Root Cause Analysis – in product management

Assumptions, Marketing, Product Management, Sales

Most engineers and technical folks would understand Root Cause Analysis, RCA in short. People use various tools like the fish bone diagram that the Japanese developed or the 5 Whys to figure out the root cause

The root cause analysis as the name suggests, helps you get to the key constraint, the main reason , instead of just monitoring the effects.

How that helps, is that once you rectify that specific cause, the problems which are related to that cause would not surface again. It does not mean that no other problems will show up. It just means that you will then need to work on the next root cause and so on. In effect over a period of time your whole system will become better and better.

In operations, manufacturing, production, there’s a lot of numeric data which keeps coming in, which can be useful in running analytics and analyzing the causes.

In product management the analysis of root cause becomes a little more difficult. First, you generally end up doing RCA only when something has failed. Which means there are already emotions running high with everyone from finance to sales to production looking to find the scape goat.

Second, marketing has a lot to do with markets, which means people – the buyers – are involved. When you have people involved the psychological aspects are also important.

So when doing the root cause analysis of why a product did not make it in the market, you need to ensure that even trivial things related to inputs of people are not missed.

These small subjective things can change your analysis to help you identify the key reasons why your product didn’t do as well as expected. Sometimes you will come across multiple causes which all seem to be equally important. Generally this means somewhere in the analysis there are assumptions which have not been substantiated clearly.

Once you have called out the assumptions then generally you will end up with only one or two causes.

Once you handle those, chances are you will recover your sales again.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Using reverse psychology to win in sales

education, Human Brain, Marketing, mindset, psychology, Thinking

Most customers believe that when a sales person comes / talks or meets them, they will talk superlative about their company products and services. A lot of that will be worthless and baseless.

So most customers raise their guard and are ready with all kinds of objections to counter the claims of the sales person. Its just a mindset issue.

I have mentioned many times that marketing and sales are all about applied psychology. So if we know that the customer will come up with various objections to our offer, why not give out all the things that your offer does not have – upfront. This way you will puncture all the arguments that the customer could have been trying to add up against your offer.

Obviously you need to word it in such a way , that it does not demean the solution that you have provided. You could put it as …. most of the vendors have policies that completely disregard the customer’s need for authority….we were also like that….however we have now got better sense and brought about this change so that you have the authority….

By acknowledging the challenges upfront, you disarm the buyer with whatever objections they were intending to raise against you.

In addition if you have been educating your buyers , using your marketing, then the buyer would already have been primed with the fact that you keep the customer’s interests in mind first. Which helps reduce the pressure on the sales team when they are selling.

It’s taken me many years to utilize the understanding of human psychology in improving my customer handling capabilities and I am trying to still learn everyday. You should also see how you can utilize this knowledge.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

As an example

Getting blindsided in product management

Assumptions, differentiation, differentiation, Marketing, Product Management

When an idea for a product or service is our baby, even though we ask ourselves and all our team members of the possible issues that the product (or service) may have, we miss out on some of the most elementary things. This generally happens because all our team members get involved in group think.

For a product management guy getting blindsided by this kind of mistake ends up being most expensive , as you don’t realise “what hit you”. What you think as an essential differentiation could be a worthless factor which increases costs.

On the other hand two simple mechanisms that I use to try to exploit all the possible lacunae or weak spots in my thinking are:

Red team, blue team: In thisI make it into a game where I have one team specifically work on figuring out all the items about my offering that the other team can utilise to beat my product. This is the same concept that armies of friendly countries use during their war games. Once the fatal flaws are identified, you then go about correcting them before you get into the market. Sometimes in these exercises, I have also heard comments like – “there is nothing about your product that we even need to bother about, we can beat it very easily”. If you hear this kind of a comment, it means you are in deep trouble. If your internal team doesn’t think your product has any strengths, then you better figure out something new.
The second method I have found useful is to get a finance guy to figure out the plan and numbers. Typically finance guys are very good at doing a post-mortem and want artefacts for every assumption for all their bills. They will ask you for all your background checks and will help you surface the assumptions.

Getting internal people telling you all the possible negative feedback helps you build a much better product offering.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Compelling versus convincing

compelling, education, education, Marketing

The appreciation of the difference in the words Compelling & Convincing, and its implications in marketing was made possible due to Dean Jackson. I would highly recommend his podcasts Morecheeselesswhiskers.com and his podcast with Joe Polish, Ilovemarketing.com.

Whenever you place an argument in front of a person, even with all the data in the world and show them a conclusion, they will be resistive to it. If the conclusion is not drawn by the person herself, she will always try to find the “catch”. What is it that she’s missing.

On the other hand if you educate a person and logically lead them on a path, then the conclusion that they draw is their own and then they are compelled to look at you.

Look at Apple. They have well designed products no doubt. But look at the closed hierarchy of systems they have created. Every few months they have some global launch in which they showcase how the integration between their products and the newer technologies they are launching will make your life even more comfortable.

Till about 4 -5 years back we didn’t have a single Apple device, we now have 8. And my family members wait when a new item is getting launched. Apple does not try to convince them to buy, but they have got so strongly hooked into the Apple ecosystem, they will give you all the reasons why you should not buy anything else.

A person who is compelled to take action will be your customer for a long time because she has taken the decision based on the education you have given her.

So instead of trying to convince people to your point of view, give them the tools by educating them and compel them to take an informed decision.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem