One of the interesting ironies I encounter frequently in my career coaching is when product managers come to me and are not able to concisely and compellingly tell me about what their value proposition is. A value proposition is not about your job description; rather it is about how you do that job differently. This realization occurs even before we get into the business of positioning themselves for their next job, promotion, or change in how they engage in their role as product managers. The same irony repeats for those in marketing.

Why is this ironic? The essence of a product manager’s job is to be able to capture the soul of what a product does and to articulate that in verbal or other terms so that the targeted audience can get fired up about buying it, owning it, or experiencing its value (outbound product manager). Its flip side is to identify what market needs out there can be met by defining a “non-existing” product through a creative process of product generation. This is the inbound product manager. In many companies these roles are blended and are done by the same person.

Either way, a person steeped in the discipline of product management (inbound or outbound) should be able to see themselves as a product that can be marketed in the targeted job market or “repackage” that very product to target some unmet need in the existing or emerging market.

The problem is not as simple as it appears!

When I ask them bluntly as they struggle to articulate their message why they are not able to see themselves with a clear value proposition and what they are offering in the targeted job market as a product, their refrain is that their lost objectivity about themselves prevents them from seeing how they create and deliver value in a differentiated way.

Hmmm!

After many such encounters I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not so much their loss of objectivity about themselves that blocks them from articulating their true value or engaging in an exercise of redefining their value to address a new market opportunity (another job), but that it is their inability to clearly translate their features as compelling benefits they will deliver in their next role to their employer.

Let me explain:

If you ask anyone in product or marketing function they will emphatically tell you that what sells is not the features you tout in your product, but the benefits the customer receives from them. Simple enough, right? Yet for their own message they are not able to translate this insight into a practice that serves them in either inbound or outbound reinvention. To make my point let us take some examples and see how this can be made an object lesson for a product manager (or anyone else for that matter trying to sell themselves).

Let us start with an everyday example of a smart phone—Feature: Our next product release will be based on a chip with the new security standard and a low-noise front-end. Benefit: This new smart phone will be immune to hacking and will drop fewer calls.

The same theme repeats when a product manager is developing their message to market themselves. So, instead of touting that you bring 15 years’ experience in high-tech product management and boasting that you generated nearly $1B in revenues from different products that you managed, say: “During 15 years, working as product manager in diverse verticals ranging from EDA products to enterprise infrastructure IT solutions, consistently delivered revenues that exceeded objectives immediately after products’ releases.” What this statements trumpets is your benefit to the hiring manager that despite the different verticals in which you managed the products, you have (not, had) the ability to capture the market and to deliver beyond what you promise. So, if you are now moving from being a product manager of enterprise infrastructure products to some other new vertical, your message is more likely to resonate with the hiring manger.

Yet another “feature” example can be when you claim how customers trust you. Product Managers are fond of using the threadbare phrase, Trusted Advisor in their résumés to tout this feature. Instead, try its benefit to the hiring manager: “Understanding customers’ business demands and tying their urgent needs to how a product could help them meet that need often resulted in much shorter sales cycles (typically 50%) and exceeding revenues (typically 30%), which also made up-selling easier and quicker.” Remember, Trust is a feature; its benefit is shorter sales cycles, bigger revenues, and customer engagement.

So, there you have it! This verbal strategy is not only limited to those in product management or in marketing, but for anyone who is trying to sell themselves. The reason I stated this case with Product Managers as my focus is because even for those whose livelihood depends on understanding the difference between Features and Benefits in how they can sell their products, fail to apply the same strategy to their own ends. So, now you know what to do and what not to!

Good luck!