Former BetterRx CEO Ben Clark sees product management as a direct revenue generator. A product manager's core value is finding significant, monetizable customer pain. When they succeed in creating strong product-market fit, it makes the jobs of sales and marketing easier and directly fuels company growth.

To be truly successful, a product leader cannot just focus on features and users. They must operate as the head of their product's business, with a deep understanding of P&Ls, revenue drivers, and capital allocation. Without this business acumen, they risk fundamentally undercutting their product's potential impact and success.

The core job of a Product Manager is not writing specs or talking to press; it's a leadership role. Success means getting a product to market that wins. This requires influencing engineering, marketing, and sales without any formal authority, making it the ultimate training ground for real leadership.

In a truly product-led company, the product organization must accept ultimate accountability for business-wide challenges. Issues in sales, marketing, or customer success are not separate functional problems; they are reflections of the product's shortcomings, requiring product leaders to take ownership beyond their immediate domain.

To build trust and deliver value, product managers cannot be 'tourists' who drop in on other departments transactionally. They must become 'locals'—deeply integrated, trusted partners who are regulars in cross-functional conversations and are seen as being 'in the battle' together with sales, marketing, and other teams.

The 'mini CEO' title isn't about power; it’s about responsibility for a product's financial success. To be effective, leaders must understand cost-to-serve, gross margin, and other financial metrics to make sound business decisions and speak the language of the board.

Product managers often fail to get ideas funded because they speak about user needs and features, while executives focus on business growth and strategic bets. To succeed, PMs must translate user value into financial impact and business outcomes, effectively speaking the language of leadership.

Unlike a failed feature launch, business viability risks (e.g., wrong pricing, changing market) kill products slowly. By the time the damage is obvious, it's often too late. This makes continuous monitoring of the business model as critical as testing new features.

The most critical skill gaps for product managers are not technical but relational and financial. The inability to make a compelling business case to diverse audiences and to move from a cost-only to a full profit-and-loss mindset are primary reasons for failure in the role.