All Posts by nils

Start Doing These 10 Things Today To Be A Better Product Manager

Take Action Today With These Product Management Tips I love lists, and the Internet loves lists. And I love immediately actionable product management tips that I can start using today to become better at my job. It just so happens that I include tons of immediately actionable guidelines in my articles on this site. There Read More

“I Have An Idea” – How I Evaluate Product Ideas

People are always asking me “Hey, I have a product idea. May I run it by you and get your input?” Of course, I say yes. They tell me the idea, and it’s usually “a technical thing for some kind of team.” And my response is, “Well, that sounds neat, but….” And then I ask Read More

Persuasion Tips: Pre-Handle Objections

(This is the third article in my Persuasion Tips series.) “Pre-handling objections” is about showing empathy for your audience. You put yourself in your audience’s shoes, figure out what they’re going to be worried about, and make sure you have answers to some of those worries. Sometimes the worries will surface as questions if you Read More

Persuasion Tips: Have A Goal

Understand and articulate what you’re trying to achieve (This article is a follow-on to my overview article on persuasion tips for product managers.) Every presentation or opportunity for persuasion has a goal, or possibly a few goals. Are you trying to get some executives to make a decision in your favor? Are you aiming to Read More

Persuasion Tips For Product Managers

After a few well-received presentations to senior executives, a few colleagues at my new company asked me, based on the positive effect I got, “Can you give us some tips on persuasion?” I’ve been doing product management a long time, and over time my presentation skills have just naturally gotten more polished. A lot of Read More

Mental Models Applied: Using A 2×2 Chart For Handling Competitive Objections

In some earlier articles and in a talk I gave at a local product management meetup, I’ve shared about the importance of having a toolkit of mental models. They help with decision making, problem solving, communication, plus every other thing we do as product managers. As an exercise for myself, I decided to take a Read More

The Secret Truth About Your Methodology and Processes

What are your goals? A product organization has three overarching goals: Deliver great value to our customers. Do it quickly, efficiently, and with high quality. Do it better over time. A product organization that achieves those goals is much more likely to be successful. Your methodology must be in service to your goals What practices Read More

Storytelling For Product Managers – The TL;DR Version

In my last article, I covered a powerful storytelling technique in great detail. This article is the summary (the TL;DR) version. Do you hem and haw when asked talk about one of your accomplishments? Do you stick to a “just the facts, ma’am” approach when telling a story? Are your stories falling flat and failing Read More

3 Simple Steps To Make Your Customer Stories 10x Better

How To Accelerate Sales With Great Storytelling In my articles about go to market, I always mention the importance of “customer stories.” These stories are a critical component of the knowledge that product management can provide to sales and marketing and sales engineers to help ensure sales success. But, if you’re like me, maybe you Read More

The Secrets of Highly Successful Sales People: Objection Handling

How to use better stories to overcome sales objections During the sales process, the prospect may – and usually does – mention obstacles to getting the deal done. Reasons they might not want to do the deal. They might say “It’s too expensive,” or “your competitor has feature X that you don’t have, and we Read More