Today in our Success Story blog, we introduce you to Sawan Tandon who is a Senior Product Manager and has been a part of GCPM, 2021 at Accredian. He shares his journey of achieving success and landing a career in the Product Management industry. Get to know more about him as he guides us through this amazing process.
Watch his interview here
Q.1 Tell us about your current role and background.
My name is Sawan. My current role is of a Senior Product Manager with Bajaj Capital Insurance. And as a senior product manager, it’s a huge responsibility to bring in the growth of the business and the product I’m dealing with.
It is sort of a role wherein I am serving as a ready trainer, for my team with regards to the product knowledge, regards to the queries, regards to the issues coming up, and it is very interesting, since you see, I mean, it gives me a huge opportunity for learning.
So, my product is what I’m enjoying a lot and simultaneously, I share my experiences with my team. So, it gives me a good environment both ways.
Q.2 What challenges did you face while exploring a Product Management role?
Well when I was told to be in the position of a product manager, I used to be in day to day sales. And I gladly accepted it. I was chosen because I had a great deal of experience in the field that was shared with my colleagues and team members.
This will further create a great source of happiness for me, because you see, the challenges are there in selling products, which is full of huge questions, huge complaints, huge checkout technicalities. But my best practices and my experiences have worked out a lot for my team. And there were challenges as well, where I had to convince people from rural areas.
So, to convince them and to bring into the private sector, where most of them are still willing to go with the government sectors and continue the old pattern of businesses was a huge challenge.
Q.3 How has Product Management helped you in your new role?
I can say that product management has helped me in understanding the market well, the need to understand the right product for the client, the need to guide the team as to how and where they can explore with general insurance and a wide variety of products.
This helps in using a product comparison study. So, it is easy to discuss and talk more about the product and the services, and as a product manager, it helps me in giving the correct view, requirement and need of the product for the clients. This helps me in giving the right solutions to people for their problems.
Q.4 What was the interview experience at your current company?
Yes, the interview experience. It was not easy. My organization was in need of a product manager who can take the whole responsibility to give a new path of success for the frequently upcoming companies with regards to the services.
I guess due to my background and my product knowledge experience it has given me an upper hand in my selection in the job role. And yes, I have proven to be better than the rest.
Q.5 Why Accredian? How did it help you?
Since I am a person who was always hungry for learning, and I’m hungry to learn new things and explore new concepts in various modes. Maybe in a physical format, maybe in a digital format, maybe the online format. I am ready to learn and ready to go ahead with this and understand things.
So when I came across the ad of Accredian it was in my interest and it was also matching my profile. And during the course material shared for the webinar, the interest got enhanced. So this is how it started.
And I remember the date well. It was 5th of September. The auspicious Teachers Day. So the Accredian platform is very good in fact, and the communication among everyone I found is also very easily sought.
So, the connectivity platform, the study materials, the library, the introduction of the other webinars, and of course, the instructor, the trainer at the backend, they have done a good job. Many people will gain out of Accredian and this is what I believe Accredian has done to me.
Q.6 What advice would you give to Product Management beginners?
Well the product manager is such a role, which has a long term career path and this will have involvement on a regular basis as there are many changes coming up in the industry.
The product manager needs to look out for their utmost interest in the field where they should be the best person to answer all the hiccups, if it comes their way. So the experience, the knowledge, the creativity, the interest to learn something new and simultaneously sharing it further with the team and others is important.
So altogether when you get feedback from them you can improve if there is anything missing out or if there is anything wrong so you can fix it. So it’s better we share those things with our juniors and the PM will be the person who most of the people will admire as he will share the true knowledge that the juniors would be able to come across.
Once you’re able to recognize your quality, then you will be focused and there is no reason to look back. So product managers are doing well.
We hope you found this success story interesting.
