Tilak Pattnaik on B2B vs B2C Product Management

MBA in Product Management, according to Tilak Pattnaik:

An MBA is not absolutely necessary, in order to transition into a product management role.

However, where an MBA helps is in giving a perspective on how business function in general.

Be it how the organizational makeup typically is of a business, and how do you navigate that organizational sort of makeup.

In order to push your ideas, push your product through. So that they can go on to the market.

So that business perspective, and organizational perspective, is very important te

Go-To-Market

• how do you exactly go-to-market
• how do you position a product
• how do you market a product
• what are some of the sales tactic around products
• So on, and so forth

That aspect is very important.

Of course, there are other aspects of product management, which is around designing the product themselves, prioritization of product features, working with developers, understanding the technology, and the technology stacks behind the products that you’re building, all of that is something that you don’t need an MBA for.

Now if someone has sufficient experience working in businesses, also someone has sufficient understanding of technology, and sufficient understanding of design, sort of user psychology, then an MBA is not necessary.

However, having an MBA just makes it easier to transition into a product management role.

B2B VS B2C Product Management

The fundamentals are very similar across the board

At the end of the day, you need to figure out what your target group is, what pain points are you solving, what should your MVP be, how do you achieve that product-market fit, how do you scale up, and how do you sort of continuously work into providing that value to the users as the product becomes bigger and more mature.

So all of these things need to be done.

Needed on the manufacturing side of things, in B2B, and in B2C side of things.

However the tactics are very different.

In B2B, the person who decides who sanctions buying a particular product VS the team which actually procures the product VS the team who are actually using the product.

Those are three separate teams.

Three separate entities, and many times the incentives for them to do it might be sort of very, very different.

For example, if it’s an IT system, maybe a Chief Information Officer sort of decides that we need this sort of system because it helps us in solving that particular pain point.

When it comes to sort of onboarding that product, it’s a vendor team, or a procurement team, which would sort of procure the product from you.

For them, what’s more important is ensuring that the cost are low.

And their legal terms and agreement of procurement are in place.

That’s the most important thing.

How well it is solving the pain point is not something sort of they look at.

Whereas, the people who are using it within the organization— the users.

For them, how easy are they able to use the product, to solve the pain point, that becomes more important.

So there, design, UI, UX, becomes very important.

The person who decides, the CIO— for example, UI and UX are not important.

For them, the features are important. These features should be there, so that we can actually solve it.

For procurement, cost and legal aspects, procurement aspects are more important.

So those are the reasons why, there are the buyer VS the decision-maker VS the user— they are focusing on different things.

Hence, yes, as a product person, it’s important to align the incentives of all these 3 stakeholders well. So that the product can be solved.

But yes, selling is a different thing.

And using is a different thing in a B2B context.

Whereas in a B2C context, usually the buyer and the user are the same.

So it’s very important to convince them that you know what, we’ve got a great product that could solve your problem.

It’s very easy to use as well.

And hence, it’s worth your time in investing in the product.