In this presentation, Tanvi Dali discusses how to position yourself so that your dots will connect to land you a PM opportunity in the future. For those who are already in PM, she also discusses a few tips on how to make a good first impression (within the first 90-days as a new PM) and what a typical day or week looks like as a PM at Salesforce.

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8. Tanvi Dali
TONIGHT’S SPEAKER

9. Transition to Product
Management
Tanvi Dali, Product Manager @ Salesforce
September 12, 2018

10. Goals
● Transitioning to Product with a non-technical background
● Developing PM characteristics & skills
● First 90 days as a new PM
● Day in the life of a Salesforce PM

11. Unless you are one of the lucky
few to have a CS/EE degree +
MBA + consulting experience,
the road to PM might not be
direct. Use your strengths to
your advantage. Not all PM
roles are the same.
Source: https://medium.com/all-things-product-management

12. My Indirect Journey: Connecting the Dots to PM
Liked building
websites at an
early age
BS in Business -
Marketing &
Finance
Brand Management
@ General Mills
Voice of
Customer @
Liberty Mutual
B2C Product
Owner @
Liberty Mutual
Product Manager @
Salesforce Commerce
Cloud

13. Common stepping stones to prepare for Product
Power User of
Tool
Customer Support Voice of Customer
Business Analyst
Solution Engineer
Other roles:
UI Designer, UX Researcher, Startup founder, IT Project Managers, Digital Marketers,
Client Services

14. Product is the glue
that holds it
together. Hard job,
but very rewarding.
Source: https://www.romanpichler.com/

15. Develop PM Characteristics & Skills
1. Customer-centricity & customer empathy are highly preferred

16. Develop PM Characteristics & Skills
● 50%+ of our job is communicating: with
scrum team, partner teams, enablement,
stakeholders, customers, public, etc.
● Logic in thinking and problem solving will
reflect in your written & verbal
communication
● Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle
○ Magical number 7, plus or minus 2
○ Organize thoughts in a tree structure
● Voice coaching apps
○ LikeSo, VoiceVibes
2. Clarity in written & oral communication

17. Develop PM Characteristics & Skills
3. Decision-making & prioritization

18. Develop PM Characteristics & Skills
4. Passion for technology
● What are your most favorite products to use frequently? Uber, Lyft, Runkeeper, Gmail,
Google Calendar?
● What do you like or dislike about them?
● If anything, what would you change about those products?
● Would you prioritize one thing over another?
● If the CEO of that company or start-up asked you to completely rethink the product,
what would you do?

19. Tailor your narrative with your resume
Resume tips from Cracking the PM Interview:
● 15 seconds rule
● Shorter is better
● Bullets, not blobs - less than 50% of bullets expand to 2 lines
● Accomplishments, not responsibilities - highlight metrics &
revenue impact
● Highlight PM characteristics
● Review examples of good PM resumes

20. First 90 days as a new PM Checklist
❏ Understand the company & culture - 2 weeks
❏ 30K foot view - business priorities
❏ What’s the culture like?
❏ Understand the product - 4 weeks
❏ In-depth functionality
❏ User experience
❏ Technical architecture & foundation
❏ Build relationship with your team, partner teams, stakeholders - 12 weeks
❏ 1x1s, Form, storm, norm, perform as a team
❏ Understand the customers - 12 weeks
❏ What are their objectives?
❏ Why are they using your tool? What are they trying to accomplish?
❏ Identify your “true north” metric - 2 weeks
❏ Build your own, unbiased vision to achieve “true north” metric - 4 weeks
❏ Communicate
❏ Influence
❏ Iterate

21. A Day in the Life of
Email from APAC,
EMEA
Industry news,
research
Stand-ups
UX Customer
Interview - feature
#1
PM Team Meeting
Vision deck -
feature #2
Review enablement
docs - feature #1
VTO activity
Product demos
“The business of business is
improving the state of the
world” - Marc Benioff

22. Resources
Communities:
● Product School
● Mind the Product Slack
● Women in Product
● Silicon Valley Product Group
Podcasts:
● How I built This
● Inside Intercom
Books & Articles:
● How to Crack the PM Interview
● Barbara Minto’s The Pyramid Principle
● The Lean Startup
● Andreessen Horowitz: Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager
● Roman Pichler

23. Thank you!

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