Brian de Haaff's Blog, page 24

5 Reasons Product Managers Are Still Building Disappointing Products

Something is slowly rotting. And I may have found the stinky source. It might be your product. Are you building something that customers love using? Or are they simply holding their noses — tolerating it due to a lack of options or because it is the product they have been told to use?

Tolerating is better than flat-out disdain. But only by a bit. So why do we keep building these disappointing products?

I once wrote a blog post about rotten products. But it has been a few years. So I figured...

It Is Time to Eliminate Sales Commissions

Crazy quotas. Anything to close a deal. Pushing customers no matter the cost. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already know how I feel about the traditional approach to sales. Customers have changed, yet the selling process has not. But here is a surprise — I am about to come to the defense of salespeople everywhere.

It is foolish to think that salespeople are coin-operated machines, brains filled with nothing but the sound of ‘ka-ching!’

In a blog post about why companies mus...

Your Company Will Not Let You Work Remotely — But Why?

People want remote work. I hear this from job seekers, comments on social media, and leaders at technology companies. Everyone wants it and research proves the benefits. But many companies just will not let it happen. What is driving this disconnect?

Companies give all sorts of reasons for their myopia when it comes to remote work, but frankly, those reasons are usually bunk. The real reason is fear.

If I sound a bit biased on the subject, it is because I am. Aha! was founded on the premise...

The Costly Mistake You Are Making on Your Resume

“Increased social media followers by 4,000 percent. Boosted website traffic by 3,500 percent.” I see puffed up metrics like this all the time. Especially on resumes submitted by people applying for marketing roles. While I appreciate the instinct to show results, what do these eye-popping numbers really mean?

I have written before about the importance of a results-driven resume. But in an effort to quantify worth, it can be tempting to lean hard into funny math — believing that big numbers s...

5 Steps to Set Your 2018 Business Goals

Getting lost used to be much easier. One wrong turn and you could lose your way. You might pull over to unfold a faded paper map. Maybe even ask a stranger at a gas station for directions. Now smartphones and GPS have changed the way we navigate. But even the best technology cannot tell you where you want to go.

You still need to know where you are and where you are headed. The same is true for annual planning.

I realize this sounds obvious — every organization needs to know where it is he...

Hey Product Manager: The Problem With “Trusting Your Gut”

Sometimes your gut instinct is wrong. I discovered this a number of years ago after launching a new product. A strange phenomenon was happening. The more support interactions a customer had, the more likely they were to keep using the product. Wait — what? The more problems customers had, the longer they stayed with us?

This felt counter-intuitive at the time. My gut told me that an increase in support requests was a sign that the product was not working as expected. Today I understand that...

Hey Boss: This Job Feels Pointless

The boss is missing. Again. You hate to be bored and are searching for ways to keep busy. So you shoot off an email with a few project ideas. You get a reply a day later: “Thanks, I will take a look.” But you know this will never happen. What is the point?

Call off the search team. I know where the boss is. And I know why your ideas will never go anywhere. I once reported to someone who did this often. Let’s call him Joe. Joe was usually locked away working on a plan for the next quarter. B...

The 10 Best Blogs for Product Managers

It is one thing to write down your thoughts in a private journal. It is quite another to publish those thoughts for everyone to read. You need to have a strong conviction to share what you have learned. That is why I started writing on the Aha! blog — to share my views about building great products and companies with others who are trying to do the same.

The reality is that the best product managers are curious about many things, not just building products and the organizations that support...

Remote Workers vs. Office Workers

“I could never work remotely.” A friend of a friend said this to me the other day. We had just met and I was explaining how we run Aha! as a fully distributed team. Despite that declarative statement about “never working remotely,” this person seemed plenty interested in the concept of remote work once I described how we do it at Aha!

He then launched into a rapid-fire series of questions:

How do you collaborate with the team? What tools do you use to stay connected? When will you really ne...

Exhausted at Work? — Do This Now

Does it ever feel like there is just too much information coming your way? You are not the only one who is exhausted. The whole team is drowning — chasing down customer requests, navigating conflicting executive decrees, and trying to prioritize which colleague to respond to first. It is no wonder the mental exhaustion seems contagious. This overcommitted and overloaded state is not sustainable. But the solution might surprise you.

I suggest that instead of tuning out the noise, you try tuni...