Each week, we interview proven leaders from our network, to learn from their experiences, and share their Talent Attraction and Candidate Experience stories with you.

• Our mission is to promote the accomplishments of our guests
• Highlight the companies where they work and the services, and products that they offer
• Share success stories from their experiences and, most importantly
• Provide strategies for job seekers and advice to talent seeking to accelerate their careers.
  

Today’s guest is James Morse, SVP Product at Brandmuscle. James shares several insightful points about the role of Product Management in SaaS companies. He also provides great ideas for individuals interested in pursuing Product Management as a career.

• Two key segments to Product Management: Inbound & Outbound
• Balancing client requests and prioritizing against business objectives
• Key Success factors for Product Management
• Writing a great LinkedIn profile and how to differentiate yourself in the job market

Summary transcript of our interview below:

[00:00:06] Ron Laneve: Hello and welcome to Episode 18 of the Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent Video series. Today’s guest is responsible for product management at a B2B, Marketing technology Software as a Service business here in Cleveland, Ohio, also known as Martech SaaS.

[00:00:21] I’m excited to share with you his career background and progression to date. Please welcome another fellow alumni from Case Western Reserve University. James Morse, Senior Vice President of Product at Brandmuscle.James thanks for being here.

[00:00:37] James Morse: Oh my gosh, Ron, thanks for having me. I’m excited.

[00:00:39] Ron Laneve: A couple things before we get started. I wanted to mention, first I wanted to say thank you when we ran into each other at Maicon a couple months ago. I was thinking loosely thinking about starting up the video series, and you said, Hey man, where’s the videos been? What are you doing? And you really gave me a good kick in the butt and I appreciate it and inspired me to get started again. So here we are.

[00:01:01] James Morse: Hey, I’m excited that you’re bringing it back. I think the audience missed you. I missed you. So this is a great series. I think you definitely should keep it up.

[00:01:08] Ron Laneve: Appreciate it. Very cool. As I like to always do with my guests, give you the floor and talk about your career history. Where’d you start after college? How has your career progressed? And, as I mentioned earlier, really fascinated by the Product Management space cause it’s just not one of those areas that you can’t go to school for, at least not recently. Maybe now you can? But but it’s one of those careers that not a lot of people know about, especially in the software space. As you talk through your progression, lead up to how you got there and why you’re there and we’ll unpack that a little bit more as we go.

[00:01:42] James Morse: My career has been a ton of jobs that no one ever expects to go into. So it’s predominantly been project management and now product management. So you’re right. Things that people don’t usually go to school for, you’re not studying a lot of it, but in some ways or another, you randomly end up into it and you hope that you’re really good at it, which is, which has been my career trajectory.

[00:02:03] As you mentioned, I went to Case Western Reserve University here in Cleveland, Ohio. They actually just conned me into getting a license plate cover that says that I’m an alumni. So I’m a little annoyed by that. But I love the university. I started doing project management for a company called Perceptis that was eventually bought and acquired by Blackboard actually.

[00:02:20] Out of college. They were a vendor of case. So I knew the executive team there quite well. And they were working or looking to have someone come in and work through a new client implementations on onboarding. They were scaling out the business quite a bit, past just at Case where they had started it. And they just needed someone to step in and do that.

[00:02:39] So I really was a neophyte at project management. Again, I didn’t have a background in it. My background at case was management with focus in marketing and economics. So I understood the business world and the lingo to some degree, enough that they were willing to put me in front of clients, I guess I should say.

[00:02:57] Led that group for roughly two years. And then I went into a little bit of an account management side. I wanted to apply the project management side of it, but I really like being client facing still to this day. I love interfacing with clients. I think that’s where I get the most value, that I can then apply to the work that either I’m doing or my team’s doing. So i’ve seen that but really I went back to I went to Brandmuscle and back to project management a little over 10 years ago. So i’ve been with Brandmuscle for I just hit a decade this past summer. Which you had asked me 10 years ago would I be anywhere for 10 years? I was told you heck no, there’s no way. But I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s been an incredible 10 years.

[00:03:36] So Similar, I did project management and new client implementations when I joined the organization. And for those who don’t know much about Brandmuscle, just a little background. We provide software and services to corporate marketing teams that sell through local affiliates. So whether it’s insurance agents, retailers, financial advisors, franchisees, whatever it may be, where buying from a fortune 1000 brand, but you’re doing it at the local level. The users of our software and services or those local entities, we want to be better marketers. So we are an amalgamation of many different companies just being private equity owned.

[00:04:15] So I had the luxury of joining a year after the acquisition where we merged three of the companies as anything, there’s growing pains about that. And up until around six or so years ago, we didn’t have a true sales team. It was the principals of those organizations that have been merged together who were really still doing the selling and doing a credible job of it. But at some point we said we got to formalize the sales team. So I transitioned over to that sales engineer solutions consulting type of role. And it made a lot of sense. I was filling that role. Yeah. Into that role, naturally, just doing since I was doing project management implementations, I was your handoff after sales.

[00:04:53] So taking that same technical acumen and applying it to the sales pre sales process helped us be able to bring on a sales team who didn’t necessarily know a lot about what we did from a technical perspective. That makes sense.

[00:05:05] Ron Laneve: Absolutely. Yep.

[00:05:07] James Morse: And then, what you’re probably thinking or anyone who’s listening who’s smart thing is why the heck would you let this guy who’s been doing implementations who has a background in business do any sort of software pre sales?

[00:05:19] I think a lot of it comes from just the fact if, case Western Reserve University. It’s a very much an engineering school, engineering and medicine. I was the guy in my fraternity who is the only one going to the business school every day while everyone else actually went to what I thought was going to be great careers and they still are for them, but engineers, I think a lot of it was osmosis from them of just understanding processes technical aspects of how you approach problem solving that applied that well.

[00:05:46] So I led that team for a little over two years. And then thankfully there was a gentleman who you’ve had on this series before Jason Tabeling who took a different role outside of Brandmuscle. So he was leading our product management group. So he tapped me on the shoulder to take over this side of the organization and I’ve been very lucky since I’ve been doing this for three years. Now I oversee a team of almost 25 across both the US and India. We have a product portfolio of almost 15 products, which is absolutely insane. You’d think that brandmuscle’s, a billion dollar company, just based off that portfolio alone. We’re not spoiler alert. But it’s been it’s been a heck of a ride.

[00:06:24] Ron Laneve: I really appreciate that introduction. So let’s talk about product management a little bit. If you don’t mind. As I look back at my notes, I took while you were talking and I think about all the product managers I’ve spoken to in the software space, you indirectly without knowing it, or maybe with knowing it, laid out the progression to become a product manager.

[00:06:42] But, can you more directly talk about what do you think are the key traits to being, to being product manager in the software space.

[00:06:52] James Morse:

I think there’s two parts of product management that are interesting, an inbound and a little bit of an outbound function, the inbound piece is really gathering requirements from clients, the market, competitors, wherever, where you’re looking to build either a new product or an enhancement, whatever it may be.

And there’s usually a technical acumen to that. You don’t want to be a developer, right? I didn’t want to be an engineer with my friends from college. But you have that thought process, that approach, that problem solving characteristic about yourself that you can dig in and you can define how we’re going to solve that problem.

[00:07:31] In my space, it’s obviously software, but product management can go across manufacturing, hardware, etc. But either way, you’re coming up with a product that’s going to solve a problem within the marketplace.

[00:07:43] On the outbound side of that, it’s more that product marketing function and a lot of some organizations have a completely separate product marketing function some places like brandmuscle you have some people that just do product marketing. I have some that do a little bit of both there. So not just the requirements and understanding the devils in the details kind of function. But what’s the strategy that you want to take defining a road map and understanding the balance. So it’s an art and a science, a little left brain, right brain activity there. But, ensuring that you’re prioritizing the right enhancements and looking at it from a corporate perspective.

[00:08:21] Going back to Jason. Jason left brandmuscle to go be a CEO of a company. And there’s a lot of things that I think Jason did really well in the product space that you see great product managers do, which is that balancing act of what does the company need to deliver? And how do you prioritize?

[00:08:36] I have a colleague who says out of 100 asks that she gets, she has to say no to 99 of them. She has to figure out the one thing that’s going to deliver the most value. And it’s a very difficult thing. So Is a long winded answer to your question. I think:

• understanding what the market’s asking for
• what your competitors aren’t delivering that you should be delivering
• and what the best way to bring something to market is really helps you understand it.

[00:09:02] So having that technical acumen, but also a business mindset is very key.

And even thinking back to my background, I think one of the things that makes me successful in this role is just my time with the sales team of having that first party feedback of what’s needed in the marketplace and What they’re seeing from competitors and what they want to see from our product and services

[00:09:24] Ron Laneve: Yep, absolutely. I don’t think it was possible to not give a long winded answer to that question because there’s so many components. There’s the requirements gathering there’s the client facing part. There’s the knowledge of marketing. To your point there’s the knowledge of where the business is trying to go and make sure that strategy is aligned with that.

[00:09:43] And don’t forget the financial component, right? Whether you’re doing it directly or working with, the finance part of the company, there’s a lot of gives and takes around investment in teams and in people and in resources to get certain things done and balance that with meeting client objectives and trying to sell more product.

[00:10:03] It’s a Incredibly complex role and congrats for you for getting there. That’s great.

[00:10:08] James Morse: Thanks. You hit the nail on the very interesting head there around just resources too I think. When we talk about brandmuscle having 15 products, there are obviously some that are more core products to what we sell and do.

[00:10:21] And there are some more that are peripheral complimentary products that may not be utilized by everyone, but utilized by a good client set. But when we think of staffing against those, whether it’s the product management function, or even the technical engineering function, the core products have set teams, but the other products have more floating teams beyond. And so you’re right. It becomes that much more difficult to align priorities. And if you worked in software in the last decade, priorities change on a dime is that based off of a competitive threat, the largest client needing something, or an industry that you primarily work in needing a new change.

[00:11:02] We’re seeing this right now with property and casualty insurance, if anyone’s following the news. Where you see climate change impacts throughout that of what we’re seeing with large fires, the hurricanes, earthquakes, whatever it may be. That industry is changing a lot and there were seeing some clients pull out of certain states because they don’t want to do growth models.

[00:11:23] Obviously that has such a downstream impact that a lot of people think of. Is that impacts than my product roadmap. Do I need to deliver something different? Do I need to stop delivering something? Because the growth models are changing with industries we work primarily with.

It’s a crazy time that you have to be both internally focused within the organization, but so externally focused as well and understanding the industries and the more macro events that are happening that are impacting them.

[00:11:49] Ron Laneve: Yep. No, perfect 10 years at brandmuscle in this role you’re in.  As you mentioned it progressed from project management to client facing work to Implementation, and then on to sales engineering and on to product management. When did you know that product management was a thing and that’s where you wanted to go?

[00:12:10] James Morse: So in when I was doing implementations, our Chief Strategy Officer at the time was filling the role for lack of a product management team. So he was driving road map and seeing that I think at that point and seeing how he executed that I was very interested.  I like the strategic side of that and understanding. It is a tough balance and I like the balance of internal needs versus external needs. And how do you get that right? As with anything, I think when you see how someone does something and you start to apply I would do that a little bit differently.That’s when I really learned Oh, I want to do that.

[00:12:43] And so when I actually joined the sales team, which was a hard bargain for them, like I didn’t really, I didn’t think I wanted to go sales side. I obviously wasn’t doing cold calling or anything, which really, this is not my comfort zone. And I knew then either I would walk out of that sales organization knowing I wanted to really be a salesperson or I wanted to go into product. So obviously spoiler alert, I went product, but the more involved I got with that sales team and helped with somewhat requirements gathering, and started to translate where I thought the needs of the marketplace for us to acquire more customers was from a product strategy rollout perspective, like the more and more ingrained I got there.

[00:13:29] Now, when I moved into the role, I was scared as hell. I had imposter syndrome. Actually, I had a good friend who is in product recently asked me when did the imposter syndrome go away? I said it never fully did. But for the most part, I just started doing the work. Like probably it I probably didn’t feel comfortable at least eight months into that. Like I was still outside of my comfort zone. Am I making the right decisions? Is this the right strategy? Am I guiding and leading the team in the right way? Am I hiring the right people to be successful when I’m out of this role at some point? And eventually it got there, but I think it all stemmed back from just seeing somebody else do it and go, I didn’t realize that was a job, but I think I could do that. And I think I could do. Pretty well,

[00:14:15] Ron Laneve: so let’s transition to I’ll just say students in college or students thinking about their careers. And, maybe they’re interested in software, but they don’t want to be software developers. What would you advise to them? On 2 levels, one if they think that product management is where they want to go after hearing this, or maybe getting exposed to more software companies in their education. What would you advise to them on the building blocks you need to be successful in the space? That’s one half of it. And the other half of it is, in general, what would where, if you had hindsight’s 2020, what would you advise to them from a class or focus point of view, what are those must have things that they need to get in their education to be more competitive in the workforce going forward?

[00:15:04] James Morse: Yeah, absolutely. I think if there’s an interest in the product management side, obviously, there’s going to typically be an offset balance that, where do you want the focus of the organization you want to work with? So mine’s marketing for bramble. So I love marketing was a focus of mine in college I’d probably be a horrible marketer if i’m being honest, but I understand the Approach the methodologies, the trade of marketing and the need for it.

[00:15:31] Understand where you want that focus to be. It could be finance there, there are software, hardware, physical products, littered in every industry. Even in your realm, Ron, there’s so many tools at your fingertips that you could use. I think understanding where you’re passionate about. If you’re passionate about product management, great, do it wherever. But I’m guessing people are going to be passionate about other areas of where they studied. But if you don’t want to be a set practitioner in there, if you don’t want to go into investment banking, but you really like finance, look at the Bloomberg tools. They have a whole portfolio of things that make investment bankers better. Find those areas.

I think hindsight being 2020, classes I would have probably focused a little bit more on would have been market research would have been a huge one. 

[00:16:17] I remember falling asleep in it quite a bit. I found the exercises to be boring. You’re doing surveys, you’re understanding, but The data side of it. I didn’t love. I think with any practitioner today, you spend more time and data than you could ever imagined. I’m currently need even weather data, which is something I never would have imagined. I’d be studying or trying to understand the impact of.

But taking that market research side approach because at the end of the day, product management, you have to get in front of your customer base. You have to understand exactly what their needs are, and you have to understand how to ask those questions, how to really get down to the specific pain points so that you’re solving those.

[00:16:53] If you try to solve things in a silo because you think you understand what the problem is, you’ll end up delivering something that nobody utilizes. I say it all the time. If you build it, they will come only works in old baseball movies. And that’s exactly it.

There have been things that I’ve built in my career that I wish I hadn’t because I hadn’t done enough research and I feel like I wasted some people’s time. 

[00:17:14] And that’s natural, that’s going to happen. But for the most part, that market research, I look back at that. I still have the book sitting on my bookshelf behind me. I reference it. I reference articles online all the time about new methodologies to approach, how to interview, how to survey, et cetera, to really get to the bottom of that. And I think that’s a great foundation for anyone who gets in, wants to get into product management. Cause you’re earlier in your career, you’re going to be really trying to define the problem.

[00:17:37] Ron Laneve: Gotcha. I’m going to make my son watch this video because I’m a recruiter, what the heck do I know about the software space apparently. But, I told him, I said, when you go to college, you got to focus on, if you’re not going to be a software engineer or, a doctor, a lawyer or something like that, you have to be solid in finance, and you have to be solid in data. You have to leave college with those 2 skills, no matter what else you do. And because it’ll be the basis of everything you figure of everything else you do in your career. And I you touched on that, I appreciate that. And I know he’s going to appreciate it when I make him watch this too.

[00:18:10] James Morse: But the finance side, you’re right. That’s the side that surprises me the most.

[00:18:13] Ron Laneve: And I’m not talking about… being an accountant, or being the CFO, but understanding, and you said it before how to create models and how to interpret models and how to make an argument with models. Sorry to cut you off.

[00:18:24] James Morse: Oh, no, you’re absolutely right.

[00:18:26] And I think, my finance team asked me all the time. How’s our P&L on this product? And what are we looking at? And what’s the long term sustainability? Or the first question I asked our head of sales when I moved to the sales team was do I have to, do I have to worry about pricing? I didn’t want to touch pricing. And her response was, does she need to worry about price? I’m like, no is the answer. And then, I’ll be damned I focus more on pricing than I ever thought I would before. And it’s always questions for our finance team too. If we release a new product or enhancement, what’s our pricing model around it.

[00:18:58]

• Where are we going to make money? That’s the real question they want to know.
• When are we going to make money off of this investment? And it’s not overly complex things, but it is from a business perspective, things that you need to understand. No matter what. I see our client facing teams all the time.
• What’s our, what’s the margin on this client?
• What’s the profitability going to be next year?
• How do we need to resource for this client?

It’s all over the place. You’re absolutely right. You’re right. Data, finance and then I throw AI into the mix just because I haven’t interviewed a single person in the past six months where I haven’t asked something about AI.

[00:19:31] Ron Laneve: Thank you for that softball and the transition or to where I want to go next. Let’s talk about interviewing. what would be your advice to, current people, current talent in the market as they’re trying to differentiate themselves both in the application process, in the recruiting process and in the interviewing process, from your experience, what have you seen? Any interesting unique ideas that candidates have come up with to set themselves apart.

[00:19:57] James Morse: I think a lot of it just comes to the foundation of interview. It’s so different than when I graduated. You’re always told do research on the company you’re talking to. Which when I graduated, that was just looking at their website, right? Maybe they were on Twitter or X for Facebook and they had some content, but we’re posting a lot. Now it’s impossible not to find content on any organization; YouTube, Tik TOK, wherever it may be. You can find people talking about their organizations. And where I’m getting to with this is,

I think it’s not just understanding them, but coming with Ideas and being able to ideate.

So the best conversations that interviews that I have with candidates right now is not just about their understanding of let’s use AI because it’s so topical at the moment, not they’re just their understanding of large language models or different AI tools and how they use them, but how those types of things could apply to either our customer base, our business model.

[00:20:58] Even if it’s not something that I run and try to apply, it’s the connecting of those dots a little bit further than I ever could have when I graduated. And it’s just because they have access to those problems so much more now. And so I think having those types of elevated questions ensures that You’re ready for the type of role and to hit the ground running.

[00:21:22] I think right now, none of us can afford to do a three to six month ramp up. Like training and everything aside, like happy to invest that time and really coaching and understand. But we’re really looking for people who can step into the role and start applying even right out of college. Whether that is for us, AI.  Or even what I’m seeing is to your point, there’s not really a lot of paths for product managers, but I’m interviewing people who are coming out of college and being able to think of the problem sets of marketing. So I’m looking at marketers typically and how would they solve this problem? What tools would they use? Just more of a conversation and problem solving on the fly. I think of it as how the the old consulting firms used to interview where they go in and give you a problem set. How would you solve this? But taking that one step further and how would you solve a business problem that I have today?

[00:22:14] Ron Laneve: Yeah, an actual one based upon your knowledge of the company. So that’s fascinating. Thank you. The last thing I wanted to mention is, and I’m going to add in an extra video here to show people, but I wanted to give you props on your LinkedIn profile is looking at it today. And, I spent a lot of my day trying to coach people on how they should format their LinkedIn in and not that you’re looking for a job. I know that you’re not, I know that you’re extremely happy, but yeah, I tell people all the time, your LinkedIn profile should mimic your resume all the time and continually update it and make the bullets extremely thorough and the beauty of LinkedIn is it gives you all the ability to add extra assets like videos and podcast interviews and other accolades. But you’ve done an excellent job at that. Everyone should use your profile as a model. So nice work.

[00:23:05] James Morse: I appreciate it. I actually I’m embarrassed to say this. I set up a website, JamesMorse.com. If you want to visit a couple of years ago I’m lucky to get three visitors on the site a year and they’re usually coming from my Instagram, which means that they’re just friends who are trying to stalk me on this.

[00:23:18] But I agree with that. I think that the I believe that the resume should match my LinkedIn should match that website. So no matter what, and then I actually, I have two days each year. I do it at the very beginning of June and usually around the Christmas holiday. When I take a little bit of time off with family, I carve out some time then just to update everything that I’ve done those last six months. I’ve had too many friends who have gone and worked somewhere for 10 years and go, Oh my God, I have to update my resume. I haven’t touched this thing in so long. To your point, I’m not interviewing, but if I was looking around, I want to make it easier so that I’m not having to dig out of it. And I think it helps for things like this. You can look at my LinkedIn and see, Oh, this is what James does. This is what he’s proficient in. And maybe I can talk to him about product management.

[00:23:59] Ron Laneve: And companies freak out when people update their link, or I would say candidates think that companies freak out when people update their linked in profile. But when I look at it from the opposite side, it’s a great recruiting tool for you interviewing other people come into your business because look at all the detail you’re concluding and look at what you’re look at what you’ve learned while you’ve been there and what you’ve been able, how you’ve progressed from roll to roll.

[00:24:21] Right? That’s 1 of the biggest questions people ask. So nice work. Maybe we’ll do another video just on that and what the thought process was. James, appreciate your time today. Thanks a lot.

[00:24:31] James Morse: Oh, I guess Ron, it’s been such a pleasure. Thank you.

[00:24:33] Ron Laneve: Best of luck to you. Talk soon.

October 2, 2023