In the future, what kind of product manager will be irreplaceable?

Taobao Product Platform Department Senior Expert

Regarding redefining product managers , each guest who shared before gave everyone a lot of suggestions and methodologies from their own perspectives. However, perhaps everyone may ask: What do these things you are talking about have to do with me? I believe the question you are most concerned about is: Can I bring this thinking back to my daily work, guide what to do next, and play my own value in my position?

Back to today’s topic, since the call is to redefine product managers, then where does the core value of a product manager lie?

My understanding is a core thinking power, which has irreplaceable value in any type of work, but the prerequisite is that you must have a mature theoretical system that can unleash your thinking power. I summed it up in one sentence:

Next, I would like to share some of my experiences and feelings during this thinking process.

Ask yourself:

As shown above, the small picture on the left is moving bricks, and "moving bricks" is a self-deprecating term for Internet migrant workers. In fact, someone had already made fun of himself this morning. Mr. He, who shared his experience this morning, said that his subordinate asked him with tears in his eyes, "Are you just asking me to label a certain business logic?"

What is it like to make a mark? As you all know, this is a jargon, and it must represent a lot of logical thinking, business analysis, and technical promotion, so we have to write a complete PRD (product requirement document) for it. But is this really thinking work? It was in the past; it is now; it may not be in the future.

We say that in reality, work can be divided into two types:

• Physical labor, similar to moving bricks in the picture above;
• Mental work, similar to writing a PRD.

However, with the rapid development of the Internet era and the advancement of science and technology, many jobs have gradually been replaced by machines and certain models, and many mature products have been accumulated, and we are no longer needed. Although we do a lot of work that seems to be mental labor, it is actually just physical work within mental labor.

This is both an opportunity and a challenge. We must find places where we can continue to exert irreplaceable value and continuously build higher value barriers. So what is this direction? My understanding: It is a brainwork within the brain, which is actually innovation.

In fact, everyone wants to talk about innovation. When we talk about innovation, what exactly are we talking about? The great appeal of innovation to individuals is unquestionable. It represents the culmination of all your abilities and reflects your organizational and communication skills in the actual process. You found a solution to a problem and solved it in a creative way. So, either you made something new, or you used a new method that no one has used before, or you used a new method to make something new.

But today, when we talk about innovation, it is no longer just one person’s request for personal development, but a requirement for practitioners in the entire industry, especially product managers.

Jack Ma said at this year's Yunqi Conference that the word e-commerce will gradually be eliminated in the future. Why? E-commerce is electronic commerce, the electronicization of business. Now, which company dares to say that it has not touched the Internet? Google has announced a strategy to shift from Mobile First to AI First. Why? Since everything has been mobileized, how many products and businesses will there be in the future that are not online to the mobile external environment?

Times are changing

What skills does a PM need?

At present, the entire Internet industry is still thriving. But in the past five years, the number of new Internet users has decreased by 5% from 40% per year. This demographic dividend has actually passed.

At this time, all markets and industries are looking for something called incremental growth. So, what is the increase? Either you use innovative ways to better solve problems based on existing opportunities, or you find a virgin land of value and create this value through a systematic approach. Therefore, innovation is crucial to the Internet. I believe that product managers have a unique advantage in this value, and it is very suitable for us product managers to realize our own value.

But not everyone can play such a value, because most of the time the information we get is lagging, and our judgment, brainpower, and mental strength are also lagging. The information we receive is that the boss says: something is a trend, you should follow it; a certain business may have prospects, you should go and try it.

In our own company and business scenarios, even if a hot business is launched, it may be live streaming or something else, what value can it bring to my business? Should we ask one more question: Why? How to do it?

It needs to be emphasized again : In the era of information explosion, a group of product managers with the keenest sense of smell and the least blind obedience need to have the ability to collect, process and organize all information, form their own judgment, and make appropriate decisions based on existing business. Only in this way can we play our irreplaceable value as product managers.

It is crucial to set a good topic

A guest mentioned AI First before. Artificial intelligence must be a hot topic this year and the next hot spot. As we all know, although Tesla has been having accidents in the past two days, Google is still constantly testing its driverless technology. It can be said that super giants and Internet companies are constantly changing the world. One day in the future, many jobs that need to be done by people may be outsourced and outsourced to machines to become models. At this time, what kind of people have irreplaceable value?

In general, if someone can come up with innovative ideas and methods based on judgment and create new things, including someone with emotional thinking, then he will definitely be able to stay ahead of the entire era. How to become such a person? The first thing you need to do is absorb the information. Before you have a keen sense of smell, one thing needs to be emphasized: it is crucial to set a good question.

Daily work always brings a lot of thinking, reviewing the information we see and absorb, such as the judgments and methods provided to us by others. In this process, have we achieved:

1. Is there a way to open up channels to better absorb information and store it as your own?
2. When we innovate and produce in the future, will it have been transformed into usable information?

The answer is: not necessarily.

After the event in Shenzhen in June, many students left me messages through the Everyone is a Product Manager platform, saying that they encountered these problems in their daily work.

No matter what industry you are in, take a quick look at these questions. Are you also thinking about these questions? Does it bother you and make you wonder where to break through next? Or don’t know how to solve the current problem?

Here, we select two of these questions for analysis:

Question 1: How to avoid low-quality influencers affecting the overall tone of the live broadcast?

Suppose you are a search result recommendation engine, and someone asks you a question like this, assuming you are smart enough, what kind of article do you think you should recommend to this person? What kind of information? What kind of judgment result?

Actually, I think it’s quite difficult. Why? Because of this channel, a lot of information overlaps with each other, hindering a product from thinking about things more clearly. Why do I say that?

Let's break down the information contained here. How many things did he talk about? I believe that everyone often thinks about such questions in their daily lives. Is it possible to further simplify this question into an answerable question? I hope that you will return to your work, examine yourself more and ask yourself: Can this problem be simpler?

Therefore, the first step of core thinking is to simplify.

How do you understand it? For example, in the question about the “tonality of live streaming”, what kind of content platform are you? For example, the product Kuaishou, what is the tone of Kuaishou? Are the influencers on Kuaishou considered low-quality influencers? This is a very interesting topic. The fresh and clean travel videos on "Kaiyan" and the videos of chefs making delicious meals on "enjoy" both have a very unique style. But it would not be appropriate if you post it on Kuaishou because it has its own tone.

Controlling the "tone" is a topic that involves many aspects: including what kind of talents we recruit to join our platform; how to use a set of modelable algorithm sorting mechanisms and operational mechanisms to screen out content that meets our needs; how to establish a user scoring mechanism and passive evaluation mechanisms such as browsing and liking, etc., so as to establish a way to screen good content through machine learning.

How to establish an incentive mechanism to ensure the survival of the fittest? This is a question of controlling the consistency of product tone. This issue is about how to avoid “low-quality” influencers from affecting the tone of the live broadcast. If they are mixed together, you may not be able to figure out what problem you are trying to solve. So, if one day your question is "I have a content-based product, and I want to control the tone of this content", I think this is a good question. This question can help you open up channels and absorb the nutrients mentioned above. If you mix in a second element, called "My influencers are low quality," you may be complicating the problem. For product managers, the first step in core thinking must be to simplify things and get to the point of the problem as concisely and clearly as possible.

Question 2: Overseas e-commerce companies sell a lot of low-priced beauty products and maternal and infant formula products. How can they transform into the high-end market?

First of all, what does this sentence mean? It seems that overseas shopping is not a high-end market now, right? So, what exactly is this question asking? How do you guys solve this problem?

(1) We hope to sell more products that are different from low-priced beauty products and maternal and infant formula products through overseas shopping e-commerce. How can we sell them?

If this is the problem, there is a solution.

• Can we discuss what category you would like to buy?
• What is the sales situation of this category of products online and offline?
• What is the current situation of the overseas shopping market?
• Does it match the population on my platform?

(2) If you want to ask me how to increase the average order value?

That might be another question.

• How to increase the average order value of each item in the current market?
• How to increase the target audience for product sales and attract them?

So, I believe these are some natural confusions in daily thinking, but whether these confusions can be directly used for one's own benefit and to absorb valuable information is two different things. You may need to break it down into very small granular units first to figure out what is the confusion that is really hindering your product improvement?

The ability to smell

When you open such a channel, you can absorb some valuable information and store it in information units that can help you better promote the next step of improvement. What might these things be?

In most cases, we will find that within just two or three weeks, there will be a lot of subscription information, website news, and colleagues around us starting to discuss a certain topic or trend.

▍Market – Consumption Upgrade

A typical example is that if someone told me today that consumption is upgrading; no matter you are responsible for marketing , community, content or other parts, as long as you are a product manager in the 2C scenario. How do you interpret this message into information units that you can use?

We may need to further break down this information:

1. What does consumption upgrading represent?
2. Does it mean that everyone has become rich?
3. Does it mean that everyone starts buying more expensive things?

So, I told my operating partner, “You can try to import some products with high average order value, or stop relying on discounts, high-volume promotional information and transform into a high-end market.” Is it possible to deduce it so simply? Let’s review this information: Consumption upgrading is a big topic. What are you going to do about it?

(1) Cost-effectiveness

Users have a higher level of economic consumption capacity, their consumption tends to be more rational, and they pursue high-cost-effective goods; the average order value that users can afford has increased compared to thousands of years ago. These two things are not in conflict and must be considered in parallel.

(2) Service experience

What value can you bring to your customers? The value that products, especially Internet products, can bring to users is the benefits they provide plus the experience they gain during the process. When you already have products with suitable price-performance ratio to provide to users, the second possible point for incremental growth is how you provide the products to users? This means that focusing on service in the process and creating a better shopping experience, including browsing experience, after-sales experience, etc., is the next value point that can be derived under this thinking structure.

(3) Market segmentation

Since more and more people can afford to buy things and more and more people are willing to consume, does it mean that the target consumption upgrade market you see now is expanding? One thing a large market can definitely do is called segmentation. This is why there are still great opportunities in many vertical fields, even in the 2C field. We are also doing some vertical population segmentation to explore vertical markets.

Taobao has done a lot of vertical market segmentation in the past 3-5 years. Later on, there may be a page channel or market. It belongs to a business unit of Taobao and is hidden in a very deep navigation hierarchy. It requires clicking through many layers to find it, but many such market segments are still doing well. Why? Because when you use precise matching to reach these niche groups, you can establish a connection between the target group and the target market (after analyzing the market, you can analyze the people in the market to see what characteristics these people currently have and which characteristics can be used by you).

So, when all information channels are opened and rely on a good established proposition to absorb the target information you need, and then combine it with actual business to see if it can make you generate a valuable association.

The ability of association

What are valuable associations? That is, the application can play a role and bring incremental value in actual business scenarios; if not, then the information is just information. As Steve Jobs once said: When you acquire certain information or learn a certain skill, it is like the pearl of your life. You never know when it may come into play and become a pearl necklace in your life.

For example:

Content e-commerce has been very popular recently, and many people have started to create content. But later you will find that you don’t know how to make money from content or how to monetize it.

Some people are doing e-commerce, but the incremental traffic is decreasing due to the demographic dividend. As a result, e-commerce still has to move forward (the "front" here refers to the touchpoints targeting consumers); the content has to move "backward" (meaning that the content must create a closed loop of the value chain and be monetizable), thus giving birth to a new concept called content e-commerce. Taobao has thought a lot about content e-commerce in recent years. I think the direction is not suitable for everyone, but these thoughts are common.

Extract the main contradiction

▍The conflict between content and e-commerce

1) Content is designed to consume time

Everyone should know that if you are making content/information products, one of the goals of content services is to consume user time; it is the opposite of efficiency, and we hope to squeeze into your fragmented time and kill your time.

Why is content rising? Because our hands are being liberated, the efficiency of society as a whole is constantly improving, and with the help of technologies like AI, maybe in a few decades, the things you are doing now will no longer be necessary. What to do with the saved time? It can only be consumed. Therefore, not only content, but also games , VR , etc. will develop synchronously.

2) E-commerce aims to realize efficiency

We are thinking about how to waste our time better, but e-commerce is not that. E-commerce to this day is still mainly focusing on one thing: efficiency. Whether it is a 2B scenario, we use AI or logistics big data to match orders to achieve faster distribution; or in a 2C scenario, we help you find suitable things faster through personalized recommendation engines, etc. These are all about solving efficiency issues. If what you are doing now is related to content or e-commerce, you must know clearly which goal you are serving. As the current core goal, you should develop a series of KPIs around it to evaluate and accept your results.

▍The contradiction between personalization and discovery

1) Personalized solution to accuracy problem

This is also very interesting. Everyone knows the three front-end engines of the e-commerce industry: content shopping guides, personalized recommendations, and search. These are the three paths for users to access suitable products.

In the past, Amazon had a recommendation myth about the transactions generated through the personalized recommendation engine, which accounted for more than 1/4 of the entire website at that time. At that time, Taobao was far from reaching this data, so we found that this thing saved manpower, was smart enough, and improved the efficiency of the entire website. So over the years, I believe that major business websites or companies have been trying to do personalization.

2) Discover and solve the richness problem

But personalization can solve the problem of accuracy. And when we get back to the issue of content e-commerce, if I recommend a piece of content to you accurately, how can I take into account your surprising discoveries? If the essence of my content acquisition is no longer to meet the need for efficiency, then why do I have to give the channel that can obtain all information to a machine where the more clicks you make, the more products of this type you will see, while blocking other possible personalization engines?

It is very interesting to dig deeper into this matter. I have discussed this matter with our algorithm team a little while ago. As you can see, on the Taobao homepage and other businesses, we can see various personalized recommendation data.

I have searched for perfume before, and I can see perfume in various columns and channels. So we discussed: Can we try to add a little element of surprise into this? The so-called element of surprise is something that meets my general target expectations but does not belong to the current very small product category. The answer I got was no, and the reason is very simple: for an algorithm, any adjustment needs to have a basis, and this basis is the measurability of its value under a certain indicator.

Before this, the so-called personalized algorithm myth was: as long as the website adopted a little bit of personalized thinking, its overall click-through conversion efficiency would be improved a little. What he wanted to look at was the conversion rate . If one day we no longer use conversion rate as a core indicator, it will be possible for it to take into account what you said, such as discovery efficiency.

If you are currently developing a content recommendation product and you want to promote this, what you need to collaborate with is not just to propose a technical solution to them and say "I want to take into account the value of discovery", but you must resolve this fundamental contradiction: what problem are we trying to solve with personalization and how should we evaluate it?

▍Conflict between scenes and relationships

1) Strong scenarios, weak relationships

Previous speakers have also talked about this. With the power of the community , including the power of the internet celebrity economy, why do we start paying attention to people? Because in a certain sense, people are perpetual motion machines. They can send the value of your website through sharing and dissemination; they can form stickiness on the platform through interpersonal relationships and create new scenarios; they can help you naturally segment communities and groups, let you know your users' behavioral preferences and likes, and provide them with more precise services, and even give birth to new product forms.

At this point, a question arises: What is the gene of the product you are making now?

It took us more than a year to figure out one thing: although Taobao is no longer a tool , we cannot be considered a community either. For Taobao, what we are doing is to drive the existence of weak relationships by building strong scenarios.

2) Strong relationships, weak scenarios

WeChat is just the opposite. It is a place with strong relationships and weak scenarios. But within this strong relationship, WeChat itself will spawn many scenarios, such as sending red envelopes, giving rewards, having dinner together in WeChat groups , etc. It will grow on its own, which is great.

We admit that Taobao cannot do this now. But our business has a lot of scenarios like "question and answer". Although it is impossible for us to create a Zhihu, we have a very strong scenario: for example, on the product details page, before making a shopping decision, I can understand what suggestions people who have bought this product have for it, and what questions they have about this product; in this scenario, I don’t care who can answer my questions, but I have created a space where information can be generated and discussed, so you have to handle this contradictory relationship accurately.

The ability to judge

For example, content e-commerce must accurately find its own position on the axis of efficiency and time consumption; find its position in personalization and richness; and find a position of who is the main and who is the auxiliary in the scene and relationship. I will discuss these points in more detail below.

▍Personalization vs. Discovery

Different business forms must carry different business objectives.

Expand the details and take a look: for example, the left side of the picture above is the Taobao homepage. What I have done over the past 5 years is very simple:

• The first step completes the transformation from PC to wireless;
• The second step is to fully personalize the wireless homepage due to screen limitations, a large user base, and complex information.
• The third step is to think about the personalization of the module itself when the entire screen is personalized. For example, people who shop overseas need to see content related to overseas shopping, and people who are sensitive to low prices need to see content related to low prices;
• What is step 4? For Taobao, this is the direction it is currently exploring; for users, it may not have resolved the contradiction between personalization and discovery mentioned above. Why do you say that? Because everything we do is actually done by adding and then subtracting. We keep increasing the stakes and do "Guess What You Like" based on the content you may be interested in. At the same time, we block other possibilities, which will produce a negative iterative effect: everyone wants to do this in their own channel. But this will cause a problem, which is what I just talked about: when you search and browse perfumes, the whole screen is filled with perfumes.

It’s not that we don’t want to do this, because if you don’t make personalized recommendations, the conversion rate will be low and it will not be efficient for users. So at this point, can we consider: for example, the homepage itself is also a product, just like the window display in a shopping mall, should all the windows be managed in a unified manner? You may or may not have some good content in your content library that matches the perfume; others may have some as well. At this time, we establish a rule: not everyone outputs perfume. Some people are responsible for discovery at certain times, while others are responsible for accuracy, and we find a dimension to measure them (in fact, this is not Taobao’s current solution, it’s just an example).

Once you have established your own dimension of discussion and thinking, and exhaust all possibilities along this dimension, you will be very pleasantly surprised to find that you can find many ideas that may be implemented or produce good results. But when you raise a very complex request or confusion, it cannot help you establish a channel that can be broken through. This is what I particularly want to express.

I have shared this picture before in Shenzhen, and I am not reluctant to talk about it again. Because for a product, the relationship between what you are currently responsible for and future matters, as well as the judgments and product deployments you make for this purpose, are what a product needs to think about and survive.

All our previous thinking was based on the personalization of content and products, and personalization was very superficial. Because all our personalization is doing something called "Guessing What You Like", which is to present to you content, information and products that you may like. The resources that can be leveraged at this time are actually very limited. No matter how you adjust, the products and content will remain unchanged. In the background, they are a huge inventory, but the front-end shopping guides and display scenes are constantly changing, and are assisted by some ever-changing operational forces. To put it bluntly: it’s just a different logic of extraction. At this time, the points at which you can serve consumers are actually limited.

The so-called personalization goes a step further and may mean that I will produce content based on what users are interested in, rather than just using my existing content to match your possible interests and preferences. Therefore, when the previous personalized marketing moves one step further, the process will definitely go through a node; this node may be called contentization in the first half, on-demand customized content in the second half, or it may be called the socialization of content. It will solve a problem: What kind of content and information do I want to browse? I will definitely be able to reach people who can produce such content through the form of products to produce it for me on demand, and deposit the value of such content on the platform and be used by the platform.

Therefore, the first step of personalized marketing is matching, followed by content production. After doing all this, it actually does not solve the fundamental problem, because the products are still the same products. I write and recommend them to you according to the dimensions you want to browse, read, and understand, but what if the products that meet your needs do not increase?

At this point, the direction that can be explored is how to reach the products that consumers really want through the supply and demand expressions of users. There may be two stages:

▍Scene vs. Relationship

Let’s take the current hot spot – live streaming – for example. What problems can live streaming solve? But everyone probably knows that it doesn't solve any problems. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so let’s take live streaming e-commerce as an example.

As shown in the picture above, the slightly shaky scene is the scene of global buyers sweeping the goods during the 828 shopping event. You can imagine that this event solved many problems:

• It solves the trust issue. You are indeed in the local area and buying genuine products.
• Solved the problem of real-time information matching;

But taking overseas products as an example, is this scenario suitable for selling all overseas products? We think it is inappropriate, why? There is a problem with its efficiency. For users who use live streaming, first of all, it is an immersive experience. When watching live streaming, users cannot do anything else and can only focus on the screen and listen to you introduce the product. During this 3- or 5-minute process, I received some redundant and invalid information, such as maybe you ran away, the camera shook, or what you were talking about was not what I cared about... It is actually very costly for users to understand a product clearly and make a shopping decision.

So, today we cannot say that pictures, texts or short videos are necessarily inferior to live broadcasts. It depends on what problems you solve. If you are selling long-tail products and disseminating niche demands and information, live streaming may not be suitable for your products.

For users, the cost of sorting and screening niche long-tail content is already very high. How many products and content can be broadcast in one live broadcast? Therefore, even in the small field of e-commerce, there are still barriers that it cannot break through; but it does not matter, this does not prevent it from realizing its own value.

I give this example only to say that any popular product or business will exist because it has its current irreplaceable value . But please do not abuse its value, as it may be a disaster for your product and the customer value you want to achieve.

Another scenario and application of live streaming: internet celebrities. It starts with selecting products, making samples, and then posting them online to interact with fans, and finally it is determined how many people are interested in this product. Finally, after the next opinions and decisions are taken, a new round of selection will be carried out. The whole cycle may take 30 days, and the longest time is spent in the selection stage because of the unpredictability of consumer tastes.

For the entire live broadcast process, the starting point or thinking point now is: How can I sell the clothes and how can I display them better?

Let me open my mind (although I may not be in charge of this business, but we can think along this line of thought). The problem it is solving now is: how to make internet celebrities sell clothes better? In other words, in the very costly selection process, is it possible to create a live broadcast model based on the selection model? At the same time, take efficiency into consideration to achieve real-time interaction of information and reduce the cost in the selection stage? Of course these are just assumptions.

In this process, thinking, refining and judging are actually the most important for the product. It should be based on the characteristics and core pain points of the current business to envision its reasonable functional scenarios, rather than simply following.

One of the questions asked before was "Why can't favorites be shared?" I think this topic is very interesting: Why did you create a collection? The picture below actually talks about the dimensions in which your information is stored? Therefore, based on your understanding of the product, you need to think clearly about the structural narrative of the product in different dimensions.

As we all know, Facebook has a function called like. The things I like can actually be found, so this is also a disguised mark function. It is a mark function plus an information sharing function. But collection is not like that. In the essential sense, collection is my own private land. When I use a product called "collection", I know that this product is mine. So Collection is actually a private product. If you want to make Favorites a purely public product, even if it is called Collection, it is not essentially the Favorites that I originally defined.

When you are doing some overlay of any product, you will think: Why can't this function be set as a list? Then doesn’t it just become a list? Why can't it be made into a shared component? Why can't I add a like at the same time? Why can't I follow people when I collect content like this? These are all possible, but the difference is: what is the core nature of this product?

The basis for judgment should be whether it actually does not conflict with the core concept of your product, so that’s why I keep asking: What can’t each product do? Because sometimes doing subtraction is actually a very valuable judgment that you make after you have thought clearly enough. This is also a judgment that future AI cannot give us, at least not at the moment.

For example, let’s take the following question:

If a product is to survive for a long time, it needs a healthy ecosystem. Can an e-commerce company survive without holding big promotions? There is no doubt that it will be difficult to survive for a certain period of time. But in fact, users' habits can be educated.

Since this student mentioned ecology, it means that his starting point for thinking about this issue is not based on the current situation of users and the industry. So what is he basing it on? For example, rebates - sharing products with friends can bring some benefits, which may lead users to create many fake accounts just to buy things at a cheaper price. But we can’t not organize promotional activities, as this will disrupt the market, etc. But is this a reason?

I agree with one point: big sales are an industry trend. To a certain extent, this trend will not be reversed so quickly, but it does not mean that e-commerce companies that do not hold big sales have no chance. For this question, I have mixed a lot of my own thoughts and reflections into it: what kind of ecology is healthy, and some principles that the current e-commerce industry should follow. Just like the point about sharing and rebates mentioned earlier, if the mechanism of sharing and rebates encourages or even makes it very easy for consumers to create many fake accounts and realize the intention of buying things cheaply, then I think there will be some problems with the design of the product itself.

But why is sharing advocated now? Will sharing itself disrupt the mechanism? No, sharing is not against human nature, but a natural desire of users.

Everyone knows that WeChat has blocked Taobao links, but you will still share your products with others by using Taobao screenshots or Taobao passwords. If there is a helping force at this time, when the product is already good, it can be cheaper to share it with friends while sharing it with each other, which is not anti-human. All things that are not anti-human and obedient to human nature have a space where value may be realized.

So, can you start an e-commerce company without conducting big promotions? What is the core? What is the original intention? It is the customer value you generate. What does customer value look at? Let’s first see if there are any such customers who may be insensitive to big promotions? If you have such a customer, you will have a matching product solution.

This is a real case: when we were in the overseas shopping market, we found that some consumers have the ability to consume and have the willingness to consume higher or better products. At the same time, they also have the spirit of sharing and do not pursue the ultimate cost-effectiveness. There are such users, and they are enough to support a decent market size.

When you have such questions, go back to the customer value level, are there any such customers who have such demands? Can I make a product to satisfy them? During the whole process, you have a keen sense of smell to capture the dynamics of some industries, think of actual products, and combine these experiences into a product solution. But when you really go to the ground, you may still encounter problems.

Practical ability

To promote the implementation of a new plan, you may encounter a lot of internal and external resistance. What may this resistance be?

• No value
• Can't figure it out
• Can't push

If you can't push this matter, look back at the current situation again. We are not short of information and often come up with some solutions that give us thinking and precipitation. We are also very executable and passionate about doing this matter, but why are we still hindered?

▍Is it valuable? How do you think?

(1) Is there any problem solved?

There may be 70% to 80% of product solutions that cannot be promoted, because they are not aware of the first point.

To give a simple example: Why do you feel passionate when you explain your plan, but you feel drowsy or shake your head repeatedly? Maybe it's because you haven't actually solved a problem worth solving and don't create value for your customers. The hypothetical scenario you mentioned may not exist at all, or there are not so many opportunities. This is a realistic situation that we often encounter.

What's even more terrifying is that many people feel that they have solved the needs of consumers or users; if not, they will make some demo products and find ways to push them online, and then prove it in disguise: You see, my products have users, so I must have solved their needs. This is very scary.

(2) Whether the solution and effect match

Maybe your problem is valid and worth solving, but is it a match between your solution and that problem? Or is it a match between your solution and the results you have achieved?

(3) What are you bringing

I have led the product and operation team. When comparing the numerical comparisons every round, they will repeatedly mention their achievements in the past year. At this time, many people like to tell a story called "I obtained data in the past year and it was so-and-so..." It sounds really good; but what did I do last year? Let me break it down for you: a very beautiful chart, use a very grand practical plan to tell me what things I have done, what kind of product I have made, and what is my business focus?

However, a very unexpected thing (and we often encounter a situation): a community-type product focuses on interactive relationships, and has established many points for people to pay attention to, optimized a person's personal homepage, optimized the message system, etc., and what is the conversion rate of transactions in the end through this community? Can it be increased? Yes, but what is this derivation logic? have no idea. You will find that this may be caused by the operation classmate who wants to activate the community atmosphere and has done many promotional activities. Is this business done well? OK, but does it have anything to do with you? Did you bring it to you? Probably not necessarily. .

There are even more terrifying things. For example, this business was 1 million a year ago, and I took over it for 8 million a year later, which is very awesome. But if you look closely, if you are on Taobao, this is a very common phenomenon. That phenomenon is because the entrance may be raised from the fifth screen to the first screen. So what does this matter have to do with the product manager who designs the product after clicking to enter?

This matter itself, when you return to the value level, look at people, and you will find that there are many things that make people feel very regretful, but the people in it may not know it.

The above, I hope it will cause you to think. You can compare the projects you have taken over now, the data reports you have compiled before, and whether there are any problems in this regard.

▍If the success is not established, what do you think?

(1) Is the logic closed?

During the process, you can't think clearly. After you finish talking to others, it's very common for others to think it's reliable. The question is: What is the situation that makes it unreliable?

Among the three tricks of a product manager, the first trick is to show logic; if the product logic is not good, don’t do the product. You must be a person who can explain things clearly, so there is logic, but whether there is a closed loop is not necessarily.

What does it mean to have a closed loop? Logic itself is not a single description of the product itself, it needs to be viewed in an environment.

Taking sharing as an example, I will create a sharing function. As long as the user shares our valuable information, designs a commission sharing system, designs a profit distribution and exquisite product pages, and thinks about the return plan. It sounds like a solution that can help our website attract new and retain new things. Is there a closed loop? Where are the initial seed sharers? Why do they share and what are their motivations? Will the person you brought back after sharing for the first time have the motivation to share it again? What are his closed loops and paths? Many times, if you look at it with a logical clip, this thing is very exciting. If you throw it back to your entire large product framework, you don’t know what to say. This is a scenario that you often encounter.

(2) Is it in line with human nature?

In the future, the more products that take care of human nature will develop better. Why do you say that?

When the Internet level is not developed enough, the products are not rich enough, and the solutions are not too many, just use it. Your product is anti-human, anti-human, has a poor experience, or does not take special care of the user's feelings during use, and the user will also use your product. But where is the focus of future improvements? Focus on caring for human nature. Any small touchpoint that can impress you can open the gap with your competitors. If a function can be used now, but it does not conform to the human nature setting, it will definitely not go smoothly.

(3) Can it continue to develop

What is sustainable development? Is this a one-time deal? After I finished this, where is my potential?

Previously, a product manager responsible for the high-priced product marketing line provided us with a new product recruitment solution, which was a bit like the popular one-yuan purchase now, which was to recruit a group of merchants at very low prices, and use traffic rebate to encourage them, and then give these products back to consumers as exclusive benefits of the app - it sounds quite happy.

There is only one question, and this question is: Can it continue to attract the target users you want? The solution itself is not wrong, but if your target users are not purely low-priced products or super-priced users, a group of people may come for the first time, but after this group of people comes, can they keep it? He was very happy to see that I could buy a 30-yuan facial cleanser for one dollar. After that, he found that a bottle of facial cleanser is usually priced at 200 yuan. So what is the value of this product? What is the value of a drainage plan? It may not be of much value, because these people will not stay.

Later, after we talked, he modified the plan. This is a way of thinking: get 50% off or 60% off for the product worth 200 yuan. What is the difference? The difference is that now consumers want to buy better products at a lower price. They are smart but willing to spend two or three hundred yuan to buy a bottle of facial cleanser. Today, they use more than 100 yuan to attract him to buy it. This is a marketing hook solution, and it may be retained after he comes.

Therefore, all designs must build a whole system around the customer value of your actual target customers and allow it to develop continuously and continuously.

▍Is it feasible? How do you think?

(1) Is it OK to do it

When you pass the first two levels, others think that the problem you mentioned is worth solving, and your solution sounds reliable, and the next thing is whether it is feasible. The lowest threshold is simply put, if it is not feasible, it is technically possible.

In an era of lack of technology, it is important whether it can be done or not; later technology caught up and became less important, and now it has become very important. Why?

Because new technologies are now developing explosively, Google's new neural network translator can translate human language with an accuracy rate of 87%; they have also used real-time intelligent dialogue to interact with users (in fact, there are robots behind it). These scenes sound very exciting, as well as VR and AR . These excitement may lead to a group of passionate young people ready to imagine some solutions that may not be able to take steps, so this step may not be done and will become very important at this stage.

(2) Is it early to enter the market now? Is it late?

What kind of entry is an early entry? Maybe it's just not possible. Or if you enter the market now, consumers are used to having their minds not established, or the cost is very high later. Your thing is pretty good, but if you don’t have the momentum, you don’t have enough potential to rush to the last moment; whether it’s too late or not, it’s like buying a house. When everyone around you is discussing that I want to buy a house, buying a house is no longer profitable, maybe you are the one who protects the country.

When everyone is discussing a product, it may be too late for you to rush in, so grasping the timing is a very important thing. Maybe you have provided a very good solution that can solve the problems faced by companies or companies now, but can you grasp the time to take action?

(3) Who is on the same boat with you

In fact, now we are increasingly emphasizing collaborative operations, from small companies or entrepreneurial partners, from multinational companies, or super-large Internet companies.

You can imagine that Double 11 must not be the biggest Internet battle in the future; at present, but in the future, it may not be. Because we now have more and more leverage in our hands, what is this leverage? It is AI, liberating your hands to do something; it is DT, it is big data; you understand your users more and more, and you can give them accurate portraits of their various behaviors and find them. It is the network itself, the development of the entire network, which leads to you being able to connect to your users at all times; this is like three huge levers that can leverage tens of thousands of unimaginable resources.

This is like giving the product manager three golden wings. As long as you think of things, you may be able to be realized. At this time, you need a lot of people to support this resource, and the external and internal environment will support your ideas. Can the idea be implemented? In fact, it depends to a lot on whether you understand your partners' upstream and downstream, and whether you understand what the company really wants, and work together to bring everyone together.

Why is it not a slogan? You can imagine a very interesting thing: many years ago, we had the Great Wall, Egypt had the pyramids, we had the Grand Canal of Beijing and Hangzhou, and Europe had cathedrals. In fact, these extraordinary achievements were built by tens of thousands of people under the rule of centralized power.

Today's Internet is about emphasizing this spirit of synergy, but it is not in an authoritarian way, otherwise you will not be able to leverage and accurately manage the resources you can master. But in disguise, this is also the most exciting thing about the role of product manager: if you really use leverage well, you can leverage a lot of resources to help you achieve your ideals and create more value in the world.

summary

Finally, I think the thinking ability of a product is the core value of a product manager . It condenses a judgment that you make in multiple dimensions of information generated and puts it into a valuable result. In this process, it becomes particularly important to know the truth and why it is. It is also important to be able to preach your ideas to everyone, and I believe that this process will establish the confidence of the product person.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising