I had the pleasure of leading a session entitled “Business Driven Product Management” where we discussed the finer points of taking the crazy out of the sales deck.  Luckily, I had Peter Hanschke, Al Huizenga, and Allan Neil in the room to back me up, and it was a great conversation.

The next session was “Power Tools for Product Managers” by Saxophonist Alan Armstrong.  In the short hour we had, Alan briefly described his approach to sales funnel win/loss analysis, which I found to be tremendously interesting.  I reckon this could have been a valuable four-hour session on its own.

Next was lunch.  Talk about value!  This was the second of three catered meals on the day!

The first session in the afternoon posed the question, “What is your favourite PM tool?” led by Barry Paquet of Quantum Whisper.  The group discussed experiences with different product management software packages, including the good, the bad and the useless.  Hakan Kilic of Ryma Technology and Kim Phelan of I Love Rewards added their valuable insights as well.  Conclusion: There is, and probably will never be one PM software to rule them all.

The final session of the day was “The strategic role of product management” led by Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing.  This one hour session was just the tip of the iceberg that is the topic of The Pragmatic Marketing Framework – A Market-Driven Model for Managing and Marketing Technology Products.  I will hopefully have a chance to attend one of their three-day seminars soon.

The day closed with some booze, some jazz and some chat.

I highly recommend this event!

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