Product management is (also) about sales

After several years of entrepreneurship and freelancing, two years ago I accepted a job as Product Manager for Glassup, an Italian company developing the next generation of AR glasses.

I will leave the reason why I accepted this gig for another post, for now let’s say that Augmented Reality is an extremely interesting field and I wanted my career to try a different path, but not that far from what I was doing before (software engineering FYI).

However, when describing one of my many work trips to see some potential clients to one of my closest friends, he jokingly said: “Hey, such a career jump you made: from software engineer to sales rep!”.

Yeah. Funny.

Still, I have found a very good reason for it: it is VERY important to pitch your product to a lot of persons in different markets. You get insights and feedback that could convert into new features or improvements for your product, that’s the most important thing for a product manager.

Moreover, by learning to pitch your product you are sure that you have very clear the purpose of your endeavour and the direction you took.

Go visiting prospects, go to expos and fair, be involved in fundraising and/or visit investors — believe me, it’s worth it!