What does a product manager do? This is the question I hear most often from people looking to make a career transition into product management. It’s also one of the toughest questions to answer in words alone, because product managers have such varied responsibilities and are responsible for so many aspects of their company’s business.
The best way to understand this role is through examples—specifically, by taking a close look at some common tasks performed by product managers today.
What does “product manager” mean?
So what does “product manager” mean? Product managers are responsible for the product life cycle and its success. That’s a big job—and one that requires you to keep stakeholders informed, lead your team, attract new talent, and more.
Let’s take a look at each of these responsibilities in turn:
Product manager job description and responsibilities
The role of a product manager is to define, measure, and manage the product. As the head of a product, a product manager is responsible for ensuring that the overall success of that product is maintained. A good PM can be responsible for knowing how many customers they have and how they will get more in order to grow their business.
It’s important that you know how your products make money and what makes them successful so you can keep growing them over time. Product managers are also responsible for ensuring there are no issues with your products or services; this means you need to resolve any problems quickly so people don’t get frustrated using your products or services.
Product management skills
- Product management skills
At their core, product managers are responsible for the growth and success of a product. They identify problems, define solutions and create strategies to reach those goals. To do this effectively, they need to have certain qualities that make them successful in the role. These include:
- Analytical skills: Product managers rely heavily on data analysis to inform decisions about what features or changes should be made next for your product. They also use analytical thinking to predict future trends and make recommendations based on current information or past experiences with similar products/services.
- Business skills: In addition to technical knowledge about how technology works, product managers need strong business acumen as well because their job often involves collaborating with various teams across an organization (e.g., sales) and understanding financial goals such as profit margins or revenue targets in order to determine how new features will impact these metrics.* Communication skills: Being able to communicate effectively is vital if you want anyone else within your company—or even customers—to take your ideas seriously.* Creativity: Product managers need creativity because they are constantly coming up with new ways of doing things not only within their own department but also across departments throughout an entire organization.* Customer empathy: This refers specifically toward those customers who already use your product; it helps PMs understand where they’re coming from so they can make better decisions when designing additional features or making improvements later down the line.* Customer experience: When creating new technologies like websites or apps we often forget that there’s more than just one person using them; there’s also other people who might interact with someone using these tools through social media conversations etcetera which means we also have an obligation towards them being satisfied by our work too! If someone has trouble understanding something then maybe we should rethink how we worded something before releasing it out into world? Don’t forget these things!
Product manager salary
The average salary range for product managers is $91,000 to $105,000. This is a wide range because of location and industry.
You can negotiate your salary by talking about your achievements and experience, as well as what you want to do in the future.
If you want a raise or promotion, be prepared with examples of how you’ve contributed to the company’s goals and why it makes sense for them to give you one.
Bonus time: ask for a bonus at the end of each quarter or year!
How to become a product manager
Now that you have a basic understanding of what a product manager does, it’s time to learn how to become one. First, let’s take a look at the role of the product manager in each stage of the lifecycle:
- Product Management – Product management involves creating and managing products from their birth to their death. This means defining who your customers are and creating strategies for getting them to buy your product or service. It also includes managing internal employees so they can achieve their goals while also helping you achieve yours.
- Product Development – Product development is all about getting your ideas into tangible form so people can use them—and making sure they work as expected once they do!
- Product Marketing – After all those hard hours spent developing something great, it’s time to make sure people know about it! In this stage, marketing teams work together with other departments like sales or HR so everyone involved knows how best to promote whatever it is that came out during development phase (let’s call this “product”).
A career as a product manager is exciting, challenging, and financially rewarding.
A career as a product manager is exciting, challenging, and financially rewarding. You get to work on products that people use every day. You get to work with a wide range of people who have different perspectives from your own. And you are in charge of the entire product lifecycle—which means that you have a lot of responsibility, autonomy, and freedom over what you can do with your job.
You also get to be part of projects that are changing the world for the better!
Conclusion
We hope this guide has been helpful in explaining what product managers do, and how to become one. We know that there are many different paths you can take in your career as a PM. It’s exciting to see how much the field has changed over the past few years, and we expect it will continue to evolve in fascinating ways.