The ranking of product managers —— On Tencent's product ranking

Liang Ning, the author of this article, was once called the first talented woman in Zhongguancun. This article first appeared on her official WeChat account "Do you take photos of idle flowers?" Coffee Day.

Yesterday, I had dinner with Li Yang and Yu Meng. Speaking of products, I feel that I have gained a lot in Tencent.

This article can be regarded as the third of the two articles I wrote before, and the first lesson of Tencent products and Tencent hierarchy. Because I want to briefly introduce the concept of rank of Tencent products.

I told Yu Meng that a person's understanding of his or her talent is not that he or she has done something well at once, but that you find that you or someone will never get tired of doing something.

For example, chefs take pains to cut vegetables and set dishes, photographers take pains to seek light, code farmers take pains to catch bugs, and you take pains to face wonderful entrepreneurs ... Only when you spend 10,000 hours painstakingly here can you become a master.

As for me, last year, I met many people who couldn't reach the level of Tencent's second-level product manager to start a business, pulling the team to find investment and determined to build three or four products. The frequent occurrence of this incident makes me extremely depressed and annoyed.

Then let me talk about the ranking of Tencent products. Several big points can roughly measure which market segment the product manager in front of you is in.

1 level product manager: mainly, optimize functions and upgrade data.

Output: Optimize the characteristics of existing products.

In fact, a first-class product manager should be called a product assistant. A fresh college graduate without any product experience can become an excellent product assistant in 1-3 years.

The first discipline he needs to do is to lock in a product he likes, draw a complete service process for its continuous operation, and estimate the overall service cost. (See Lesson 1 of Product Manager).

If you are always keen on the details of UI/UE interface, but "How does it work" and "What's good about the service it outputs?" Have no patience to search systematically. In fact, you should have self-awareness from the beginning: you are suitable for UI/UE, but you can't be a good product manager.

When you notice a product, the first thing you care about is "how does it work" and "what's the difference between the services it outputs?" Then you can start the second-class and third-class training of product assistants.

Junior product managers are divided into three levels. The core work is to optimize features and improve data.

1- 1: Establish a complete understanding of products, and know the explicit and implicit features of a product, so as to continuously provide services. Instead of always being confused and entangled by the dominant features on the surface.

1-2: Inform the points that need optimization, which can complete the optimization and improve the product data performance.

1-3: Inform the product data that needs to be upgraded, and actively judge which features to optimize to realize data upgrade.

To sum up, when you reach 1-3, you have become an expert in product characteristics, and you can consider challenging the job of an intermediate product manager.

If someone can't pay attention to the total process and total cost of products and services first, in fact, he is not suitable to be a product manager.

If someone always puts forward optimization requirements according to the characteristics of his opponent or his own fuzzy experience, instead of pre-evaluation and post-summary according to the numerical results. Then this person is not suitable for being a product manager.

Secondary product manager: intermediate, defining products and operating products.

Output: products that can continue to operate in the market.

The junior product manager already has a product here to improve the data by optimizing the features. The intermediate product manager is that the company does not have this product at present, so it is necessary to make clear the service content and all features of this product, and realize and operate it.

Product optimization that is not oriented by data results is hooliganism.

Similarly, product definitions that are not oriented to the results of service operations are all hooligans.

In other words, we can't clearly evaluate the highest service quality that can be achieved under the current resource constraints, and rely on the word-of-mouth strength that this service quality can achieve to incite the market, so we define products, which is hooliganism.

Why can entrepreneurship only rely on a single breakthrough?

Because entrepreneurs don't have that many resources.

For example, if you want to have an effective impact on the existing market, you need a sense of service quality or word-of-mouth strength of 130.

According to the product category defined at present, the service quality or word-of-mouth strength that the resources in the hands of entrepreneurs can accomplish can reach 70 points at most.

In the end, he did realize the complete product service process, and he exhausted all his strength. However, 70 points is invalid. So, this is just an ineffective attack.

What should I do?

The only way is to narrow down the scope of products or services.

The so-called single-point breakthrough is not the product of enterprise ALL in. Every product contains endless categories, enough to devour all the resources of a startup company.

Single-point breakthrough: controlling the category of a product in controllable resources, grinding out the most meaningful feature points in limited categories, at least reaching 130 points. If the score is 100.

Intermediate product managers are also divided into three levels:

2- 1? Define products, control product categories and overall service costs. Define and polish core feature points.

2-2? Optimize products according to channel characteristics. Get scale users.

2-3? Optimize the user's moving line and tamp the user's viscosity. Balance revenue and user viscosity.

What are the channel characteristics? In fact, there was an article vaguely said before (see changing the direction of rivers).

For example, in terms of content, WeChat friends circle, Weibo and Baidu search are all powerful channels, but the characteristics of these channels are completely different.

Even Tencent's own user traffic, QQ, mobile QQ, Qzone, WeChat, portal ... when they gather in different channels, the group characteristics reflected are also very different. If you want to attract users from different channels of Tencent, you need to make different optimizations.

So you see, before reaching 2.3, Tencent product managers don't need to consider money. In other words, Tencent has been training and training from 1. 1 to 2.2.

And a large number of Tencent products that make countless entrepreneurs feel miserable are actually only training works within Tencent.

So I think Tencent is terrible.

Third-level product manager: senior, define and control strategic products.

Output: Entrepreneurial project or enterprise strategic project.

A friend wanted to make a product the day before yesterday and asked my opinion. After listening to it, I said that I felt that what you said was second-class. Based on the overall change of your industry and the change of your company strategy. This second-class product can't help you or your company. Only in the end, you are especially sorry for those brothers who work overtime and stay up late for you.

I suggest that you either make a third-rate product or stop. Maintaining the status quo is better than launching a particularly tired and ineffective attack.

For example, nuts in Luo Yonghao are third-rate products.

In the mobile phone market, just like a Samsung man blocking the scientific and technological development of the earth, Apple blocked the technological transformation line of mobile phones.

In this way, the development of mobile phone enterprises will either break through Apple's technical concept blockade and explore the oneness of mobile phone technology. Or, just under the blockade of Apple's technical concept, be a technology toy company.

Luo Yonghao's nuts and toys are very good. He changed the pain point into a rich itch point and scratched the itch point of the fans. (See my "Pain Points and Itching Points")

He bluntly said: technology is based on changing shells, which makes me so happy. Many people around want to buy a nut, but they think they can buy 99 yuan for a change in the future.

Why are nuts third-class? Because before there is a major breakthrough in mobile technology, it is another characteristic trend of mobile phone consumption and can form a strategic support for hammer technology.

Therefore, the three types of products are product definitions that can form strategic support for the company's development in a relatively long period of time, in line with the future trend of the industry or the new characteristics of consumer psychology.

What's the difference between second-class products and third-class products?

If your product accounts for less than 10% of the company's total resources, or accounts for less than 5% of the total market share, it is a secondary product.

If your product accounts for more than 20% of the company's total resources, or accounts for more than 5% of the market share, it is a third-class product.

The second-level product manager and the third-level product manager have the same specific work about products, but the internal decision-making pressure and external competition pressure they bear are different. The resources that need to be coordinated and mobilized within the company are different from the external industrial resources. The decision-making power, leadership and cross-cultural communication skills required are different.

The feeling of being second-class and third-class is similar to letting a person walk on a one-meter-high wooden bridge and a 100-meter-high wooden bridge Walking is the same, but the psychological experience is completely different.

Level 4 Product Manager: Great God, Singularity Explorer

Output: God-class products, opening an era.

The fourth product god is the explorer of singularity (see singularity approaching). Or the discoverer of the tuyere.

IPhone is a superb product. Tesla is a superb product.

Tesla is more than just a new energy vehicle. The concept of new energy is indifferent to ordinary car users, and they may even worry about the inconvenience caused to themselves because it is new energy.

Tesla is a smart car. The automobile has been invented for more than one hundred years, and its progress is in physical machinery. On the other hand, Tesla has brought the history of automobiles into an era when intelligence is connected with the human brain. Even if there is no new energy feeling, it is enough to seal the gods.

Therefore, Lei Jun's tuyere theory is applicable to product managers above grade 2-2.

Because from 1- 1 to 2-2, this person has mastered the control of the complete service in limited resources and polished the most effective features.

Without a solid 2-2 ability, even if you are lucky enough to be blown into the sky by a third-grade wind or even a fourth-grade kamikaze, you will soon fall down before the wind stops.

-

Tencent's product ranking is a very specific and complex system. The evaluation points of product managers include basic quality, key quality, professional ability, market ability, operational ability and leadership, and there are dozens of ability points in six modules. In this article, I just outlined the main characteristics of different market segments. Just looking at the leopard in the tube.