如何成为产品经理，直接从Hubspot PM

Even if you’ve been consideringproduct managementas a career for a while, you might still wonder how you can become a product manager. What do you even study for that? What kind of experience do you need? What should be your first step?

There’s no shame in wondering. It was a mystery to me, too, before I became a product manager at HubSpot.

Product management is unlike any other career out there. Marketing, sales, and service roles all have clear-cut responsibilities and requirements. If you’re acustomer success manager, for example, you help customers get the most out of the product with excellent customer support.

But the role of a product manager isn’t as clear-cut. They work at the intersection of customer service, product development, user experience, engineering, and design. They can also take on a mixture of marketing- and sales-like responsibilities (though they’re neither marketers nor salespeople). So it’s confusing to understand what they do — but I’m here to help.

In this post, I’ll cover everything you need to know about becoming a product manager — even if you have no experience in product management, which was the case for me when I was hired as a HubSpot PM. Let’s get started.

While there are many responsibilities of a PM, the key function of a product manager is deciding what to build — with the objective of helping the business and its customers.

There are two main considerations to be made in the prioritization of what's built: the likelihood of maximizing customer value and business impact. The product manager must optimize both of those areas to generate the most value for the business. Ideally, this leads to products that are useful to the consumer and profitable for the company.

The PM is also a key player in the product development and management teams. They're in charge of distributing information and making sure everyone is clear on their objectives. In product management, it's important to meet deadlines, so PMs need to be proficient communicators with strong leadership skills.

How much does a product manager make?

How much you make as a product manager depends on your location, your company’s location, and your years of experience.

According toGlassdoor，产品经理平均每年的价格为111,090美元。在低端，产品经理可以每年赚取72,000美元，而在高端，他们每年可以赚取$ 171,000。

Salary.comreports slightly different ranges. The median salary for a product manager is $86,866/year, and the salary can range from $67,000/year to $124,000/year.

ZipRecruiter的数据显示，全国平均水平为每年66,670美元，低端为32,000美元，高端为98,000美元/年。

Is an MBA required to become a product manager?

No. An MBA isn’t required to become a product manager. When hiring product managers, companies most often look at your problem-solving skills and your experience in the industry. Some companies prefer candidates who have a technical background or who have experience specifically selling B2B products.

A product manager oversees an array of responsibilities during development and production. Let's review a few of these tasks in the section below.

产品经理做什么？

产品经理负责概述产品愿景并创建可行的策略，以将其投入生产。协调每个工程团队并将他们从初始计划到最终产品发布是他们的工作。他们还确定了其余发展团队的可交付成果。

在实践中,这意味着一个产品经理需要identify customer pains or challenges that the business seeks to solve. Then, product managers work with design and development teams to validate and implement solutions, and ultimately launch a product to the market.

根据组织,它往往是到the product manager to prioritize which problems need to be solved most urgently, and to validate customer challenges as problems that are worth solving now or in the future.

Below, I cover some common responsibilities of a product manager.

Conducting User and Market Research

产品经理的主要目标之一是创建或增强产品，以便1）帮助客户，2）它在行业中更具竞争力。产品的创建或改进应增加保留率并改善业务的底线。

To that end, product managers are often tasked with conducting user andmarket researchto find out how the product is doing and what improvements should be made. They then communicate these findings to the engineering team, which takes the changes into effect, and then the marketing team, which crafts messaging to communicate these changes to the target audience.

In some instances, product managers are expected to create the messaging, then send it to the marketing department.

与工程，销售和营销联络

产品经理负责与工程，销售和营销联系，以帮助最终用户提供精美的高功能产品。如果是现有产品，工程团队将执行拟议的更改，销售团队将出售新的和改进的产品，营销团队将产品定位为成功。

The same would be true for a new product in the works. Product managers continuously partner with engineering to create an effective and bug-free product, then work with sales and marketing to get it off the ground.

产品经理还负责向领导者和利益相关者报告更新。

Managing the Product Life Cycle

At a high level, product managers oversee theproduct life cycle从头到尾 - 从开发阶段开始，在下降阶段结束。目的是避免下降阶段或制定策略，以防市场过饱和。

分销在产品生命周期中起着关键作用，尤其是在引言阶段。进行市场研究后，产品经理确定了产品的最佳分销渠道。

To illustrate all of these responsibilities, let’s take a look at an example from a HubSpot job listing.

示例产品经理职责

• “Own product strategy from concept through launch, along with future iterations.”

• “Connect with the customers to identify insights to drive decisions.”

• “Utilize research and analytics to build delightful and innovative products.”

• “与内部产品团队建立联系，以确定市场可以帮助客户增长的新机会。”

What makes a good product manager?

一个好的产品经理具有强大的问题解决，战略性，协作和沟通能力，以及同理心和创造力。

Creative Problem-Solving Skills

产品管理的核心目标是改善现有产品或创建已经过测试和定位的新产品。因此，优秀的产品经理对客户和企业有一个可靠的往绩解决问题。

Being a problem-solver isn’t enough. They have to be creative about it, too. If their user research alerts them to a bug in the product, they’ll brainstorm a few solutions from the user’s perspective — solutions that may not occur to the engineering team.

Strategic Mindset

Managing a product’s life cycle from beginning to end requires a high level ofstrategic thinking。因此，优秀的产品经理始终会牢记战略和最终目标。战略心态的特征是敏锐的聆听和质疑技巧以及偏见的意识和任务优先级。

You can cultivate a strategic mindset in your personal life, at school, at your current job, or in all of the above. By intentionally building this skill, you can be better prepared for a PM role.

Collaborative Attitude

Product managers collaborate with different departments, teams, and people. If you prefer to work alone, you could still do well in a product manager role. Just know that while you’re still working alone, you’re collaborating with others to achieve a positive end result.

Collaboration is key in a strong product organization. Without it, everyone would be working in silos, and nothing would get done. As a product manager, you’ll be expected to proactively work with other people within and outside your team to solve problems and create positive impact.

Outstanding Communication Skills

对于产品经理来说，强大的沟通能力是必须的。您不必是个外向的人，但是如果您不喜欢与人交谈，则可能想跳过PM角色。您不仅必须与其他团队成员交谈，而且还必须与客户交谈。

在您的用户研究中，您可能会期望您通过电话发送电子邮件或与他们交谈。当您在产品管理职业中晋升时，您还会期望您向领导者和利益相关者提供演讲。

High Levels of Empathy

要了解产品级别的问题，您需要能够将自己放在客户的鞋子上。这意味着您需要同理心 - 否则，您将无法在管理产品的生命周期时设计解决方案。

Having empathy can also help you understand the challenges that other teams face, which can help you collaborate better with them and cultivate a more fruitful partnership.

Let’s look at an example from a HubSpot job listing.

示例产品经理技能

• “在内部和外部代表产品组织的信心。”

• “A data-driven approach to problem-solving.”

• “Excellent communication skills and ability to clearly articulate vision.”

• “将客户反馈与产品开发联系起来的创造性方法。”

Now that you know the responsibilities and skills needed for the job, let’s cover how you can become a product manager. You can do it two ways: without any experience or within your current company.

如何成为产品经理

很有可能，如果您正在阅读这篇文章，那么您将没有任何产品管理经验。

Most product manager roles require a bachelor’s degree. Luckily, you can study any discipline and still land a PM role. There’s no particular field requirement, although some PM roles may request a technical background.

在申请产品经理角色之前，请确保您有：

• 任何学科的学士学位
• A true and vested interest in the field
• 产品管理课程的预算

这样，让我们​​回顾一下如何开始产品管理职业。

1. Research the role and talk to current product managers.

You don’t want to end up in a job that you actually dislike. If you’re just out of university or planning to switch from another discipline, be sure to research the role prior to spending one dime on product management courses.

You can reach out to current PMs on LinkedIn or watch YouTube videos from product managers describing what they do. This should give you a much better idea of what the role entails and could even give you a hint about the types of companies that hire product managers. As you begin to research, you should take note of the firms you could potentially work at. Google, HubSpot, and Slack are just a few examples.

2. Take a product management certification course.

Product management can seem complicated from the outside-in, and no amount of research will prepare you enough for the responsibilities of a product manager. For that reason, I recommend taking a product manager certification course — in fact, that’s what I did. I took the course atGeneral Assembly。

This step is important because it can also help your resume stand out from other resumes in the pile. Without any experience, you might get bypassed by a hiring manager, but with a certification in your credentials, your resume will warrant a second look. It will also equip you for taking on the role confidently, which will come across in your interviews.

There are a ton of courses out there:Cornell,UC Berkeley， 和Northwesternall offer product management certifications. Check out our full list ofproduct management coursesyou can enroll in right now.

3. Start a side project and document it — failures included.

我建议这样做，如果您也在内部申请。您能做的最好的事情是启动一个附带项目，并从头到尾监督它。从头到尾，您监督一个项目表明，您具有管理产品生命周期从开发到发布的技能。

The fun part about this is that it can be anything, so long as you’re interested in it and it requires similar steps to product management. I personally created an app, but you could create a website from scratch. On the artistic side, you could create a mural raising awareness for a cause that you care about or hand-bind journals to sell through your website.

这里重要的是要展示您如何在整个过程中解决问题，这意味着对自己的失败和错误诚实。您还需要记录您如何与他人合作以使项目完成。

4. Work on your communication and storytelling skills.

Product management requires strong communication and storytelling skills. Whether you practice presenting something in front of your pets or gather your friends for a practice meeting, you’ll want to work on your communication skills. Your goal is to communicate ideas succinctly while delivering high impact.

产品经理以及与他们合作的团队 - 没有很多时间。作为产品经理，期望您每周甚至每天都与外部团队和利益相关者进行沟通。确保提高您的沟通技巧，并学习如何提供有关单一产品的引人入胜的故事。

5. Build a technical background.

While技术产品管理不同于一般的产品管理,while you won’t be expected to have a ton of technical knowledge, the fact remains that most PM roles are at tech firms.

因此，您需要建立一个基本的技术背景 - 实际使用这些知识，而是要向未来的雇主展示您愿意在需要时学习的知识。对他们来说，重要的是要知道技术信息不会吓到您。您可以从基本语言开始，例如htmlorCSS。Or you can jump into a more complicated topic such as红宝石在轨道上。

6. If applicable, apply for an Associate Product Management program.

Associate Product Management (APM) programs allow new graduates and early-career professionals to start a career in product management. You can apply without experience. While the roles are temporary, many programs lead to a permanent role within the firm.

世界上最大的公司拥有APM计划。谷歌,Facebook,LinkedIn， 和雅虎are just a few examples. You can find more onAPM List, which lists programs and their current status.

If you’re an experienced professional shifting into product management, don’t disregard these programs just yet. Google’s APM roles often require some experience, so you’ll be able to set yourself apart if your current industry complements product management.

7. Apply for a PM role.

If you apply for an APM program and get in, there’s no need to proceed to this step. If, however, you’re advanced in your career or didn’t get into an APM program, it’s time to apply for PM roles.

我建议您先申请小型企业，然后努力到更大，更杰出的公司。这样，您就可以在尝试在Facebook等公司找到工作之前就可以品尝到产品管理面试的情况。bob全站app

To that end, check out some companies where product manager roles are always available.

Project Manager Jobs

Product manager jobs can be found virtually anywhere, but there are a few companies where you’ll always find product manager roles due to growth.

• HubSpot
• Facebook
• Twitter
• 谷歌
• 松弛
• PayPal

产品学校列出您可以申请的更多公司。

想成为您当前公司的总理吗？在下面查看我如何做。

如何成为产品经理at Your Current Company

成为产品经理可能有点像Catch-22，因为大多数PM角色都需要作为产品经理的事先经验。但是，即使您还没有在产品团队中工作，您也可以找到可以为您准备并增强您的宝贵机会。

问题后继续解决问题。这就是我在Hubspot成为PM的所做的。我以前曾在服务团队中，但成功地转向了产品管理。如果您在一家拥有产品管理团队的公司工作，则可以做我所做的同样的事情并在内部申请。

Here's my best advice for becoming a product manager and best prepare for the role.

1. Find a project you can own end-to-end at work.

A few years ago, I was eager to become a PM just like you. I was working as a customer support rep at HubSpot, and I had decided to take a product management course at General Assembly. As part of my final project for the General Assembly class, I had to pick a problem and go through the exercise of validating potential solutions to bring to market.

在提出了问题和解决方案之后，我与同学链接，实际上解决了我研究的问题，并决定创建一个应用程序，可以帮助您从您的单个应用程序中管理每月的数字订阅（例如Spotify，Netflix等）电话。

三个月后,我们的iOS应用程序,SubscriptMe,born, and promised to help consumers manage their subscriptions, keep track of trials, and find top-rated services by other users.

As part of the process in building the app, I conducted user and market research, I designed and tested prototypes, and I partnered with a developer to build an iOS app to bring a solution to market. To be clear, I didn't actually code the app myself — I outsourced the engineering work and focused on making sure SubscriptMe was solving a real problem.

18个月后，在未找到可行的业务模型后，我停止了该应用程序的工作。尽管我还没有获得所希望的商业成功或产品经理的头衔，但我已经做了PM来验证问题和解决方案所做的所有事情。

关键要点

You don't have to build a mobile app to get the experience that I am talking about here. Start a side hustle. Build a business. Work on a problem set that affords you the opportunity to try things and fail. You’ll learn helpful lessons on your path to becoming a product manager.

2. Volunteer to solve problems as a side project at work.

Whether you work at a startup or a large corporation, companies empower their employees to solve the hairiest problems. If you're not in a position where you have the autonomy or time to work on problems that fall outside your core job function, keep digging until you find one you and your manager believe is worth solving.

By this time, I had moved from a support rep to an implementation specialist, helping sales teams onboard to HubSpot's CRM. At the time, we were migrating from one billing system to another, and the transition was causing a ton of customer pain around account and billing accessibility. I asked my manager if she would be willing to let me tackle the issue we were experiencing, and with her support, I went full force at solving the problem.

Every time the billing problem surfaced, I had my teammates send the customer my way. I would hop on a screen share and document the steps for how the customer got into a weird state. Then I would resolve the billing problem for the customer and pass along my findings to the team working on that particular set of products. Ultimately, we were able to mitigate the billing problem with an elegant solution that the product team released a few weeks later.

I learned a ton along the way — how to triage, how to prioritize, how to liaise with various teams. But, at the end of it, I still hadn't become a PM. It was time to move onto the next problem.

关键要点

诊断或询问您的队友或经理他们面临的挑战。除了日常工作外，还要承担研究，实验和执行您自己拥有的解决方案的任务。

3.建立解决棘手问题，进行研究和领导跨职能协作的记录。

My manager now had faith in me to tackle another problem: helping really small businesses get started with HubSpot through a self-service onboarding model.

面临的挑战是让客户细分市场很难在船上和保留，很难进行大规模进行，几乎没有人力资源。bob体育苹果系统下载安装我的角色已成为半程管理，半实践。我正在与客户打电话，以了解如何扩展一项将在没有人触摸的情况下登上新团队的程序。然后，我的任务是制定一个完整的入职计划。

As part of my effort, I documented experiments, tracked engagement rates with my onboarding resources, and worked with internal stakeholders in product, sales, and support to create the program that still exists today. I worked on this program for close to a year and got a ton of exposure to other PMs in the organization. I was essentially acting like a product manager without some of their core responsibilities.

关键要点

跟踪您正在管理的项目和正在运行的实验，记录您的发现，并使用这些学习来开始与产品团队进行交流对话。另外，如果您在组织之外寻找PM角色，请在个人博客或LinkedIn个人资料上记录这些内容。

4. Apply for a PM job opening at your company.

After spending a couple of years managing problems inside and outside of the workplace, I had created a body of work that I could point to and now had experiences to draw from.

我上面描述的所有经验都是降落产品经理工作的关键。以下是我在此过程中获得的一些技能，可以帮助我向雇主证明我可以完成PM的工作：

• Learning how to tell a good story about the problem I was trying to solve
• Understanding and practicing how to conduct user and market research
• 与潜在客户或客户交谈感到自在
• 拥有我申请的产品角色的主题专业知识
• 表现出强大的口头和书面沟通能力
• Garnering buy-in and influence across multiple teams
• 学习如何测量，分析和包装内部利益相关者的关键结果

It was the collective experience of identifying and solving problems for a couple of years that was the key to me landing a job as a product manager.

由于我建立的关系以及一路上获得的经验，我被聘为HubSpot产品团队的经理。

关键要点

Apply for a product manager opening at your current employer. During the interview, highlight your experience and expertise identifying, diagnosing, and solving problems end-to-end, collaborating cross-functionally, and taking ownership of project successes and failures.

Launch a Fulfilling Career in Product Management

Product management is a highly fulfilling career, and the best part is that anyone can get started — just like I did. If you want to become a product manager, solve one problem, and the next, and then the next. If you solve enough problems, you'll become a product manager that any firm will be thrilled to hire.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.