Should the manager maintain a strong commercial focus?
A Leadership perspective of commercial-heavy manager
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach me on Substack and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
I am continuing on the series related to different types of project managers. This article will focus on a different and not-so-rare kind of Project Manager: The Commercially oriented, or the Seller. This kind of Project Manager is easily seen in small Software Houses or Consultancy companies, where the Project Manager has a certain degree of responsibility to sell the product or the service. Is normal for a Project Manager to interact with all the project stakeholders, so interacting with clients who are paying for the end product is a very normal part of the job description. It is expected for the Project Manager to manage the billing of the different requested features, follow (or not) any sort of Change Management procedures, and manage expectations about the quality of the delivered work.
The Good Stuff of a Commercial Manager
There is a clear visibility regarding the product’s added value for the client and the potential selling points for onboarding new clients and growing the product. There should be a clear understanding of the financials and the ROI for the end product. There is an increased concern about overspending the budget since it directly impacts the margins and sometimes, the basis where the decision to advance with the project was given in the first place. It lies an enormous responsibility to keep the project on track with the consequence of the project losing its financial attraction.
In this kind of context, a project’s risk tends to have a financial quantification. This means the mitigation strategies already take into account the financial impacts, improving the odds for the project to be financially and commercially attractive.
Hearing about the client’s feedback is paramount for the success of the project. Since this kind of Project Manager is typically linked to heavily commercial projects, having the client’s feedback and satisfaction is paramount for the project’s success. On which the need for a proper Change Management procedure is key for making sure the Client is billed for any change which is out of the initial scope.
The Improvement Points
The responsibility of making sure the project is on track for its commercial end is paramount and it comes with great responsibility. However, this sometimes is done at the cost of the Team’s effort and the ability to restrain constant new features inside the project. This type of project manager may not understand the technicalities of the project and pushes the team continuously to deliver a set of features, ignoring the technical challenges that might come with the requests. As in consequence, the relationship between the Team and the Project Manager might deteriorate depending on the quality of the initial estimations and what has been communicated or sold to the client. Since the project needs to be commercially viable, and depending on the context, some concessions might have been made to have a client sign off, which came with the sacrifice of extra hours from the Software Team.
Having a good relationship with the client and having their expectations properly aligned is paramount for having proper Change Management procedures. If a client requests a new feature, they should be aware of how much it will cost based on a proper effort estimation from the team. Asking the team to develop features for free or low cost, can be a strategy for client satisfaction to eventually up-sell another set of services, however, the problem comes when the commercial strategy directly impacts the team stability and engagement. Having the team constantly push for extra hours, will result in turnover and loss of technical knowledge and efficiency in the long run.
Having a better understanding of the project’s technical aspects can help the Project Manager anticipate potential risks or engagements for delivering features that might be very challenging in the current project’s status quo. Having the technical part completely delegated to the team, and having a Project Manager only focusing on managing the clients and the project’s financial attractiveness, might deliver more problems on the issues the Project Manager is trying to avoid in the first place.
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest in the comments or send me a message on Substack.
Cheers,
Artur