From Moody’s Enterprise Sales to Product Manager

About us: Andrew (AM) and Chandrika (CM) met during their MBA program at MIT Sloan and connected over their passion for product, growth and paying forward the help they got transitioning into product management. AM currently works as a Product Manager at Moveworks and CM works as a Product Manager at DocuSign.

In the 3rd series, we are covering our peers who made the transition into Product Management from a variety of different backgrounds so they can share insights and lessons learned. For this post, we spoke to Brian Simmons who is currently a Senior Product Manager at Moody’s Analytics. Prior to transitioning into the PM role, Brian had a few roles within the same organization such as Enterprise Sales Associate Director, Desktop Publisher, and Client Service Representative. 

For the last 3 years, Brian has been leading the v2 rebuild of a syndicated research product – Moodys.com - which is used by fixed-income investors. The product aggregates ratings agency research, financials, ESG data, and more, to analyze and highlight credit risk. Post-use migration in 2020, he will shift focus to lead a team focused on personalization to create a differentiated user experience. He has heard directly from users that they are pressed for time and need to have important information served up quickly so that they can get what they need and move on. Here are the notes from our conversation with Brian:

Why did you want to become a PM?

Two roles back (the one before Sales), I was in a Product Operations role in which I was responsible for stitching together the final form of our research deliverables. We relied on a very manual process (literal paper and highlighters) to track work-in-progress which caused myriad issue in the production process. I decided to build a simple tool in Excel to drive efficiency and reduce errors. After one year of launching it, I was able to convince management of its merits and secure resource to formalize the product as an intranet app. For that project, I served as the de facto Product Manager and loved seeing a vision in my head become reality. Amazingly, that basic application is still being used by the business unit 8 years later. 

I transitioned into Sales because I wanted to spend more time with customers to understand and empathize their pain points. In hindsight, I view what I learned as part of “Customer Discovery” (a concept referenced in “Inspired” by Marty Cagan) but just in another part of the customer life cycle journey. I was in Sale for five years and had a fair amount of success, but I wanted to come back into a business unit and build upon my knowledge of product management. 

There was an internal unit at Moody’s that was starting a product redesign. They needed someone to oversee the build, and although I had no formal product experience, I brought in strong communications and leadership skills.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced transitioning into PM?

There was a very steep learning curve; even though I stayed with the same company I switch business units, customers, products, and functional responsibilities overnight. Although I was brought on as a Senior PM, I didn't know anything. Literally, nothing about basic concepts such as a web service, full-stack developers, the difference between UX and UI, or the various acronyms, e.g. CTR, CTA, etc. Basically, I didn't have the language of the product so I had to ask a TON of questions and learn quickly so I could communicate with my teammates. 

What did you have to unlearn?

Sales is more individual contributor sport (even when selling with an AE) where you have more things in your control than dependencies on others. Product is on the other side of the spectrum where you operate through influence and need various teams to come together to make something possible. I had to make a shift in my behavior and my approach to work. My first PE was littered with comments like “Brian has great enthusiasm and energy, but he needs to slow down and build consensus across the organization before agreeing to something.”

What skills and experiences you found were transferable to PM?

Two specific skills that I found transferrable were Problem Discovery and Multitasking.

In sales, you have to earn the right to pitch a solution by spending enough time in the problem to really understand your prospects position. I find Product to be similar in that you really need to be a ‘Problem Manager’ (to steal a quote from one of my LinkedIn connections).

Also, in Sales I was managing somewhere between 150-200 accounts each year and as a result was constantly context switching and multitasking. Sound familiar?

What was the one most important resource you had to make the transition? Why?

The single most important resource for me was my manager. I was very fortunate to have come into product under her guidance. She helped me grow by pushing me to think beyond just the first solution that came to mind for a given problem, while ultimately leaving the final decision to me. You can imagine as I came up such a steep curve that there were moments of doubt and frustration. I regularly wondered if I was right to leave sales and attempt something new. In those moments of doubt, she never quit on me and she never let me off the hook easily. I’m so grateful she kept me in the game long enough for me to get maximum value out of the role.