Citrix Fmr Product Lead on The Truths of Enterprise Product Management (Part 3)

Now let’s talk about the cool things about the enterprise space and product management. Here are my five benefits for working in B2B that some people may not even be aware of. 

Benefit 1: Size Of Checks 

I love this part. You know, it’s not uncommon to have deals in the millions. Just one single deal. And then imagine the compensation from closing the deal. In my research, it seems like the compensation for PM in the enterprise space actually tends to be higher than for the folks in B2C. So, it’s not a bad thing. 

Benefit 2: Personal Development

There are great opportunities for you to build your brand, expand your knowledge in B2B. Of course, enterprise software often requires those with super deep domain expertise. However, you will often have an opportunity to get trained in verticals of the company. Larger enterprise companies also provide tons of opportunities for learning, getting certified, and such. Sometimes, you even get to present to user groups, customers, and CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies and that’s super cool.

Benefit 3: World Travel

I really enjoy this part of being in the enterprise space. It’s unlikely that a startup will be able to afford to spread their focus globally. Startups will often be very geo focused. But larger enterprise companies have customers throughout the globe. And if you are the PM for this product, you have an opportunity to meet customers everywhere. I got to visit tons of cool countries from India to Mexico. 

Benefit 4: Stickiness

Business customers are less fickle than consumers. And there are reasons for that like costs or customization. So, once the customer commits to something and spends millions of dollars with you, they’re not jumping to a competitor very quickly. Of course, they can still switch. 

Benefit 5: Importance

Finally, importance. Your product is often at the foundation of businesses. Some companies may not be able to continue their business or work without your product. However, if your product doesn’t work, that puts some pressure on you as well.  

So, I think there’s tons of cool stuff in enterprise. And believe it or not, the space is no longer B2B versus B2C. In fact, the lines are starting to blur. It’s no longer about using beautiful experience provided by Apple and then going to work in the command line or something. B2B companies are paying attention to user experience and UI. So it’s definitely improving. So in summary, there’s lots of cool stuff that we can build every day in the enterprise world. Of course, it’s not easy.  You can see the difficult parts and the deep domain knowledge and expertise required to succeed in this space. However, don’t lose faith, it’s worth it.