John Mansour is a Product Management and Product Marketing Trainer, Coach, and Thought Leader. He is the Founder and Managing Partner at Proficientz and has more than 25 years of practical experience in marketing communications, sales, and technology product management, working in start-ups to Fortune 1000 companies. He has held senior management roles in healthcare, software, retail, hospitality, and distribution companies. John was the Chairman of the Technology Association of Georgia's Product Management Society from 2006 to 2010. He has a Bachelors of Science degree in Operations Management from The Ohio State University. John joins me today to share how innovation is a result, not a process. He reveals how his company helps technology companies focus on customer outcomes through product management and marketing. John highlights why investing time to understand your customers as well as your products is preferable over simply running a process to find innovation. He shares how the shift from Waterfall to Agile development strategies has helped product managers. John also reveals the challenges design engineers face, such as not having context and a perspective when building products.
"Innovation is a result of understanding your customers better than everybody else." - John Mansour
This week on Innovation Talks:
- How Proficientz helps B2B companies—primarily in the technology space—with delivering products that have more quantifiable value to the customer
- How product management relates to innovation and why the business approach should consider what customers are trying to do, why it's important to them, and why they can't get there
- Why innovation is a result of understanding your customers better than anyone else—including themselves
- How to structure front-end conversations with potential customers and define the success customers will get with your solution before you build them
- The differences between the product manager and product owner roles and why they should not be combined into one role
- What will drive companies in the B2B space to become more customer-focused
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