Most Important Skills in Product Management

Working as a product manager requires different skills from different fields. It is not a job that requires one, two or even ten skills. It is like starting your own business and you must have different skills from different fields. It requires Skills from marketing, creativity, technology, pricing and leadership, etc…

Always I do ask myself: “What is the most important skills working as a Product Manager?”. I decided to enter Linkedin and post a new discussion in a popular group called Product Management that have more than 9,987 members and in Telecommunications Product Development Group that have more than 869 from different industries and I had more than 79 comments from different professionals. They had highlighted different skills. Some of them mentioned one skill and others more than one skill.

The number one was Communication. 47 professionals say it is an important skill. Number two was Stakeholder Management (Managing Internal and external stakeholder). 33 professionals say it is an important skill. Number three was Market Understanding. 18 professionals say it is an important skill.

17% of the professionals say Communication is the most important skill. 12% was for stakeholder management. Stakeholder management is something similar to communication. That means both of them is 29%. Product manager should care about developing those two skills.

The important skills from 4 to seven are: Customer Understanding, Product Understanding, leadership, Project Management, creativity, analysis and delivering effective training.

Working as a Product Manager is a challenging job. Although I did not get one answer that a particular skill is the most important skill as Professionals have different opinion, I can say communication is very important skill working in the filed of product management. 

Market Research from an Omani Working in Gulf

Market research is an important role and task working in the field of marketing. Being a Product Manager, Marketing Executive or Marketing Manager the Market Research is an important responsibility. Personally, I enjoy doing Market research. From collecting data to the last stage which is preparing the report to our Senior Managers. Some of the companies in the Gulf let the Market Research part of the responsibilities of one of their employees in the marketing department. Some of them let a dedicated employee with the Marketing Research job title.

The first step in doing Market research is defining the objective of the Market research. The Market research is divided into two types in terms of purpose which are: For operational and strategic. The objective of operational is for the daily tasks in the company. The second type strategic purpose.

In the Gulf we do go to some global companies and ask them for reports such as Forrester Research, Hall & Partners and Gartner Group. We do also have local research companies such as Arab Advisers Group and International Data Corporation (IDC) in Dubai.

Data been collected is divided into two types which are: Quantitative and Qualitative.

Some of the methods we do implement is to collect some data from press releases from local newspaper such as Al Watan and Oman. Some of the popular places that provides useful reports from the government are The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority in UAE. In Qatar is Qatar's ICT Landscape which been conducted by Qatar ICT. I am also using popular portals during my Market research from Gulf. Popular news portal in the Gulf that i trust a lot are AME Info FZ LLC and Zawya. Collecting data from employees from different department is a nice way to collect data. I do collect from Sales, Customer Service, Call Center, Engineers, and technicians.

After collecting data we do analyze through using different tools. We do measure by different tools. Some of the tools I had been using are Risk Analysis, Cost/Benefit Analysis and Return on Investment (ROI). In the gulf, Benchmarking is an important method that is used commonly in the government sector where governments compare with the different countries in the gulf.

Technology had changed the way we work in the Market Research. Internet had changed the Market research dramatically. Products from Microsoft, Oracle and IBM and other vendors is helping a lot. Microsoft has a product called Microsoft SQL Reporting Services which you can develop and obtain report easily. We do collect data internally from Databases and Warehouses. I Do also use a tool commonly in the Microsoft Office which is Excel.

Personally, I had conducted many Market research in the Telecommunications & Information Technology industry. I did for Internet services and fixed services. In addition, in Information Technology industry.