PMM and PM. What's the difference?

For those of you who don't know, I carry the title of a product marketing manager at work and I often ask the question about the difference between a product marketing manger and a product manager, especially in the enterprise world. Here's a version of my self response.

Our job as product marketing managers is more about geting a product out that is sellable. A product that we will be excited to sell to a customer if we were sales people. And that's primarily what we care about. Just making it sellable. Our focus is to do all the stuff it takes to sell it for a month, a quarter, a year and so on.

Product managers on the other side should focus on geting a product out that is usable. A product that they will be excited to use if they were the end users. And sometimes there might be conflicts. We need to collectively think through the details to get something out that has the right mix. The worst thing we can do is to get a product out that's neither sellable nor usable and there are hundres of examples for such failures in the market.

You might ask why sellability (when is this going to be an official word!) and usability are different things. It kind of defies commonsense. If a product is exceptionally good at what it does and is a pleasure to use, wouldn't more people buy it? Unfortunately the answer is no because it's an enterprise product and not a consumer one. The key difference is that in the consumer world the buyer and the user are the same person or has the same persona. You buy a music player to use it yourself. But in the enterprise world the buyer and the user are completely different people. They have different goals, different day jobs, different priorities, etc.. It's the reality of the market.

And guess what's happening these days? Enterprise IT is getting consumerized, which I think is really a good thing. So, we all better change.

My Master Teacher

In the Indian epic Mahabharat there's a story about a phenomenal master of archery, Drona, and how a young tribal lad, Eklavya, gets inspired by the aura of Drona and aspires to be his student. However, Drona is the master teacher of the kingdom teaching only the sons of the kings. Eklavya gathers all the information he could about Drona, makes a clay statue resembling Drona and assumes the statue to be his master. He practices archery every day and night standing infront of the statue for the rest of his life.

When I first heard this story I thought to myself if there could be anyone in this world who would inspire me in a similar way. I thought it would be impossible, only until I learnt about Steve Jobs. Once I moved from my rural village in India to Boston for my higher studies in early 2000, I would skip classes, stay super late just to see the videos of Steve Jobs do his magic on the stage in keynotes again and again. The first thing I purchased once I got a job in Boston was a PowerBook. Not because I needed it but only because Steve Jobs was behind it. He's the Drona for me and I'm sure for millions of others like me. Only a handful of humans in the history of our planet ever had such a positive impact on our civilization.
Well done Steve. I wish peace for your family and friends.