This episode features an interview with Ben Ellison, Sr. Director of Product at Sam’s Club.

In this episode, Ben helps us understand how he and his team are leaning into technology to create better products, shares different use cases for prioritization frameworks, and what it has looked like integrating tools and teams to enhance the Sam’s Club customer experience.

Key Takeaways

Kyle:

• Exploring the genesis of innovative products leads to solutions: Our customer problems can help us come up with an innovative solution to those problems.
• Overcoming the fox holes and fires happens when we utilize a good framework: Having an effective framework in place helps drive clarity through the challenge of getting things done even if we run into fox holes and fires in the process. It’s PMing 101.

Lukasz: 

• Working on and rolling out tech that works well is exciting: How many times does technology get put somewhere and is never used? All the time! Which is why it’s exciting and important to have technology that’s operational and helps a broad market.
• Being challenged as a PM makes our job amazing: When you learn to persevere and overcome challenges as a PM, it makes the job much more enjoyable and exciting to be able to work on such projects.
• Iterating can help address product problems: When onboarding new technologies, making progress happens through making iterations to our products and observing them in action.

Segment Timestamps: 

*(00:41) - Never Have I Ever

*(06:46) - Innovation, Therapy & Other Wild Tales

*(18:05) - PM Power Move

*(24:46) - Ship it or Skip it

*(29:14) - Host Takeaways

Links:

• Connect with Lukasz Weber & Kyle Kolich on LinkedIn
• Connect with Ben Ellison
• Learn more about Sam’s Club
• Learn more about Zuora

>> Connect with Lukasz Weber & Kyle Kolich 

>> Learn more about Zuora