talk About the relationship with the sales team So that's one skill that a product manager working in the B2B space needs to really Work towards improving as I mentioned the sales team is Literally the most invaluable source of information since and this is the sales. This is your account managers Anyone who is in direct contact with the partners or with your end users Can really help you understand that their needs and their problems and they can also help you in highlighting What you could build next? so something that a product manager in this field should not fall prey to is Just building things that come across in in these feedbacks. So there could be multiple times where Key account manager or someone from the commercial teams can tell you that hey, why don't you build this? It might add value to our user and I think what's What's a skill that a product manager needs to have is to Understand should is not to build something As and when they come in in the form of feedback but actually learn about the underlying problem that the current product is currently not solving and Then decide whether a scalable solution is required To answer these unadressed problems And that's the reason Especially with when you're interacting with the sales team or commercial teams There needs to be not only the sort of exchange but also Prioritization and the deeper and the second level of research That needs to be taken up after these discussions because a lot of these conversations might be in the form of a solution And not a problem And that's where a product manager needs to dive deep into and learn about the problems instead of Going straight ahead into solution mode so Lastly is something that I just touched upon But I want to go deeper into it, which is prioritization and expectation management Which comes also with having Business and enterprise customers and working with the sales team So something that might Come about in a B2B setting is You can get Requests from both the sales team as well as their existing customers while this is also true For B2C products the key difference again is that B2B products have fewer customers And there could be a chance where these few customers actually generate a lot of revenue and have a lot of weight in what you build so Something that you need to understand is yes these these specific customers may have More weight than you are the customers in terms of the revenue They make or the relationship that they have with your team But something that you also need to know is weigh this against what you're building. So our watch is what you're building Specific to that one customer You also need to think if you customize your product heavily to that one customer How can this product scale to the other customers that are using your your tool or your product? So it is a key challenge for product managers in the B2B context to navigate this fine line between Keeping your customers happy Generating enough revenue and building features that are that are scalable to all users or most users to your product Secondly what I want to touch upon is expectation management. So Something that is very very Noticable in a B2B setting is that your sales team wants to have a High-level visibility on your or want to have a lot of visibility into your road map. So We do know that road map is something that changes quarterly or six months, but Sometimes the sales and even the end customers want to understand What you're building and are you building for things that are being requested for? and so I think what we need to navigate as a product manager is this line between enough visibility for customers and sales team and Also the flexibility to be able to deliver the highest value product and killing those ideas that fail to deliver the value on the other hand so you need to somehow make and and Constantly communicate with your end customers and your sales team By by every time there is a change in your road map every time you do go a different direction Communication is key to to manage The stakeholders expectation So that's one of the key skills that a product manager needs to develop in this Working in this sector or in this segment So now Lastly it brings us to our last segment, which is the common pitfalls that a product manager in this setting falls to And while this is very much true for also be to see Products the reason why I've highlighted in in this B2B space is because it costs you more so by if you if you fall to one of These these problems and if you fall pray to one of these problems You're not only losing customers or you're not only losing the few handful customers That you have but you're also spending resources that you may or may not have In order to build these so Let's move on to the first one, which is aimless exploration so What I've highlighted here is in the beginning I took you through how there are a million parts that a product manager can take to get to the vision But what could happen is you don't know where to begin especially if it's a new product especially if it's a new feature So sometimes what product managers end up doing is just they just take up Random discovery so you just go ahead and say that I'm going to interview a bunch of Users or partners and see what comes up in the discussion and take it from there so That's one of the common pitfalls that I've noticed in this field and Something that and let's let's make this more concrete run example So let's say you want to or your goal as your product vision is to increase Revenue streams through advertising And what I've seen product managers do is just go out there interview Your users and understand how can we generate revenue through advertising? there are a bunch of different ideas that the PMs want to test and Yeah, it has no purpose and it has no clear direction on how much or how likely is this idea going to Contribute to achieving this vision So what's the solution to that so the solution to that is instead of Instead of wandering aimlessly You need to wander with purpose and what that means is Before you jump straight into solutions and before you jump straight into discovery You need to break this higher vision down into teams So what you're now doing is saying yes my products and vision is to generate revenue through advertising and instead of Aimlessly going forward and testing and throwing a bunch of ideas to your users What you can do is first segment them based on themes and then select a theme that you want to validate and Discover further in so in this case what we've done is instead of looking at Bunch of ideas. We are now saying hey, yes, we can generate revenue through advertising through data-driven insights through alerts or through recommendations and Now how you're going to start your discovery work and your research work is by picking one theme and Then moving that forward in the discovery stage. So you know that you're moving With a specific goal in mind with a specific team in mind And you're not like all the noise is cancelled out Something that you can do even better is not only choose a theme and validate and test a theme but Combine it with personas in order to be even more To a wander even more with purpose So what we've done here is that we're saying that let's take this example. We're saying that we want to understand How can insights contribute to generating? advertising revenue and We believe that there are certain types of personas That will help us generate this revenue if they did use insights So then during your interview process and your discovery process you specifically look at this target group and Validate this problem with that target group before going and building something. So what this does is it strengthens your Discovery work and your eventual 4d work And you're not wandering aimlessly. You're not wasting resources trying to find an idea that might work But you're putting you're developing a framework. You are Segmenting the bigger idea into smaller chunks that you want to test and then testing it with the relevant User group. So that's one way to solve this Let's move on to the second problem that I have noticed is It's a sunk cost delusion. So it mostly happens when you have shipped a product without great traction but you continue building on it because You think that by building or making it nicer or prettier The product that's not working you might Gain more Customers or you might improve the engagement and so on the solution to this is It's very simple. It's basically slowing down what that means is instead of going and sending out additional emails communication emails to your users instead of improving the UI UX or Just building complimentary features that you think might improve the product what you need to do is ask yourself some devilishly simple questions and These are mostly what is your value proposition of the product? What are what is the problem you're trying to solve? Who is it that you're trying to solve the problem for? is someone how are Your end users currently solving this problem. So especially for this question, you would know that if your current Business users are not doing much to really solve the problem It might not be a real problem Versus if your end users are stitching together a bunch of things and trying to make it work for them You know that this is a problem to solve because they take a lot of time and energy during their day to make it Like make it work for them So there are these certain questions that you need to ask yourself, which is the basic questions before you go and Build further upon upon the feature that you've delivered And if you then do find out the answers and if you do Believe that you're not building for a certain target group or if you're not building the right product What you need to do is pivot instead of moving even Further down the product development classes So let's move on to the last common Pitfall which is biases so What this means is a bias is basically Misinterpreting or skewing the signals for validation So let's take this example here This was this is a real-life example So at one of the companies that I was working at We were checking the engagement And the activation rate of the different users that we're using our product I got so excited by active users that I ignored The remaining users so what I did was looked at active users constantly looked at The growth in revenue that they were generating how often they were coming back and What I didn't see is this chunk of users or this cohort of users that were actually going That were actually declining in engagement and in adoption and I spotted this at the right time and When I tried to figure out how to solve a problem such as this I realized or I learned that cohorting is one of the best ways to solve this problem so what you do in By cohorting is instead of asking yourself what's going well you ask yourself what's declining so when you look at Graphs such as this You see the yellow spots and you ask yourself what's going What's going there and you go further into it? So let me give you a more concrete example So let's say you have a hundred users and 50 of those users are underperforming What you do is then segment these users into A cohort such as when was the first time they logged into the tool secondly how much revenue are they generating? third The third point or they have an internal capabilities So when you segment these users into different segments What you then do and they do is spot the segment that's declining. So then you can approach those specific Users, let's say the user that's generating less than a certain amount of revenue and do not have More than two employees at their company Is causing the decline so what you then do is approach those? users for a post rollout feedback and dig deeper into what is Not helping them. So what are the things that would provide them value that you're not providing them value with? so that's one of the best ways to Not fall into bias is to consistently question what's not going well and Then go deeper into into that problem The second way to not fall into this bias or the survivorship bias is or Considering by considering product management as a team sport and this was actually one of the best advice is that was given to me by a mentor and I was told That if you do consider product manager as a team sport and not something that you do at an individual level you Take self-worth and the idea That's originally one one element and you split them into two so you decouple self-worth and idea So if an idea fails, it's it's not to just you that led to its failure It's a bunch of people. So you wouldn't fall pray to Cognitive biases or survivorship biases Involve as many people as you can in the ideation phase and the validation phase and the feedback phase And that's that's one way to not to Detach self-worth and and the idea So I guess that was a little intro or a little package to Getting started into B2B product management and something that you can expect By going into this field. I hope that it helped you gain an insight into this area and Yes, thank you all for tuning in and I'm happy to answer any questions either via LinkedIn or via this this talks chat, so Thank you and Have a great rest of the week