Product Manager

Summary

The Product Manager has an active leadership role in creating customized product and service offerings for various customer segments, including international teachers, domestic school systems and education leaders. This position will aid VIF in better understanding and responding to the specific needs of targeted customer segments and develop tactical plans to serve these audiences.  Also included in this position is the creation of a repeatable product development/evaluation process and implementation of this process across the organization.

The VIF Product Manager is an integral part of the marketing department and participates in market research to understand customer motivations and requirements, defines product vision, and works closely with other departments to create and deliver differentiated products and service offerings. The Product Manager will work to ensure revenue and customer satisfaction goals are met while delivering product and marketing efforts that support the company's overall strategy and goals.

Essential Functions

• Lead the development and implementation of a repeatable product development, evaluation, and management process for use throughout the organization
• Project manage product rollout as new offerings are developed to meet needs of target audiences
• Collaborate with internal departments on evaluation of existing services and the creation of new service offerings to meet customer and organizational objectives
• Define and implement pricing strategies and discounting policies to meet revenue and profitability goals of the organization
• Participate in market research, including personal interaction with customers, to increase organizational understanding of target market needs, motivations, and satisfaction with current product/service offerings. Use gained knowledge to serve as customer advocate working closely with all stakeholders to understand and clearly articulate the customer’s needs and to verify that the implementation approach meets those needs
• Recommend ways to expand sales and profitability in specific markets. Provide comparative product analysis, competitive product and marketing strategies, and feature and benefit summaries

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Proven written and verbal communication skills, including delivering face-to-face presentations/training and writing project summaries/recommendations.
• Proven project management skills, including experience leading cross-functional and cross-departmental project teams with minimal direct supervision.
• Ability to manage and maintain good working relationships with outside vendors.
• Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams without formal authority.

Educational and Experience Requirements

• BA/BS required, MBA preferred
• 5-8 years of experience required in product marketing or product management
• Experience with a service-orientated international business preferred
• Ability to effectively lead cross-functional teams and manage large projects with little direct supervision
• Experience defining market research projects and working with market research experts to conduct research and analyze findings.
• Experience with MS Office, email required
• Experience with CRM solutions, online survey tools, and project management software preferred

Key Competencies

• Demonstrated success defining and launching products/service offerings that meet organizational objectives.
• Thorough understanding of product/program marketing and product management strategies.

Key Measures

• Evaluation from business sponsor and project manager on overall product quality and effectiveness in the marketplace of the requirements after the product has been developed
• Feedback from key customer representatives on the way in which the requirements engineering process was conducted
• Customer satisfaction measures
• Satisfying or exceeding requirements development schedules, resource constraints, and quality goals.
• Control of requirements creep attributable to missed requirements and leakage of “unofficial” requirements into the project

Apply for this position