Product Innovation Series with Aram Melkoumov

In this episode, Meraj and Aram discuss the main reasons product-led growth initiatives fail. They chat about the challenges that pursuing product-led growth brings about and how product directors and product managers can catch problems early on. Throughout the conversation, they explore how-to future-proof products, the characteristics of consistently successful project managers, and what B2B product managers can learn from B2C product managers.

Show Notes

Product-led growth is not for every company. Yet, lots of people have jumped on the product-led growth bandwagon inexplicably and have ended up disappointed or frustrated. Tune in to discover why most people get product led-growth wrong and what to do to get it right.


About Meraj
Meraj Imani is the Director of Product Management at Fiix by Rockwell Automation. Previously, he was Group Product Manager at Checkout 51 and Director of Product Management at BioConnect among other product management roles. He stumbled into product management while he was at the beginning of his career as an engineer.


SHOW NOTES:
0:00 | Who is Meraj Imani?
06:45 | Bringing B2C experimentation and mindset to B2B
09:24 | What is a painted door experiment?
10:26 | Why do so many people get product-led growth wrong? OR 4 main reasons why most people get product-led growth wrong
14:18 | Who should the product marketing officer report to?
15:42 | The challenges that come with product-led growth
18:03 | Metrics that can accelerate growth for product directors and product managers.
22:25 | Should Product Managers act like CEOs?
25:32 | How documenting questions and assumptions can future-proof your product
29:30 | Thought experiment to ship better products
30:18 | Never outsource THIS part of your product development process
32:04 | Gauging customer expectations
33:13 | How to get rid of distractions in your product development process
33:58 | Streamlining user experience is not always right.
35:38 | Should you have fun at work?


QUOTES:
“A painted door experiment is when you don’t have something built. You’re sort of wondering if it’s going to impact a particular behavioral outcome and so you just put a link to it or a button to it or a call to action to it. What that does is it introduces the user to “hey we have this” or  “can we talk to you about this” or “is that something that you’re interested in”. It’s important to have tracking for it.” [09:28]
“People get attached to the solution that they’re thinking about and you kind of lose sight of the problem that you’re solving. So be attached to the problem, not the solution.” [22:06]
“The most successful product managers in a long period of time that I know have always been collaborative, extremely humble, good storytellers, and have empathy.” [24:00]


Follow Meraj Imani:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merajimani/ 
Fiix by Rockwell Automation: https://www.fiixsoftware.com/ 

What is Product Innovation Series with Aram Melkoumov?

Product Innovation Series is an in-depth interview series featuring product & innovation leaders from small startups all the way to Fortune 500 behemoths. Our guests share their battle-tested perspective on what prevents teams from shipping a great product.
The show is hosted by Aram Melkoumov, the CEO of Crowdlinker.