if you work on B2B products, you’ve probably noticed a tension between the “inbound” parts of the job like working with design/engineering/research to build the product and the “outbound” aspects of the job like working with marketing/sales/success to bring the product to market
my understanding is some companies even separate the PM ladder along inbound / outbound tracks - which is something I’ve found awkward and artificially constraining for a PM who just wants to GSD (remember, I prefer PM tweeners to purists)
BUT
I’ve recently noticed (maybe because I am working more on 0→1 products) that some PMs are great with users (understand the problem, solve the pain, create delightful experiences) while other PMs excel at navigating buyers (ask great discovery questions, circle the compelling event, tease out commercial constraints)
and I’m starting to wonder…are there user PMs vs buyer PMs in B2B products? should those be 2 different roles? is it fair to ask 1 PM to excel at both for a new product line?
survey question: should those be 2 different roles / career ladders / performance bars / etc?
[A] yes
[B] no
[C] you need to write a longer post for me to really form an opinion
If forced to pick, I'd say no - separating *PM* roles based on user- vs buyer-focused is setting up political conflicts, and if the same product has both users and buyers removing responsibility for one is bound to end up in poorer decisions by the PM. I think adding complementary roles is better. For example a Product Marketing Manager to focus more on the sales enablement and buyer education.
One situation in which I'd say 'yes', is when there is a large enough platform and set of capabilities that are being packaged differently for users vs buyers. For example, different sides of a marketplace, or a SaaS product that is sold both to solopreneuers (user and buyer are the same) as well as Enterprises (users and buyer are different), perhaps under different brands. Of course this implies a 1 -> 10 scenario, rather than 0->1 ;)
Having PM teams with a diversity of skills is great, because when a new project or product comes up, you'll be able to give it to the person whose skills match it best. Don't hire clones. At Splunk in the early days we had one PM who was a wizard at sales and pricing strategy, another who was amazing at business models, another who knew web UI and web dev really well, etc. That diversity helped us handle whatever came at us.
But as soon as you enshrine those differences into a job role, you necessarily create multiple owners for decisions, more people at every meeting, more personalities who need to agree, more single points of failure, and overall slower progress. Don't do it!
Instead, try to have fewer, more experienced, breadth-friendly people on the team. Not just PMs but also in Marketing, Eng, etc. If a Marketer wants to build personas, great! If an Eng lead wants to own the internal admin tools UI, great! The more PMs can be creative about finding the skills around them and putting the right people to work on the right problems, the happier everyone will be.
Just don't create more job roles. You'll never be able to get rid of them and they'll slow you down. Much more depth about this is in the post linked above.
If you are lucky enough to find a systems thinker, with engineering literacy and an interest for the commercial (or at the very least the patience and empathy to sit along commercially minded people), the you might be ok with a single track. Those people are exceedingly rare though.
[B] - But also want to caveat this with saying that PMMs should ideally handle a good chunk of the buyer PM responsibilities, and I think that shows in some other great comments here too. But there is a lot of things the org needs to ensure for this to happen seamlessly.
For example,PM and PMM need to "build and launch together", and it should not just be a PM to PMM hand-off. I had the good fortune of working in a setup where PMs and PMMs were working collaboratively pre-product in addition to the launch and GTM phases. PMM would build out the business case, tease out the commercial journey, challenges, etc. while PM (with design) would map out the user experience. Great setup, yet, the degree of collaboration was often highly dependent on the individual PMs.
Finally It didn’t. I still consider dividing the journey as a valid way to scale workforce. Not perfect, but the alternatives seems more siloed and less prone to collaboration (the journey is one for all).
My understanding is this should be a single role over time. When starting out, B2B PMs should index more on being User PMs to learn the ropes. This includes focusing on users, solving pain points, creating delightful experiences, and gaining experience in the product development cycle. From what I've seen, they typically work on iterating an existing product line with established distribution and PMF.
As B2B PMs advance their careers to leadership roles like Principal PMs, Directors, and VPs, they often take on new vertical lines and work on more nebulous 0 to 1 products, requiring a broader skill set and proficiency in building products that might not yet have PMF. They need to become more proficient with pre-selling products (e.g., LOIs), understanding commercial constraints, and most importantly, aligning with GTM on outcomes and goals.
I think about it more in terms of archetypes. You could argue that any PM needs both skills, but some competencies, work styles, and preferences can point more to one side.
I manage PMs (and other ICs) based on knowing them, their capacities and goals, and what is the best fit for the problem space/cycle. Even if there are no perfect matches, it raises awareness of possible trade-offs, need for support and opportunities for learning.
That is a valid argument and real-world problem. My suggestion: Split the tasks vertically, not horizontally. Make two products out of one, or create a portfolio. That may not be perfect, but better than splitting feature and value into different roles.
A. Yes. The user PM you are describing is literally a product designer (though I know in many companies designers are just pixel pushers that put some lipstick on the PM's mockups).
If forced to pick, I'd say no - separating *PM* roles based on user- vs buyer-focused is setting up political conflicts, and if the same product has both users and buyers removing responsibility for one is bound to end up in poorer decisions by the PM. I think adding complementary roles is better. For example a Product Marketing Manager to focus more on the sales enablement and buyer education.
One situation in which I'd say 'yes', is when there is a large enough platform and set of capabilities that are being packaged differently for users vs buyers. For example, different sides of a marketplace, or a SaaS product that is sold both to solopreneuers (user and buyer are the same) as well as Enterprises (users and buyer are different), perhaps under different brands. Of course this implies a 1 -> 10 scenario, rather than 0->1 ;)
great points!
[B] No. Adding a new company-wide job role should be an absolute last-resort solution to any problem because it's so costly. I wrote a whole post about why: https://www.saaspm.com/p/dont-split-the-pm-role-into-multiple
Having PM teams with a diversity of skills is great, because when a new project or product comes up, you'll be able to give it to the person whose skills match it best. Don't hire clones. At Splunk in the early days we had one PM who was a wizard at sales and pricing strategy, another who was amazing at business models, another who knew web UI and web dev really well, etc. That diversity helped us handle whatever came at us.
But as soon as you enshrine those differences into a job role, you necessarily create multiple owners for decisions, more people at every meeting, more personalities who need to agree, more single points of failure, and overall slower progress. Don't do it!
Instead, try to have fewer, more experienced, breadth-friendly people on the team. Not just PMs but also in Marketing, Eng, etc. If a Marketer wants to build personas, great! If an Eng lead wants to own the internal admin tools UI, great! The more PMs can be creative about finding the skills around them and putting the right people to work on the right problems, the happier everyone will be.
Just don't create more job roles. You'll never be able to get rid of them and they'll slow you down. Much more depth about this is in the post linked above.
Thanks for asking this question, it's a good one!
B though Product Marketing should be aligned and able to drive a bulk of these conversations once PM and PMM have worked out the outbound messaging
If you are lucky enough to find a systems thinker, with engineering literacy and an interest for the commercial (or at the very least the patience and empathy to sit along commercially minded people), the you might be ok with a single track. Those people are exceedingly rare though.
[B] - But also want to caveat this with saying that PMMs should ideally handle a good chunk of the buyer PM responsibilities, and I think that shows in some other great comments here too. But there is a lot of things the org needs to ensure for this to happen seamlessly.
For example,PM and PMM need to "build and launch together", and it should not just be a PM to PMM hand-off. I had the good fortune of working in a setup where PMs and PMMs were working collaboratively pre-product in addition to the launch and GTM phases. PMM would build out the business case, tease out the commercial journey, challenges, etc. while PM (with design) would map out the user experience. Great setup, yet, the degree of collaboration was often highly dependent on the individual PMs.
Came here to write PM should focus on a part of the journey, not personas, but now I need to read all the comments and maybe change my mind.
I know right?!
Finally It didn’t. I still consider dividing the journey as a valid way to scale workforce. Not perfect, but the alternatives seems more siloed and less prone to collaboration (the journey is one for all).
My understanding is this should be a single role over time. When starting out, B2B PMs should index more on being User PMs to learn the ropes. This includes focusing on users, solving pain points, creating delightful experiences, and gaining experience in the product development cycle. From what I've seen, they typically work on iterating an existing product line with established distribution and PMF.
As B2B PMs advance their careers to leadership roles like Principal PMs, Directors, and VPs, they often take on new vertical lines and work on more nebulous 0 to 1 products, requiring a broader skill set and proficiency in building products that might not yet have PMF. They need to become more proficient with pre-selling products (e.g., LOIs), understanding commercial constraints, and most importantly, aligning with GTM on outcomes and goals.
love this take - it’s a spectrum!
I think about it more in terms of archetypes. You could argue that any PM needs both skills, but some competencies, work styles, and preferences can point more to one side.
so you staff people based on leanings?
I manage PMs (and other ICs) based on knowing them, their capacities and goals, and what is the best fit for the problem space/cycle. Even if there are no perfect matches, it raises awareness of possible trade-offs, need for support and opportunities for learning.
B - this must be a single role. PMs should own the product AND the product's benefit. It is hard to have them on different people.
counter argument: as you bring a new product to market, those 2 jobs add up to more than a full time load - how do you manage?
That is a valid argument and real-world problem. My suggestion: Split the tasks vertically, not horizontally. Make two products out of one, or create a portfolio. That may not be perfect, but better than splitting feature and value into different roles.
No
A. Yes. The user PM you are describing is literally a product designer (though I know in many companies designers are just pixel pushers that put some lipstick on the PM's mockups).
Growth Engineer + Product Designer + Product Marketer (PMM) is the ideal setup. PMs are too glorified IMO
interesting - any companies that follow this model?