gm Archives - Monetary Musings

So you are a product person turned GM. What advantages do you bring to the table? What’s your edge in this role? Some of my thoughts below

dilbert-advantage-1 — Credit: Scott Adams

Structured and systems-level thinking

Great product folks have a structured thinking approach to solving problems. Thinking in systems is a critical skill. This mode of thinking is immensely valuable and has broad applications in other areas like sales and marketing. As described in the last post, sales and marketing have a very quick rhythm, everything resets at the quota end period. This dynamic has a natural pull towards tactics that yield quick outcomes. You can easily slide into just executing on tactics without a reliable and predictable system of making Continue reading “GM Chronicles Part 2: Does a product background give you an edge?” →

So I’m a GM now :). Learning by writing is my thang so the next few posts will be about all things GM. Hopefully, fellow GMs and my core constituency of product folks will find this interesting and useful! The GM role in tech companies is a broad role that is accountable for a commercial (revenue and or profit) number. A GM has three levers of Product, Sales, and Marketing to achieve this outcome. Coming from a product and engineering background it was instructive to me to understand how sales and marketing differ from the product and engineering function. These are my observations/learnings from the few months on the job!

media_httpdilbertcomd_ibwly-1.gif.scaled1000-1 — Credit: Scott Adams

Continue reading “GM chronicles : A product guy learns about sales and marketing” →