The Product Book

Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell

The three critical skills I think you have to develop in order to get a job as a product manager are technical expertise, domain expertise, and communication expertise.

e grow by working on our weak spots.

The Customer Life Cycle

4Ps Framework, is a guide to making marketing decisions and a reminder of key decisions you have to make when launching a product. The Ps stand for product, price, promotion, and place.

ustomers buy your product to make their lives better. Make sure your message clearly highlights how your product will help your customers improve their lives.

these ads don’t focus on the product—they focus on your life, the experience you want, and how the product helps you have that experience

A simple way to make sure you’re using the right diction is to ask how a customer would tell a friend about your product. If their diction is similar to yours, excellent! If it’s very different, reconsider your word choice. You want your message to match how your customers see the world.

here are three key questions our theme should answer: Why is this product/company important? Why are you doing this? What’s special about your company’s mission that will make a customer want your product over a competitor’s? Ideally there will be one fundamental theme that answers those three questions. Grab a blank sheet of paper and start writing down what you think your company’s core theme is. Revise what you write as needed to make sure that theme applies to all three questions.

Different personas will want different value propositions and care about different features/use cases.