Have you felt the pain

Have you felt the pain – As a product manager?

When Engineering, Sales and Marketing are not well orchestrated, we can see traces of the problem manifesting itself throughout the business side of Product Management. Examples can be:

  • Discrepancy between customers who love your product, and customers who don’t “get it”.
  • You know you have a great product, but you feel you have an awareness problem – if more customers just knew about your product, they would surely buy it.
  • You’re hunting for the “silver bullet functionality” – if you just had that specific functionality in place you would win more customers.
  • Management is expecting profitability and/or growth at a pace that you feel you are unsure you can meet.
  • You have a problem with “feeding the beast” – your organization constantly requires more of the time that you don’t have.

Essentially, the product business is not where you’d like it to be.
You may have a hard time keeping up, and you’re sometimes alone in trying to address the situation.

THIS IS WHY WE HAVE CREATED THIS MASTER CLASS PROGRAM

Why this program |

Training
+
Workshops
+
Networking
+
Mentorship

Experience Executive Training and Mentorship with the Edge:
A Face-to-Face Approach to Product Management

In product management, a broad understanding of your business is more important than ever. Our program is designed to help you take that leap beyond traditional online courses and into the dynamic world of real-life collaboration.

The program is designed for B2B product managers who have been working a few years in the role, got the fundamentals under control and now aspire to advance and learn skills from seasoned professionals on key deliverables for orchestration between Engineering, Sales & Marketing.

Our approach ensures a personal and immersive learning experience, one that opens new avenues for your career progression and equips you with the tools you need to thrive in product management.

Key benefits of our program:

  • Face-to-Face Interaction: In contrast to the online format of many courses, our program prioritizes face-to-face meetings, interaction and exchange. This approach is designed to foster real relationships, enable rich discussions, and promote direct feedback from experienced professionals.
  • Access to Senior Executives: Our program offers unique networking opportunities by connecting participants with senior executives. These industry leaders, serving as mentors in the program, will provide valuable insights and advice drawn from their personal journeys and expertise. You will meet them at the monthly workshops, where you will have the opportunity to mingle with all of them, not just your own mentor.
  • Applied Learning: We believe the best way to learn is by doing. That’s why our program emphasizes the practical application of training content. By presenting your real-life, work challenges and projects, you will experience problem-solving in action, providing immediate value to your role as a product manager.
  • Diversity of Perspectives: Our program attracts a diverse mix of participants from different backgrounds, roles, technologies and industries. This ensures that you are exposed to a variety of perspectives, sparking creative solutions and enriching the learning experience.
  • Informal Yet Professional: We pride ourselves on creating an informal but professional environment. Our program promotes open interaction and sharing in a setting where you can comfortably express your thoughts, ideas, and questions. We strive to cultivate a strong community, believing that professional relationships can last a lifetime.

Content

Through our program, you will gain comprehensive knowledge, collaborate with top-level professionals, and apply what you learn to your actual job role.

  • Learn about the commercial aspects of Product Management.
  • Gain actionable insights that can be put into play in your daily work – throughout the program.
  • Build a new network – learn from experienced professionals and share situational-analysis with other Product Managers.
  • Mentoring – get support from an executive within tech, individually matched.

Join our mentorship program today, and let us shape the future of product management together.

Please note that the deadline to apply is on the 13th of November.

Apply here

Topics

This is not your average PM course. Instead of focusing on the usual product planning, specification and discovery skills, you’ll get the unique opportunity to unravel the commercial orchestration side of product management.

  • Product management as a discipline in the company
  • How Product Managers interface with and influence Engineering, Sales and Marketing
  • Acting from a position of strength, and what the benefits are in doing so
  • What does our ideal customer look like and how do we help Sales generate more business faster?
  • How do we enable Sales with our defined commercial product value?
  • What does Marketing need from us in order to generate customer interest and usage growth?
  • B2B buying – how does it work in reality?
  • How do we make our product easy to buy (vs easy to sell)?
  • Value – the mysterious topic – how do we best communicate value and create credibility for it
  • Commercial packaging and business models

Syllabus

Each monthly session will include group discussions and interactions with the instructors and mentors, as well as break-out sessions.

01: Introduction session

  • The evolution of Product Management
  • How Product Management supports Sales & Marketing teams in our organizations
  • Introduction of program literature
  • Individual exercise: Phrase your current challenges which you want to solve during the program
  • Fundamentals of being a mentor (mentor break-out)
  • How to best use your time with your mentor (participant break-out)

02: A great product is not enough

  • The Product Discipline in the company context
  • Today vs the future, and selling what’s on the truck
  • 4 actionable deliverables to give to Sales & Marketing
  • Acting from a position of strength

03: Foundation for our product business

  • Why Product Positioning is vital in today’s B2B markets
  • How to build commercial insight about our customers’ business
  • Context Setting – deliverable to Marketing
  • Who is the dream customer for our product business?
  • The Product point-of-view in customer qualification
  • Customer Characteristics – deliverable to Sales

04: Debunking the mysterious topic of ’Value’, once and for all

  • Value means money. Learn about the four categories of value.
  • How to derive (true) value for your product
  • Differences of value in your ecosystem and amongst stakeholders
  • Value equations blueprints, proposing value to customers – deliverable to Sales
  • “Pricing & Licensing – the dark arts” (Guest speaker Bill Andersson, University of Maryland)

05: Buying made easy – how Product Management supports it

  • The buying asset logic – deliverable to Marketing
  • It’s not about getting a ’Yes’, it’s about not getting a ’No’
  • Value logic for communication consistency and building trust
  • How to build a buying journey with objectives

06: Summing up and closing statements

  • Recap and looking back at what we learned
  • Workshop results and feedback
  • Your Challenges: walk-through and status
  • ”It ain’t over until it’s over” – program follow-up and bonus events

Format and details |

 

Format

  • Training workshops focused on Product Management topics, led by seasoned Product Managers
  • Break out sessions
  • Networking with peers and executives
  • Light food, drinks served after each workshop
  • Separate 1-1 mentoring sessions between the monthly training workshops
  • Literature included

Details

  • Six monthly workshops, 17:00 – 20:00, in central Stockholm
  • All participants and mentors are present at workshops
  • Limited participation – max 20
  • Fee: 28 500 SEK per PM participant
    The mentors are kindly asked to contribute their time and experience to the program.
  • Duration: January 18th – June, 2024

The Value that we bring

For you and your company

Value for the participant

Our program offers participants valuable opportunities to enhance their knowledge and skills, collaborate with like-minded peers and leaders, receive personalized mentorship, and have fun with those who share the same daily challenges, all while fostering broader business success.

  • Expand your knowledge and skills on how to enable broader business success through supporting Marketing and Sales.
  • Use the program to bounce ideas and questions with peers and leaders.
  • Support for your career aspirations with a individually matched mentor.
  • Have fun with people that ”live the problem” every day – just like you do 😀

Value for the organization

Our comprehensive program equips product managers with actionable insights and skills, essential for driving organizational success. By nurturing the product discipline, participants will unlock the full potential of engineering, sales, and marketing teams, making strategic investments in times of careful decision-making.

  • After each session, participants return to work with actionable takeaways, new skills, fresh insights and tools to become an impactful product manager.
  • Growth in understanding of the business, organization, product values and how B2B customers think and act.
  • In times where investments need to be chosen wisely, up-leveling the product discipline might be the best way to get more out of both Engineering, Sales and Marketing.

Superior product management is a key differentiator to any product-led organization.

Save your spot

Are you ready to upskill and to expand your proffessional network? If so, apply for the Product Management Master Class here.

Please note that the deadline to apply is on the 12th of January.

Questions and answers

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The training workshops are given by Eva Skoglund and other senior product managers who are experts in their respective fields.  The workshops are interactive and filled with practical learning, as well as exercises to contemplate after the sessions and use in your day-to-day work.  We invite people to be very open and share their ideas, so we can all learn and grow. We provide a safe environment to discuss all sorts of perspectives.  The workshops are educational, fun, energy-giving and always an opportunity for networking.  The training workshops are about 2 hours long, followed by mingling – wine & beer & light food are provided.

The participants are required to attend the training workshops and the mentors are invited to attend as many as they can.  There will be good opportunities to meet other executives and mentors during the workshops.

All participants have professional backgrounds within the tech industry. The participants are working as Product Managers in a variety of industries including medtech, fintech, SaaS B2B etc. and have at least 4 years of experience.

You will be individually matched with a mentor according to your specific requests in your application.  We take great care to ensure that the backgrounds of the mentee and mentor fit together nicely, according to areas of experience and personalities. The mentor will have at least 10 years’ experience senior to the mentee.  Industry non-compete issues are also taken into consideration.  So, it’s important to fill out your application with full, descriptive details.

The mentors are executives and senior managers with 20+ years worklife experience, a variety of technology and management backgrounds, and prior experience being a mentor. All mentors are interviewed before being accepted into the program and most come from Beth’s and Eva’s personal networks.

Not really, except for couple of the reading assignments. We do advise some preparation and planning before your Participant-Mentor meetings, so that you get the most out of your sessions.  We’ll hold a short tutorial on how best to use your time with your mentor in the introductory event.

The introductory event will be a casual meeting to get to know each other, and what’s in store for the program. Both the participants and mentors are invited to the event and the participants will be introduced to their mentors in person. Electronic introduction will be made before the event, so you can connect on email ahead of time.  The event will be held in an office space in central Stockholm and will include wine, beer and light food.

The monthly training workshops will take place in an office space in central Stockholm. The schedule will be set and distributed to accepted applicants in September.

For Mentee-Mentor meetings, we leave it up to the pair to decide the location for their meetings.  We recommend that the meetings do not take place in either the mentee or mentor’s office and instead be in a neutral, casual environment.

Yes. In order to get to know each other better, we have a couple of group activities as well as some informal after-works scheduled.

We like to emphasize the value of building a meaningful network, so we incorporate many aspects of community in the program and opportunities to get to know each other better.  We also have reading assignments planned in order to enrich our training.

We speak English in the workshops, yet you are welcome to speak Swedish with your mentor in your mentoring sessions.  Some of our mentors are English speakers only, so if Swedish for your mentoring is important, please let us know on your application.

The program is definitely not over when it’s over!  It’s very rewarding to see everyone meeting and getting to know each other. Many important business connections are made in the program and continue after the last workshop. Also, a lot of Participant-Mentor pairs keep in touch after the program, that’s totally up to you and your mentor to decide.

Our Product Management Program provides an individually matched mentor for each participant accepted into the program. In relationship to the mentor, the participant is a mentee (adept). The match is made based on the mentee’s career direction, level of experience and desired attributes of a mentor summarized in their application. All our mentors are fully vetted through interviews, personal connections and are working, or have worked, as executives in tech companies.

A mentor is someone who provides guidance, support, and acts as a sounding board (bollplank). A mentor can share their experiences and expertise to help the mentee develop skills, overcome challenges, and achieve their goals. A mentor is often a trusted advisor who provides feedback, encouragement, and constructive criticism, and helps the mentee to grow both professionally and personally.

Mentors have enriched both Beth’s and Eva’s careers and we can truly say that the road would have been much rockier without them.  We have had and continue to have mentors in our careers and are advocates for mentoring.

We ensure there are at least 10 years difference between the mentee and mentor’s career experience.

We welcome new mentors into the program. We are always on the look-out for senior executives from different backgrounds and industries. Please fill out the mentor application and we’ll get back to you to schedule a personal interview.

Beth Topolovsky

Founder of The Spark Group

  • 25+ years working in tech companies within operations, engineering, production and product management.
  • Leader of the Spark Group, an engineering management consulting company specializing in product-led transformations for tech companies.
  • Experiences include roles within Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, KLA Instruments, Q2Labs, Tilgin.
  • Passionate about helping companies transform to become scalable, product-led companies.

Eva Skoglund

Eva Skoglund, Sareva

Leader of Sareva Product Advisory

  • Product professional with more than twenty five years working with complex tech solutions.
  • Leader of Sareva Product Advisory, focusing on taking great products to business success.
  • Experiences include international product business at Intel, Tobii, Wind River, Virtutech, Enea.
  • Born and raised within software engineering.
  • Passionate about product strategy, positioning and business models.

Eva and Beth
– Our story

We first met during a Product Management networking event in Stockholm, and immediately connected on the topic of how important the product discipline is for successful companies. At the time, Eva was working for Intel in Stockholm, and Beth, with her background from Cisco, had just founded the Spark Group.

—“Recalling our first conversation, I think we went a bit into a spin about how things work in large companies vs small companies, and also Swedish vs American companies” Beth and Eva remember.

A few years later, Beth had through her many years of transforming tech companies within the Spark Group, concluded that product management often had to take the lead in the transformation journey. Meanwhile, Eva had started to form her own thoughts about how the product discipline could take greater ownership of the business around the product vs just the specification of the product.

As we looked around, we realized that there is a significant gap in the execution of the Product Management role. Many companies have a vague understanding of what Product Management is or how to effectively implement it within their organizations. This gap may lead to missed business opportunities and products that fail to meet customer needs. Most significantly, Product Management is often not effective working cross-functionally with teams like engineering, marketing, and sales.

—“We both strongly believe in product-led organizations, and we see there’s a great opportunity for the product management role to develop in a more business-oriented direction”.

We are compelled to do something about this. We want to share our knowledge, experience, and conviction of the impact of high-performing Product Management. That’s why we have now created a new type of Program with four critical components; Training for conveying knowledge, Workshops for discussions and problem solving, Networking for sharing and learning from each other and Mentoring to get personalized guidance with an executive about your career.

Are you a mentor? Please get in touch to contribute to the program:

Mentors - Apply here