Since 2018 my mission has evolved. Part of my repertoire is now designing and delivering a hiring process which finds the best product managers in the game.
In addition to providing me with immense job satisfaction, interviewing countless candidates for product leadership positions has forced me to explore the traits I look for when hiring product managers.

A data-driven, analytical approach? Strategic sensibility? Design expertise? Feature prioritization? Product Managers have an arsenal of technical skill sets which are used differently depending on the size of the company, type of product, existing resources and where the company is on its roadmap. These are the skill sets which all good product managers have. They are a prerequisite for the job, and you won’t be hired without them.

However, what separates the exceptional product managers from the good are the intangible, intrinsic qualities which shape how someone conducts themselves day-to-day. They are part soft skills, part mindset. They are your ego, empathy, and your ability to listen; they are how you learn and how you deal with feedback. On a deeper level, they are how you view and question the world. As such, I spend as much time – if not more – studying how Product Manager candidates field questions in an interview, rather than how they reply.

Over the years I’ve identified some of the hidden traits the very best product managers have. So, if you want to know what makes an exceptional product manager, let’s dive in.

Intellectually Curious

As a Product Manager, you are the ‘Questioner in Chief’; the ‘why’ man or woman. Curiosity is the bedrock from which creativity, ideas and solutions arise. The best product managers ask the right “why” at the right time. They are eternally curious, and when they don’t receive the best response, their curiosity allows them to look for, think about, and find answers which elude merely good product managers.

In other words, autodidacts make for great product managers: Learning a new language, picking up a new musical instrument, mastering a new topic. Self-directed learning and curiosity are essential traits for successful product management.

The added advantage of intellectual curiosity and self-learning is that, even if you are leading a project in a vertical you have little prior experience in, the skill set allows you to gain the experience and knowledge necessary to excel.

Furthermore, when it comes to your vertical of expertise, curious PMs who get granular with trends bring more to the discussion. They ask better questions and make observations (workflow, team dynamics etc…) the less curious don’t.

Confidently Humble

A product manager isn’t expected to – and nor should they – always have the right answer. A great PM must be both confident in their abilities and open to accepting responsibility when things go awry. They must be humble to the knowledge of others and listen openly when alternatives are given.

Having a mindset which is strong enough to move mountains, but flexible enough to adapt when change is needed, is part of the makeup of a great product manager. To use an analogy from Bruce Lee, “be formless, shapeless, like water.”

Comfortable with Ambiguity

When I interview Product Managers, one of the questions I ask is about a particular scenario which is purposefully vague. Answering the question outright isn’t the point. I do this to see a candidate’s comfort with making (and stating) their assumptions when information is limited. I want to see how comfortable, or uncomfortable, the candidate is when faced with missing facts.

This is a reflection of the reality a PM faces in the workplace in 2021. Knowing all the parameters up front is a luxury you simply don’t have. This is especially true in small companies and start-ups where there is less experience, knowledge or precedent to draw insight from. A PM who is paralyzed when faced with unknowns won’t get very far, being comfortable with ambiguity is part of a great product manager’s mindset.

Values Criticism

You’ve identified an issue, come up with a potential solution, and gathered the necessary requirements to execute it. However, when you pitch your strategy to your team you are met with criticism and unexpected questions.

The best PMs embrace this criticism and feedback, they go after it, they demand it. It is part of the process, and every project is better because of it. The best PMs build feedback and criticism into their thought process; they learn from it and use it, both on current, and future projects.

In addition, employees often find it intimidating to challenge the status quo, fearing their voice will go unheard, or their position in the team jeopardized. Great PMs create a culture of open discussion and debate by setting an example. By being willing to stick their neck out and ask challenging questions of the leadership, successful PMs breed an environment of effective discussion where difficult questions and constructive criticism can be voiced freely.

Understands Others’ Contexts

Another question I ask during interviews is used to discover how a candidate would resolve a difference in opinion over a product feature with their CEO. This is a difficult question to answer honestly (and often goes hand-in-hand with the points made about valuing criticism – a clear indicator of potential relationships with seniority). Invariably, less self-aware candidates launch into a defence of their own idea, speaking at length about how they would use data to prove their opinion was correct, yet deferring to the CEO if they couldn’t ‘win’ the argument.

In all my time asking this question, only about 10% of candidates have said they would first try to understand their CEO’s decision making process. This is empathy in action, and it is a key trait to a great product manager.

A CEO has investors, different departments, the press and a whole host of other responsibilities, outside the remit of a product manager, to consider when making a decision. The CEO’s decision framework is often at odds with a product manager and it’s crucial to understand that before lobbying for your own prioritization. (Incidentally, this is a behaviour which transcends the workplace.)

Brings Others Along for the Ride

The destination is often about the journey.

Product managers who monopolize the search for a solution risk alienating their team and bringing counter-productive criticism and feedback when the results are pitched. Bringing others along for the ride – giving courage and motivation to the team aside – often brings more defined and executable results.

Naturally, there is a balance to be struck: you’re not meant to crowd-source your job, nor pander to groupthink. However, your team is composed of product experts and, if judiciously consulted, will greatly improve the project and the team dynamic. Great product managers understand this and use it to better the project.

Knows Which Hills to Die On

There is nothing more exhausting – and ultimately useless to a business – than a PM who fights every battle, regardless of its overall importance. Whether it’s due to misunderstood priorities, ego, or a misguided idea that pushing for more is always better, a PM who can’t prioritise issues and tasks is not a PM.

Furthermore, if they have been picked well, a team will be as passionate about the product as their product manager. As such they will be open to endless arguments and discussion about the smallest of features. It’s up to you as a great product manager to discern what’s worth spending time discussing and solving, and what isn’t. Then execute.

Pulls Back to See Big Picture

We’ve all been there: 45 minutes into a meeting on a specific KPI which needs improvement. Before you is an impressively large mind map of all the ideas competing for feature interventions. You’ve diligently captured most of them, but now’s the time to decide what to actually develop.

A great product manager chooses this moment to pull back and see the project in its entirety; to see the forest, not just the trees. They will remind the team of the KPI they’re here to address, and what parameters are in play for its solution (by when, by whom and with what resources).

Mark Baxter, AC&A Senior Associate, says,“THE PM’S ROLE IS TO BE THE “KEEPER” OF THE CORE VALUES OR PILLARS AROUND WHICH A PRODUCT (AND POTENTIALLY COMPANY) ORBIT. THAT ROLE CAN KEEP THE TEAM ALIGNED DURING HARD DISCUSSIONS ABOUT WHAT TO INCLUDE AND WHAT WON’T YET (OR EVER) BE INCLUDED. WHEN VALUES GUIDE FEATURE SELECTION, THERE’S LESS CONFUSION AND EGO TO DEAL WITH.”

Knows Their Process

I often ask a PM candidate to describe one of their favourite software tools and explain why they love using it. It’s a rich question and gives insight to not only their product sense, but also their own self. How a candidate answers this question tells me how closely they have examined their own productivity, efficiency and workflow. It tells me, ultimately, how efficient they are.

The great product managers know their processes, but they also reflect on their own methods. They use critical thinking to see through the plethora of productivity tools and choose (and utilize) the ones most effective for them. Through self-examination comes growth. It is why I look for it when interviewing candidates.

Carries No Baggage

Being a consultant gives me the ability to view a product clinically. Unlike an employee, my opinions are not coloured by interpersonal conflicts, ego, or the culture of the company.

A great PM (consultant or employee) avoids accumulating baggage and is able to treat each problem and opportunity with a user-first mentality. When I interview PMs I look for someone who can ignore personal feelings, product politics, and history, and be willing to question, implement or alter decisions based solely on their merit.

How someone frames their time in previous positions and the language they use to describe scenarios (pay special attention to previous failures) and former colleagues can often shed light into how prone they are to picking up baggage.

As our Senior Associate Maxime reminded me recently, a great PM requires a diplomatic personality, as you’re often pitching solutions to teammates who aren’t as free of baggage. ????

What intangibles do you look for when hiring a great Product Manager?

The post 10 Intangible Traits of a Great Product Manager appeared first on Mobile Freemium Game Design & Product Management | AC&A.

While your concept may have found product-market fit, if you start to charge users in the wrong way, you might miss out on maximizing your long term success. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the most effective app monetization strategies for 2018.

#1: Subscription Revenue

With Netflix and Spotify cementing the idea of monthly streaming subscriptions in the eyes of the average consumer, it’s never been easier to build a subscription business within your app. This business model is powerful because it helps build a stream of recurring revenue, which makes predicting the future health of the business a more manageable task. The key to healthy subscription revenue comes from what services are offered initially for free.

One option has always been giving a free trial of all your features for a limited time, then charging for the access continually. This is popularized by Netflix and has been staple since the days of AOL internet access. The benefits of this approach are that it’s fairly straight-forward in the eyes of end users, and from a product development side you don’t need to discuss whether features are a “free” tier or a “paid” feature – they’re all part premium experience.  The downside is that users are forced to make a choice at the time of the trial’s expiration – they may or may not be ready to make that choice by that time.

The other approach is to let users utilize some or most of the features for free, indefinitely. This lets users get acquainted to the core functions of the experience at their own pace. However, some of the more advanced features would require the user to join the premium subscription tier. In this way you can have a steady user base of free users, and over time gain their trust and allow them to become power users.  

Which approach is best depends a lot on the type of service you have. For example, if the value your service provides is long term, consistent value add, then it might be best to not have a limited time trial.  The limited-time approach works best if the value proposition to the user is easy to understand in a short amount of time (i.e you have a catalog of content).

In any case – subscription services aren’t limited just to Netflix and Hulu – many apps are making great revenue off of very specific use cases, and charging users for pro features. Take a look at Strong, Bumble, and Lifesum for great flows regarding subscription monetization in apps.

#2: Rewarded Video Advertisements

Many games and apps decide that they want to incorporate advertising in some way, in order to best make revenue off of a larger percentage of their user base.  Since other, purchase revenue – such as subscription and in-app purchases – takes time to convert users, ads can be a great way to gain some revenue from those users who might not be ready yet to become customers.

This concept isn’t new – but in the last several years, we have seen a large increase in games that decide that rewarded video are the best ad placements for games.  Rewarded video ads are the type of ads that let the user opt-in to watching, in exchange for some in-game or in-app re

ward. In this way – you don’t interrupt the core experience of the service, which users overwhelmingly favor.  In fact, they are 4 times as favorable to the user than traditional banner or interstitial ads, according to Adjust.

For an example, take a look at this screen from the game Blocky Football.  Here, the user has lost a level and the game is asking if they want to continue where they left off.  If the user watches a video ad, they will get an extra life. There is an exchange of game progression for monetization for the developer.

This type of monetization is great for games, but is also a possibility for non-games too. We think that a great app monetization strategy for 2018 is to incorporate these types of offers as well. As long as there is something important to the user – such an feature or a consumable item, then rewarded video ads can be incorporated for extra revenue for you.

App Monetization #3: Design for High Spenders

Games that make the majority of their revenue through in-app purchases will talk a lot about “whale” spenders – the players enjoying the game enough to spend a lot of money on the in game items. Often, whale players will make up a small percentage of the users, but account for the majority of the developers revenue. This concept works well in non-gaming places too, so when you are deciding your app’s monetization strategy, make sure to design experiences that will let those who want to pay more, can do so.

This is seen most commonly in some of the more social app experiences.  Take Bumble and Tinder for example – where they offer an experience for the free and non-paying users, a subscription tier for the power users, and the option of additional “super likes” for the whale users.

Super Swipes are a consumable item, that lets users tell potential matches that they “really like them.”  It sends a notification to their phone that they’ve been super liked, and the user who initiated the super like will get sent to the top of their queue. These likes run around a dollar a swipe, and can only be used once, so you can see how someone considered a “whale” can quickly run up a decent amount of purchases very quickly.

These app monetization strategies are very clever – allowing each user in their app to spend as much or as little as they want.

Conclusion: App Monetization in 2018

You will notice a common theme across these monetization strategies – that the line between how a game and an app monetize are becoming closer and closer.  That’s because the user behavior and motivations for all humans generally behave similarly in the aggregate. If you are able to demonstrate value about your service quickly, keep users engaged, you should be able to gamify your revenue streams as well and be able to maximize your apps monetization.

The post App Monetization – Maximize In-App Revenue appeared first on Mobile Freemium Game Design & Product Management | AC&A.