Let’s take a closer look at product management, a project manager’s career path, the Scope and Salary of a product manager, and the role of a product manager.
About Product Manager
A product manager is in charge of a group’s project management as part of their job responsibilities in the areas of product management. In contrast to managing the current product strategy, they are in charge of managing feature releases and establishing a product’s functional specifications.
The areas we’ll be covering in this blog are:
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Who is a Product Manager?
A professional who manages all aspects of a product, piece of software, or service, from inception to maintenance, is called a product manager (PM).
A knowledgeable product manager understands how to carry out a product strategy to give consumers value and communicate the vision of a product to internal workers.
The two most important criteria to take into account when choosing what should be built immediately are the likelihood of enhancing customer value and organizational effect. The product manager must maximize each of those areas in order to optimize value for the company. Theoretically, this leads to goods that are advantageous to the client and profitable for the company.
Making sure that the product supports the organization’s broader strategy and goals is an important part of the product manager’s job.
Delivering a unique product to market that fills a market need and offers a promising economic opportunity is the responsibility of the product manager.
Although the Product Manager is ultimately responsible for overseeing the product from conception to end-of-life, they receive support from specialists such as designers, developers, quality assurance engineers, supply chain and operations experts, manufacturing engineers, product marketing managers, project managers, sales professionals, and others during this process.
A product manager’s work also requires a lot of client communication. Before beginning any form of ideation, a professional product manager first decides who their target customer is and makes an attempt to comprehend their requirements and goals.
They typically have a conversation with their clients, seeking their feedback on the benefits and drawbacks of their offerings, deciding whether or not novel ideas are worth pursuing and assessing the level of market competition.
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This makes it possible for the product manager to identify the key tasks users must undertake now or in the future in order to fully exploit the product and how those tasks will improve users’ experiences.
The strength of completing this activity will be strengthened by the evaluation of whether to develop or expand solutions for those duties.
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Responsibilities of Product Manager
Here are some bullet points that may appear in the product manager job description as a product manager, detailing the product manager’s roles and duties of the position:
- Outlines the direction, strategy, and vision for the product.
- Storing, arranging, and hierarchy of market and customer needs.
- They act as a customer’s advocate, explaining the demands or needs of the user and/or the buyer.
- By working closely with technology, marketing, marketing, and support, a product manager needs to make sure that the targets of the economic case and customer satisfaction are met.
- Possesses technical product competence or unique domain knowledge.
- Defines what to address in the market needs paper, where you outline the important issue you’re addressing and explain the reasons for each feature of your solution.
- expert in the market. Knowing the factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions is part of market competence.
- This entails having a thorough awareness of the competitors as well as how consumers perceive and use your product. To fulfill these tasks, product managers need to understand competition analysis and market research.
- serves as the company’s representative for the product.
- Creates the business case for new products, product upgrades, and business intelligence.
- Develops the product’s positioning.
- Recommends or provides data to help determine product pricing.
- Although not all industries, particularly the insurance industry, may proclaim to always have competitive pricing, businesses usually require you to supply this knowledge when determining prices.
Product Manager Career Path
Yes, becoming a product manager is an excellent job if you like generous wages, good benefits, rewarding work, and the strong demand for the position.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2016 that among MBA grads, product manager was the most sought-after job title. According to Hired’s Global State of Tech Salaries report from the following year, Product Managers earned the highest average salaries of any tech role, averaging $138,000 and rising.
In addition, CBS News ranked it as one of the top nine occupations in America in 2018, citing the high number of opportunities.
The combination of hard and soft talents makes it particularly difficult to identify people who are a good fit, which is one of the reasons for both the high demand and high salary that Product Managers enjoy.
The perception of what constitutes a strong Product Manager is gradually changing, and as a result, so are the qualities a Hiring Manager will value more highly than others, such as team management and leadership.
Different authors and product management consultants discuss the difficulty of locating product managers with the necessary skills. This, in my opinion, is partly because so many high-profile and high-tech items have been shown to fall short of expectations.
Roles of Product Manager
Let’s get more specific now to learn more about the various product management job roles.
This is the standard career path for a product manager.
Associate Product Manager
APM is often entry-level employment that calls for a willingness to alter, adapt, and learn based on the client’s demands. Young professionals have many possibilities to develop in this capacity because they work directly with the Product Manager and can pick their brains about leading a team and making decisions.
Product Manager
A product manager is often a mid-level position and prior product management expertise is typically required. Here, they may collaborate with numerous teams and departments while controlling the product. PMs are typically the first people to contact for any needs relating to the product in firms.
Senior Product Manager
Senior heads of several teams, including sales, marketing, design, and others, are typically in close contact with senior product managers. They collaborate closely with clients and leadership positions. Product managers, engineering managers, analysts, associate product managers, and the full product team are all under their management overall.
Group Product Manager
Product managers that interact with executives more frequently are known as group product managers. They must always be abreast of emerging trends and marketplace developments relevant to the product category. They are noted for predicting, detecting, and controlling risk. They are problem solvers.
VP – Product Management
A leadership position that emphasizes overseeing groups of people and product lines is the vice president of product management. The amount of hands-on participation diminishes as product managers grow teams, streamline procedures, and keep abreast of developments in the product industry.
Director – Product Management
The entire product strategy is the responsibility of the Director of Product, for whom the implementation will necessitate less direct engagement in product management. Making crucial choices regarding product strategy, vision, and market and outreach is a component of the process.
Chief Product Officer
The C-level executive in charge of the overall product strategy, or CPO, is crucial in determining long-term objectives. Large enterprises like MNCs and Fortune 500 corporations frequently have this position.
Go through Product Manager Interview Questions before your interview for the above roles.
Salary of Product Manager
You might be interested in seeing how much product managers make after reading this. An overview of product management incomes in India and the USA is shown below:
Product Manager Salary: Based on Experience/Job Roles
| Job Role/Careers | Salary in the USA in USD | Salary in India in INR |
| Assistant/Associate Product Manager | 40,000 – 80,000 | 5,00,000 – 20,00,000 |
| Product Manager | 66,500 – 1,50,000 | 5,00,000 – 25,00,000 |
| Senior Product Manager | 1,00,000 – 1,80,000 | 10,00,000 – 40,00,000 |
| Group Product Manager | 1,25,000 – 2,40,000 | 15,00,000 – 45,00,000 |
| Director – Product Management | 1,15,000 – 2,00,000 | 30,00,000 – 75,00,000 |
| VP – Product Management | 90,000 – 2,10,000 | 30,00,000 – 1,00,00,000 |
| Chief Product Officer | 1,00,000 – 3,00,000 | 30,00,000 – 1,00,00,000 |
Salary for Product Manager: Determined by Company
| Company | Salary range (USA) in USD per annum |
| Google | 135,000 – 210,000 |
| Amazon | 75,200 – 145,000 |
| Meta (previously Facebook) | 130,000 – 230,000 |
| Cisco | 100,000 – 170,000 |
| Microsoft | 110,000 – 160,000 |
| Apple | 105,000 – 180,000 |
| Citi | 80,700 – 150,000 |
Salary for Product Manager: Determined by Bank
| Company | Salary range (India) in INR per annum |
| ICICI Bank | 3,60,000 – 16,30,000 |
| Axis Bank | 4,80,000 – 14,00,000 |
| TCS | 5,50,000 – 35,40,000 |
| Microsoft | 17,00,000 – 33,80,000 |
| Paytm | 6,48,000 – 46,50,000 |
Product Management Salary: Based on Skills
| Skill | Average Salary (India) in INR |
| Product Management | 13,27,401 |
| Product Development | 14,03,854 |
| Product Marketing | 11,66,528 |
| Strategic Planning | 12,12,891 |
| Project Management | 12,28,645 |
Explore these Project Management Interview Questions and ace your next interview with ease!
Summing Up
You now have a clear understanding of what is expected of a product manager, what talents to develop, and what a potential career path could include. With the growing demands, it’s a rewarding path from a personal and a financial viewpoint.
This blog wants to help newcomers by offering direction on how to enhance their skills and understanding of product management, the responsibility, different roles of product managers, and the whooping salary of a product manager in different fields.
We hope now everything is crystal-clear and intend to widen your mindset in the field of Product Management.