What distinguishes the Top 1% PMs?

According to Ian McAllister of Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon, it’s something I thought to be my secret weapon.

Well… the secret’s out! It’s fun, it’s simple, it’s creative, and it requires practically ZERO dev time!

Whenever you discover a problem that affects your users -

• you hypothesize underlying causes

• you come up with potential solutions → mostly features

• you prioritize

But if you suspect the product is doing a bad job of COMMUNICATING VALUE, refining your product copy should be on the table among these potential solutions!

This is especially true for PLG products since they leverage a no-touch automated sales motion (AKA bottom-up self-serve).

Ian McAllister flags writing effective copy as one of nine competencies distinguishing the Top 1% of PMs from the rest.

Surprised?

Check out Lenny Rachitsky's podcast with Ian McAllister for the full list. Link at the end of the post.

Copy will get you far

Double down on writing effective copy to -

• Improve activation
  e.g. decrease the time and effort toward that glorious aha moment with copy-optimized onboarding

• Increase feature awareness and adoption → retention
  e.g. users who don’t understand what a feature does, will not use it

• Decrease paid churn
  e.g. without understanding a plan’s full benefits, users won't keep paying in the long term

• Decrease clutter
  e.g. combine two buttons into one, remove unnecessary and over-explanatory navigation labels,

• Improve navigation
  e.g. way too often, I see branded terms as product areas, which are far from being self-explanatory (this one really gets under my skin 🤷🏻‍♂️)

What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb)