What does a product manager do?

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abacus

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From the job description, it sounds like an IT support role:
1. Accountable for providing insights and perspective for multi-asset portfolio characteristics calculations and usage
2. Support product management efforts – primarily around enterprise data creation, manipulation and usage.
3. Review appropriate communication materials for accuracy & completeness.
4. Liaison with various business areas to proactively understand anticipated issues and address accordingly.
5. Project work as needed.
 
Basically a product manager is someone that sits between the portfolio manager and the sales staff. When the sales people have a lead and want to give the potential investor a deeper explanation and understanding of what the portfolio is, what it does, how it would fit with other strategies, etc., they’ll call in a product manager to be an expert on the portfolio. The advantage is 1) many effective PMs have poor people skills, and so this allows the PM to do what they do well, while providing the investor with an intelligent people-oriented resource, and 2) even when PMs do have people skills, it allows the PM to spend more time and attention on managing the portfolio and less on holding clients’ hands.
What I’ve heard about product manager roles is that it that the substance of the work is interesting (at least it sounds that way to me), but that it’s not clear what the promotion path out of that area is. If you’re young, it can be a stepping stone to either sales or PM, but you’ll have to focus on developing the relationships and skills. It might lead to strategy. If you’re not proactive in figuring out where to go next, however, it can be a bit of a dead end (or so I’m told).
 
Imagine a sales guy working for PIMCO Total Return product. They have 250bill AUM in that fund. There must be thousands of investors in that product alone. New potential clients wants to do an interview with them on a daily basis and existing clients wants to do an live review of the strategy.
Lets say your base in NYC, flying anywhere on the east coast will take anywhere between 1-4hrs each way. So at most you can attend 1-3 client meetings a day (meetings can last anywhere between 10mins to a few hours). So the sales guy is constantly on the ground meeting with clients.
Because the sales guys are busy and are never at home base they need product managers to create the pitchbooks, understand the strategy, and follow-up with clients before and after the meeting.
Some things you might do as a product manager
- Create marketing materials: pitchbooks, monthly & quarterly reviews, white papers
- Help with clients in account openning/transfers/paperwork/legal
- Work with portfolio manager to understand the strategy and the markets (know the holdings and why the strategies) so they can communicate this to the sales.
- Also client always have requests like “i’m worried about the amount of treasuries in the Total Return fund, what is the worst case scenerio?”, the product manager will work with the investment analyst to help do the research.
 
bchadwick Wrote:
——————————————————-
> Basically a product manager is someone that sits
> between the portfolio manager and the sales staff.
> When the sales people have a lead and want to
> give the potential investor a deeper explanation
> and understanding of what the portfolio is, what
> it does, how it would fit with other strategies,
> etc., they’ll call in a product manager to be an
> expert on the portfolio. The advantage is 1) many
> effective PMs have poor people skills, and so this
> allows the PM to do what they do well, while
> providing the investor with an intelligent
> people-oriented resource, and 2) even when PMs do
> have people skills, it allows the PM to spend more
> time and attention on managing the portfolio and
> less on holding clients’ hands.
>
> What I’ve heard about product manager roles is
> that it that the substance of the work is
> interesting (at least it sounds that way to me),
> but that it’s not clear what the promotion path
> out of that area is. If you’re young, it can be a
> stepping stone to either sales or PM, but you’ll
> have to focus on developing the relationships and
> skills. It might lead to strategy. If you’re not
> proactive in figuring out where to go next,
> however, it can be a bit of a dead end (or so I’m
> told).
That’s what I think of when I think product specialist/manager - but that’s not at all what the description reads like. These guys at my company (300B) make good money - 300-500k the last couple years, potential to get to 1M+. More travel than the PM’s and more interaction with people, and gives you the opportunity to go sales or PM like you said.
 
At larger institutions there might be more than just one role in between portfolio management and sales: a product manager and something along the lines of a capability manager (both terms can be called something entirely different depending on the company).
In this case one could roughly split up the roles along the investment side (capability management) and the operational side (product manager).
The capability manager is basically responsible for substituting the pm in client presentations, prepares and checks pitch books, etc. Basically everything to do with presenting the investment strategy itself.
The product manager, in this case, would be involved in generating and overseeing standard sales materials. Think standard charts, fact sheets, annual reports, sales prospectuses, etc..
In smaller organizations, these two roles are often combined or the pm takes over the capability managers chores. However, if it’s a larger organization with the roles split up, make sure it’s the investment side you’re applying for, where you will get a bit of both worlds in the front office: sales and investment management (even if you’re not directly managing money, you’re right next to the action). If its the operational side, you’re in for a desk job with repetitive tasks.
 
After reading the description you provided once more, sounds unfortunately more like the operational side.
 
Pretty much what people have already stated. Though at our firm product managers are never in front of clients. We have a different role that melds investment management and sales.
 
Thanks folks. It was very informative. From the sounds of it, product management may not be a bad opportunity. May help me transition from pricing debt & derivatives to a more client-centric role, though the particular job description (that I posted) wasn’t that. After talking to headhunter, it was really a DB role to support product management.
 
I don’t know guys. If your goal in life is to be middle class/upper-middle making 200-500k/yr, fact and spell checking quarterly reports isn’t too bad.
 
BiPolarBoyBoston Wrote:
——————————————————-
> I don’t know guys. If your goal in life is to be
> middle class/upper-middle making 200-500k/yr, fact
> and spell checking quarterly reports isn’t too
> bad.
where do you get the fact that making 200-500K is only middle/upper-middle class??? that would definitely be upper upper class.
 
CFAcountry Wrote:
——————————————————-
>
> where do you get the fact that making 200-500K is
> only middle/upper-middle class??? that would
> definitely be upper upper class.
Not in Manhattan.
 
“Mr. Rockefeller, how much money should be ‘enough’ money?”
“Just a little bit more.”
 
abacus Wrote:
——————————————————-
> Thanks folks. It was very informative. From the
> sounds of it, product management may not be a bad
> opportunity. May help me transition from pricing
> debt & derivatives to a more client-centric role,
> though the particular job description (that I
> posted) wasn’t that. After talking to headhunter,
> it was really a DB role to support product
> management.
Abacus - I am currently interviewing for a pricing role and would like to get some insight. Would you be willing to chat off-line? My email is [email protected]
Thanks
 
Jay5150 Wrote:
——————————————————-
> abacus Wrote:
> ————————————————–
> [email protected]
>
> Thanks
You might want to get a different email to induce dudes to converse with you offline Jay…
 
Jay5150 Wrote:
——————————————————-
> abacus Wrote:
> ————————————————–
> —–
> > Thanks folks. It was very informative. From the
> > sounds of it, product management may not be a
> bad
> > opportunity. May help me transition from
> pricing
> > debt & derivatives to a more client-centric
> role,
> > though the particular job description (that I
> > posted) wasn’t that. After talking to
> headhunter,
> > it was really a DB role to support product
> > management.
>
>
> Abacus - I am currently interviewing for a pricing
> role and would like to get some insight. Would you
> be willing to chat off-line? My email is
> [email protected]
>
> Thanks
Sure. Send an email to [email protected]. Also, put in the job description so I know where this job fits into the overall organization.
 
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