The Positioned Product Manager
Why Differentiating & Positioning Yourself Will Unlock Career Progress
I was coaching a client a year or two back.
Let’s call him David.
Now David was a decent Product Manager; he had delivered business results, understood what made a good product approach, he had even been trained up by doing our Prod MBA programme & taking a product from zero to revenue!
BUT, his career was stuck.
Why? 🤔
David was awful at selling himself.
Awful. 🤦♂️
And David is not alone.
Out of 350+ PMs that I’ve coached, I would say 80-90% are equally bad at selling themselves! That’s a lot of missed promotions, failed job interviews, missed chances to make an impact in their roles.
In the following article, I’ll explain why David was awful at selling himself, before going on to outline the specific steps you can take to differentiate & position yourself effectively to get your career un-stuck.
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Why Was David’s Career Stuck, Despite Being A Great PM?
David’s career was stuck because he had only focused on one of two elements of product career success:
Differentiation.
David was a differentiated Product Manager, which is great - and no small thing to achieve.
Through a combination of being good at his job & being in the right teams & companies as opportunity arose, he had steadily built up experience in the travel sector with some impressive key results (e.g. scaling a product from 0 to £1m+ within a few months) & strong domain knowledge.
He was differentiated in that here was somebody with unique, specific value to a prospective hiring time. Somebody that could clearly deliver results as a PM & within the travel industry.
However, he hadn’t thought about the second key element of product career success:
How to position himself.
What do I mean by that?
It means that, if you dug under the surface, there was tangible evidence that he knew his stuff.
But it also means that the perception of value was not clear.
I.E. If you picked up David’s CV, or interviewed David, it really wasn’t clear that he would be the perfect guy for your PM travel industry job.
Which meant that companies simply either turned him down after interviewing, or barely glanced over his CV before rejecting him.
Which led to his career being stuck (and reaching out to me for coaching).
So, How Do You Position Yourself as a Product Manager or Leader?
Ironically, you could have a lot of substance, but if you can’t sell yourself effectively, you’re stuck.
Conversely, I’m sure you’ve worked with people who are great at selling themselves & completely lack substance, but manage to seemingly inexplicably rise quickly in their industry. The reason? A mixture of confidence & good positioning.
I get it.
We should all be judged on substance, not on how well we sell ourselves.
But that’s just not reality.
Therefore, the thing you should focus on in order to kickstart your product career is positioning.
Here are 4 things to focus on in order to unlock career progress:
1/4 Define Your Unique Value Proposition
Start by asking yourself:
What can I do that is both different & creates value?
But this is a waste of time if you are vague or aspirational here (e.g. Saying you’re “really hard-working” or “dedicated” doesn’t mean anything. Everyone says that stuff. It’s fluffy.)
Instead, find evidence in your career to help define your unique value:
Which industries have you most worked in?
Do you have any specific technical and/or domain knowledge?
Have you delivered key results for your products’ users (e.g. improved acquisition, activation, retention or referral)? If so, what was the specific result?
Have you delivered key results for the business (e.g. reducing cost or increasing revenue)?
Any other accomplishments that might grab a hiring team’s attention? e.g. Running ultra-marathons, running a side project or podcast, building a community of mentees?
2/4 Create A Personal Narrative
I won’t go into the psychology of why we craft a personal narrative using this framework here, but it’s worth watching this full workshop replay to put this into practice.
For the sake of this article, suffice to say: we’ve tried this with 300+ PMs. It works.
By preparing a clear narrative - positioned in a way that should resonate with your target audience (e.g. a fintech product leader if you want to apply for fintech PM roles) - you will immediately stand out from other applicants.
Focus on writing 1-3 key, concise points you want to make for each section:
1. The back story: Where did it all start? What struggles did you face? E.g. growing up, finding a job, getting good at that job
2. Desire: What was the challenge you were faced with and wanted to solve?
3. Epiphany: What - and when - was that moment of realisation when you decided enough was enough?
4. Plan: What was the plan you decided upon to change our current situation and start moving towards our desired outcome?
5. Achievement: Once you had a plan, how did we put into action? And what were the results? How did we overcome obstacles along the way?
6. And finally, what transformation did we experience? How did we come out of the experience better, happier, stronger, having a great impact on others ,etc., in the process?
For example, say you want to start with a great back story to grab their attention, you might say, “I was fired from my first job. I felt lost. Didn’t know what to do next…”
3/4 Make Your CV Reflect That Narrative
It’s not enough to sell yourself well in an interview.
You need to also position your CV to resonate with your target audience.
That means a focused, specific intro section
e.g.
✅ “I have 10 years experience in fintech, with experience building products from 0 to £1m+, as well as improving retention by 44% in my recent role.”
❌ Not something fluffy like “I always put 110% into my job & love product work.”
That means, for each role, stating clear key results you have delivered (e.g. “My team improved onboarding conversion from 10% to 35% in 6 months”)
That means cutting the long list of responsibilities & irrelevant roles/work experience that your target audience won’t care about.
(Watch this workshop replay for more tips & real examples)
4/4 Back It All Up With Substance
Sure, some people sell themselves well, despite zero relevant experience or competency to do the job.
But, ultimately, you want to be able to deliver results. Without that, you’ll always feel like a fraud & quite simply not feel fulfilled with your work.
That means focusing on delivering user & business value on the job.
It means that, if you’re not getting that experience on the job, doing things like…
Working on a side product, like a no-code app
Building real value with a small community, podcast, or regular networking event
It means reaching out to startups to maybe offer free consulting/coaching
Conclusion
In product management, you can build a great product, but…
If it can’t 1) find the right audience and then 2) be packaged in a way that makes it desirable to that audience?
The product will fail.
You are a product.
Whether you like it or not, you need to differentiate yourself, position yourself, sell yourself.
Start by defining your Unique Value Proposition, create a compelling personal narrative, thread that into your CV, then make sure you back it all up with substance.
350+ of our students have followed this process as part of Prod MBA & seen their product career accelerate dramatically.
You should do the same.