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Product Management and the inspirations around it - a Malaysian point of view.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

How to present like Steve Jobs

You can watch the video here, and read my excerpt below.

This is from a book The Presentation of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo.
How to be insanely great in front of any audience.

5 key secrets

1. Introduce the antagonists

"Every great drama has a hero and a villain."
This is the key to great salesmanship isn't it. Sell the problem first, then the solution. Many people do it the other way round!
The villain here can be a customer problem, an ugly scene in the industry, or a competitor.
And make your solution the Hero.

2. Create Twitter friendly headlines.

"A really light, thin notebook with a 13.3 inch display and yada yada yada" versus
"The World's Thinnest Notebook". (Period).
That was the headline for MacBook Air. 140 character or less!
The next key is - how you communicate that consistently across your website, press releases, presentations, and what came out from your sales person's mouth. I think it takes good discipline and great leadership in the organization.

3. Sell Dreams, not Products.

Steve Jobs doesn't sell computers or hardware.
He sells transformative experiences.

"Music is a transformative experience. Music enriches people's life. In our own small way, we are changing the world". And the world was changed with iPod.

What is it about your product that will change your customers' life?

4. Zen like Simplicity

Simplicity is the elimination of clutter.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Get it?
There are no bullet points in Steve Jobs presentation, and hardly any words. But yet every slide of his presentation conveys a strong message and maximized the outcome.

That same principle applies in product design, presentation and I dare say - life!

5. Rehearse!

Steve Jobs practices over 100 of hours over period of weeks before he does 1 presentation.
If Steve Jobs rehearse relentlessly, what would you do? Depend on your natural born talent in presentation?

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Ministry of Health Malaysia - Do you need a Usability Specialist?


Mark told me about this not long ago.. but I get to see it myself returning from Singapore last week.

As part of Ministry of Health's measure to curb the spread of Influenza A(H1N1), they now require all incoming travellers to fill in a form (on the left).

And it looks like they could use some good usability advice when designing the form - because many people have issues filling it.

First mistake, asking Age in form of _____ years and _____ months. Sorry, but it took me a while to count how many months old I am (is it the fault of our education system?).

Here's the real bummer - "Have you been to any area of country with local transmission of Influenza A(H1N1) as indicated by the WHO over the past 7 days?". Does everyone remember the full list of countries with local transmission of H1N1? The WHO list, you know?

So Ministry of Health, if you need to hire a Usability Specialist, please go to http://www.jobstreet.com.my/ - the most cost effective way to hire in Malaysia.
Or, get a hold of the book Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The Marketing Discipline

Recently Philip Kotler was in the country to give a talk.
And I thought he said something very profound - Marketing needs deep understanding of the following:
  • Economic theory.
  • Mathematics.
  • Organizational theory.
  • Behavioral science / psychology.
Does the marketing function in your organization capable in all these areas?

Monday, April 6, 2009

Assessing Product Opportunities

"Complicated is interesting, Simple is useful' - I heard this recently. The best advice is normally the simplest one, isn't it?
So I was thinking about how can I systematically access the potential of a new product, and I found a good article in SVPG (yet again).

And here's the thought process - guiding questions to help discover the answer:
1. Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)
2. For whom do we solve that problem? (target market)
3. How big is the opportunity? (market size)
4. What alternatives are out there? (competitive landscape)
5. Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)
6. Why now? (market window)
7. How will we get this product to market? (go-to-market strategy)
8. How will we measure success/make money from this product? (metrics/revenue strategy)
9. What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)
10. Given the above, what’s the recommendation? (go or no-go)