Having performed the role of Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager for over 75 products and services across multiple markets and industries for the past 47 years, I am often asked: “What do I have to do?”

“How to get a job as a product manager and product marketing manager?”

The answer is simple.  

Show you can do the job.

Being able to demonstrate the competency of a product manager and product marketing manager is the hard part.

First, you have to know what competencies are required for each role to be a product manager or a product marketing manager or both.  

You can get the job description for a product manager here and a for a product marketing manager here.

Then you have to demonstrate you have the skills, the competencies.

One way is to find someone who will hire you and let you learn on the job.  

Hewlett Packard Product Management

I had such a benefit when Hewlett Packard let me move horizontally into a product marketing manager job (back then everybody was called a product marketing manager which today is split into the titles and roles of product manager and product marketing manager) and learn on the job.

But fewer and fewer companies have the time or the desire to let you learn on the job.

Or…

Association of International Product Management and Marketing (AIPMM)

You could read the Association of International Product Management and Marketing (AIPMM) book of knowledge or ProdBok and find out what a product manager and product marketing manager does.

The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge (ProdBOK® Guide)

But that does not teach you “how” to do it… just “what” needs to be done.

Where can you learn ‘What’ to do as a product manager?”

To learn “what” to do. You could take any number of courses on the subjects from the likes of Pragmatic, Sequent, Brainmates, General Assembly, 280 Group, the University of California at Berkeley Extension, University of Wisconsin, Institute of Product Leadership and others.  

You could also attend pCamps or Product Camps to pick up tidbits of popular interest, but those tidbits tend to be disjointed and provide little in an organized, systematic mature process that is repeatable – the key to product management success.

The Best Way to Learn What to Do as a Product Manager or Product Marketing Manager”

Or…(Warning… unabashed self-promotion coming up) you could:

1. Take my online courses which cover the entire breadth of the product lifecycle:  getting the company organized, discovering the key things your product should do for your customers, innovation, value proposition, product market strategy, marketing and social media marketing.  Go here.
2. Do the accompanying workbooks for each for your own product, or I can give you a case study and a product idea you can use for your study. (If done well, these products could be turned into real ones, and you will have laid the necessary groundwork for starting your own company.)
3. Let me review your work and give you feedback (Included in the price of the course)
4. If you do a good job on the workbooks, then I will give you a personal letter of recommendation you can show to your prospective employer along with the plan you developed showing you know “how” to do the job
5. Each course will give you a “certificate of completion” you can show on your Linkedin profile and to your prospective employer
6. Then go to work on your resume including citing results you have accomplished with numbers, use active verbs and cut out anything that distracts from what the hiring manager is trying to find

You are Hired as a Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager

I’ll bet, if you follow the directions above, you WILL get hired, since you will have demonstrated you know what you need to do and how to do it.

And then there is the cost both in terms of time and money.  

In terms of time, each of the providers listed above will take you 2-3 days to several weeks to go through their courses.  In most cases, you will learn “what’ needs to be done and little on “how” to do it.  It is the “how” that is most important.

What I say here is from personal experience.  I was teaching one of those other company’s courses (which I also helped write), to the Botswana Telecommunications Company. About two days into the three-day class, one of the junior product managers asked if we could go through filling in the product plan template in detail.  Out of the three days of training, we got to spend only about 45 minutes on that task which greatly frustrated them.  You see, the lectures were all about the “what” and not the “how”. Plus they were all lectures with almost no time for practice, discussion and collaboration.

With Spice Catalyst’s courses, it will take you about four to five days to go through all the courses. But you can do it in manageable bites of less than 20 minutes each at a time if you want and at your pace. If you want to hear/see the lecture again, you can do so at any time, including the updates.

To do the plans, it will take about 4-5 months of effort to develop a really good–and comprehensive–plan that will work in the marketplace.  It is difficult. It is hard work to make sure you will have a successful product or service.   

Regarding money, the others will cost you several thousands of dollars, and often more.  My course is substantially less.  Less than $120 for all five courses. They include what I have learned from my experience.

Do you have what it takes to be in a position to earn over $100K a year and get the fundamentals of what it requires to be a CEO and an entrepreneur?

It is up to you.

If you believe you can, then the ball is in your court!

Make it happen!

Go here to get started.