Product managers help people transform or get closer to their ideal way of being. Most people have an idealized version of themselves that they are working towards or aspire to. Products help bridge the gap between a person’s current state and their desired end state.
You often have to understand your target customer’s desired end state to build products that help them get closer to that end state.
Finding problems to address
With an understanding of the end state (goals) a customer has, you can then uncover the obstacles and problems keeping the customer from where they want to be. This requires you to be objective when analysing customer behavior and holding customer interviews.
After understanding the different obstacles keeping a customer from their end state, you can use your business goals to decide which obstacles/problems to focus on.
As you are building or enhancing your product, you can show proposals to your customers to ensure your approach will truly address the problem you’re addressing. Note: Following everything outlined here will reduce the odds that you build something that doesn’t solve a customer problem.
Products rarely have an end state
Humans change, which means that the aspirations of your customers will likely evolve and change over time. To continue satisfying your customers, your products must also evolve and change as your customers’ desires and needs change.
What is a customer need?
A need is something that a customer will almost always have to do. Humans have to eat and sleep, so those are core needs that someone or a product can address. Understanding the core needs of your customer allows you to come up with innovations that customers may not have imagined they would like or use.
Needs example
Someone who builds software, a software developer, is almost always going to have to go through a planning, design, development, testing, and deployment stage to create the software they want. All those phases are core needs of a developer. Someone who wants to build products for developers like Apple and Android can find different ways to help developers progress through those stages faster, cheaper, and easier.
how to identify core needs
You have to perform customer research to understand your customer’s reality. As you’re doing this work, be on the lookout for key activities your customer has to perform on a routine basis to accomplish the goals they have.
