Job Description

Manages the Product Management team across all product categories, providing leadership, coaching, and development to a team of product managers. Oversees new product and product line development; product line analysis, enhancement and strategy; and market and competitive research, ensuring the team's work builds demand, market share, sales, and profitability grounded in deep product and market understanding. Actively guides and supports product managers in their strategy development and execution, while working collaboratively with cross-functional teams to develop and commercialize a new product development pipeline and help drive P&L results.

People Management

• Manages, coaches, and develops a team of product managers, providing regular feedback, performance management, and career development support.
• Actively partners with product managers on their strategy and execution work, providing guidance, unblocking issues, and pressure-testing plans before they move forward.
• Sets team priorities, workload distribution, and project assignments across the product management team to ensure effective coverage across all product categories.
• Recruits, hires, and onboards new product management talent; identifies and addresses team capability and coverage gaps.
• Leads process improvements for the product management team, establishing best practices, tools, and ways of working that improve team effectiveness and consistency.
• Collaborates with cross-functional leaders to improve organizational effectiveness, strengthening how the product management team partners with Sales, Channel Marketing, Engineering & Design, and Operations.
• May lead or personally own a strategic initiative or thought-leadership area in addition to people management responsibilities.

Product Line Strategy

• Lead the development and execution of product line plans, project priorities, and product positioning. Work closely with Sales & Channel management to determine product features, pricing, and placement tactics.
• Establish product life cycle metrics and plan appropriate modifications to keep line / mix at performing levels.

Financial Management & Operations

• Maintains an ongoing assessment of estimated financial performance versus targets. Recommends incremental programming to close any gaps.
• Works collaboratively across cross-functional team to track product cost and drivers of cost.
• Works collaboratively with operations/sourcing to help create an ongoing pipeline of productivity initiatives that drive best cost while maintaining acceptable level of product quality.
• As required, assist product managers in proposing a strategy for reducing SKUs. Working collaboratively with cross-functional team to determine which SKUs to annually prune from offering.

Organizational Leadership

• Collaborates with peers to share marketing and industry best practices.
• Uses appropriate decision-making and approval processes in a timely manner. Makes or approves recommendations to streamline/simplify product line and business processes.
• Actively leads or is engaged in cross-functional teams driving process and procedure changes and improvement in the organization.

Innovation and Product Portfolio Management

Manage product managers owning their product lines to achieve:

• Product improvements that enhance product benefits, quality and competitiveness.
• Profitability. Establish list pricing and provide cost/value analysis.
• Effective mix of product offerings to meet customer and market needs, while containing line proliferation. Recommend product introductions and eliminations.
• New products / product derivatives that reflect and lead industry trends.
• Leads cross-functional product team to create a robust pipeline of new products based upon consumer insights and market needs, culminating in a Strategic Product Plan.
• Collaborates cross-functionally to write new product definitions. Recommends product features and benefits, and overall product design, based upon homeowner insights and needs.
• Leads developing the business case for new products, including estimating sales and financials.
• Works collaboratively across cross-functional team to recommend post-launch success metrics. Analyzes metrics and tracks vitality rates. Builds findings into plans.
• Works collaboratively with Channel Marketing, Sales and E&D to analyze homeowner trends, technologies, product categories, and geographies to help identify category trends and future sources of growth. Analyzes product portfolio to help determine product lines to enter, exit, or maintain.

Consumer and Market Insights

• Translates business needs into a prioritized project list to help set corporate product category direction. Explains the business needs to solve and how the results will be used.
• Works collaboratively with Channel Marketing to recommend metrics to track, such as share, POS, distribution, pricing, and quality measures.
• Collect data and maintain accurate files on competition and competing products.
• Maintains relationship with internal codes/regulations engineering; includes understanding of codes (building codes, etc.) as it relates to product line present and future.
• Assist the Channel Marketing team with market & competitive intelligence to aid in the development of their commercialization or 'bring-to-market' planning.

Product Line Reviews

• Manages an annual situation assessment (Product Line Reviews), which analyzes overall product line and business performance. Recommends business implications from key conclusions via the Strategic Product Plan.
• Prepares homeowner, category, and product line information to support channel marketing and sales in key customer-specific category management and sales presentations.

Pricing

• Recommends pricing on new products based upon data analysis / understanding of marketplace pricing. Estimates expected price and impact of different price points on profitability.
• Reviews own-brand and competitive prices and recommends action steps from findings.
• Approves special pricing programs for key customers ensuring the opportunity is sound considering the full product portfolio.

• Bachelor's degree with emphasis in marketing or business (MBA a plus).
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in product management, including experience managing or leading a team. Minimum of 2 years’ experience people leadership preferred.
• Demonstrated people management and coaching skills, with the ability to develop talent across varying experience levels.
• Must be able to manage the coordination of a line transition and provide both qualitative and quantitative rationales for decisions.
• Strong analytical and computer skills essential.
• Experience in market research, analysis and strategy development.
• Strong project leadership skills.
• Experience in windows, doors or related home improvement components a plus.
• Ability to effectively communicate and persuade others in a variety of settings, both within and outside the organization.
• Ability to provide direction and manage outside design talent and procure additional talent as needed.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and written communication skills.
• Highly motivated people-leader, with ability to manage multiple projects and deadlines simultaneously across their team.
• Creative problem-solver, able to synthesize information quickly and make decisions.

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