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Visiting Uncle Paul's Fruit Store

 

Uncle Paul has worked at the fruit store most of his life. As a teenager, his principal tasks were to move heavy boxes around to keep shelves stocked and lots of clean up jobs at the end of each day. During the summer times, he spent every moment he could outdoors at a local orchard helping with the daily growing chores. Over the years, he became very familiar with the fruit business, gradually working his way up the “food chain”. Now, he has a critical role that directly affects the success of the business he works for – he is a Product Manager.

 

I’ve only seen Uncle Paul’s store a few times. It looks like a very busy place. His customer’s are primarily buyers for restaurants and other food stores, which makes him more of a wholesaler than a retailer. He does get people walking in off the street looking for bunches of bananas or baskets of peaches, but most of his customers are buying in large volumes for use in a particular business of their own. A key to Uncle Paul’s success is in understanding not only his customer, but what makes his customers successful. This way, he can tailor his approach to marketing and packaging to suit particular needs.

 

Timing and scheduling is very important to his business. Products have to be ready for calendar-driven events, such as Christmas and Jam season, and his products are greatly affected by changes in the weather. As such, he has to be very organized and very driven to work with his suppliers to make sure needed items arrive when his customers are looking to buy them.

 

Uncle Paul would regularly assemble a box of choice fruit for us to take home. The largest seedless grapes you ever saw, juicy pink grapefruits and occasionally a quart of sweet ripe strawberries. I especially liked when he would call his Nephew’s to the store to try a new fruit supplier or savor a delicious version of an old favorite. I get hungry every time I read this paragraph!

 

His business is constantly undergoing challenge and change. New suppliers show up in town with truckloads of cheap product, looking to make a quick buck or establish themselves as credible vendors. From what I understand, they invariably leave town after a few weeks or months, once they realize the work involved in sustaining a profitable business in Uncle Paul’s backyard. Uncle Paul confessed once that he sometimes would visit his in-town competitors pretending to be a buyer. It did not take long to sort out who would be a serious competitor and who would be leaving town.

 

A lot of Uncle Paul’s time is spent meeting with his suppliers and his customers. He is constantly looking to make sure that customer needs can be satisfied with what suppliers can deliver. When a gap occurs, he shows his best skills in negotiating either with the supplier to change their growing or delivery plans, or his customers to look for alternative ways to meet their food needs. He relies on thought leadership and a sound understanding of both the supplier and consumer side of the business to keep his reputation of success ongoing

 

Uncle Paul tells me that his biggest challenge is managing change. He has to keep monitoring his suppliers to make sure they remain focused on the specific things he needs to meet customer demands, and he has to keep in constant contact with customers to make sure that they continue to need what he is delivering. Sometimes – although rarely – the whole process breaks down and he has to cancel orders and disappoint customers. 

Idea

Sometimes Uncle Paul gets a bunch of customers asking for special things in a short period of time. He says he has to continually hold them off until the next ordering period is complete. His main issue is that he can not afford to let a few customers dominate his supply chain, he has to make sure than everyone has a chance to take advantage of special items. As such, he saves up special requests and reviews them as a group on a regular basis. This way he can better balance what commitments he makes to his customers and keep as many satisfied as possible.

Umbrella

I’ve sat in at a few of Uncle Paul’s monthly planning sessions. The big topic of each session continues to be whether he wants to build out his business and go after becoming the fruit market leader in the region. His investors seem ready to support him but the debate always centers on what would happen if they fall short of becoming the actual market leader. The worry is that the whole business would collapse and Uncle Paul would not be able to re-establish the bit of success he now has. I never spend much time thinking about being the leader. I am used to thinking of leadership as a shared goal with many companies. I suppose trying to become the leader would be nicer, but in watching Uncle Paul, I can start to see what additional challenges and risks come along with it. 

 

The strongest product managers often have relevant “field” experience. This provides high levels of supplier credibility in the eyes of customers and often brings forward insightful perspectives during the product planning process. Although this kind of experience is not a mandatory, it is certainly a highly desirable hiring characteristic.

 

One of the most interesting aspects of product management is that you quickly realize it is a horizontal discipline that can be applied equally to many types of businesses, not just selling software or services in the high technology sector. The basic concepts of product management revolve around the ever-classic supply-and-demand principals that all businesses are exposed to. Product Management in the high technology sector is perhaps seen as more challenging because the nature of the product itself is so different that most other sectors. Every programmer in the world can create their own version of a word processor, their own WEB site, their own specialized service offering. Unlike most other industries where much of the product or service is rooted in tangible components, software does not lend itself to a very scientific product creation process – although it should!

 

Although there are always nuances particular to a given industry, the issues that fall under the product management discipline are generally the same throughout. Some of the key points introduced in this chapter are:

 
  • Field experience is critical to product management excellence. If the product managers themselves do not have it, close relationships with active customers can be a good second best.

  • Establishing cornerstone requirements for your products can often allow Sales and Marketing to operate at a more strategic level. The key is to avoid being trapped at the feature-function level when trying to establish a business in the marketplace. The cornerstone requirements become the embodiment of what your business is known for – the so called, cheapest, fastest, best idea. Always strengthen the cornerstone capabilities, and the whole business has a strong base to evolve from.

  • Plan according to windows of opportunity. This brings extreme levels of focus to achieving the goals at hand. Otherwise, you find yourself trapped into a mode of selling what you have when you get it, not when you need it. Keep product development totally in-line with the needs of the market.

  • Involve customers in key lifecycle management decisions. Customers will be the best source of input when important product decisions are being made. They are in the best position to give you feedback on how changes will effect them, on the value of new features and on what will make a product best for them. The longer you wait to involve actual users in your decisions, the greater the effort you will spend in selling and supporting them on new releases.

  • Understand the nature of your competition. But don’t get too hung up on what they are doing. Develop a level of confidence in your cornerstones such that it would not matter what the competitor does. Don’t be afraid to bring the competitor’s products in house – in fact, it should be a rule that all product managers, sales, marketing and sales support people sees competitive products. They will develop a more passionate approach to the way they represent what you sell (this assumes that what you have is in fact good!).

  • View the relationship between Development, Marketing and Sales as a supply-chain contract. Everyone has to agree to a plan in order for it to succeed. Adopt an operational management style of developing what you think you can sell, balanced with a style of selling what you can develop. The hardest thing to change is the product itself, so you need to spend a disproportionate amount of time understanding what it is you need to have in order to be successful.