Product Marketing & Product Management
Consulting & Training

The 280 Group helps companies deliver products that delight their customers and produce massive profits. by providing Product Marketing & Product Management Consulting & Contractors, Training, Certifications, Books, and Templates and Toolkits. We have an entire series of 280 Group Press  best-selling product management & product marketing books and a complete and thorough worldwide-standard methodology that includes a seven phase product process with corresponding training, certifications and templates.

Since 1998, the 280 Group’s consultants, contractors and trainers have helped a wide range of companies, from Fortune 500 to startups to deliver and market great new products and achieve excellence in product management and product marketing. Whether you need a high-level consultant to plan your product strategy, a seasoned veteran to run an industry-changing product launch or a mid-level Product Manager contractor to write an MRD, or training and consulting to dramatically increase the effectiveness of Product Management or Product Marketing at your company, the 280 Group can provide you with expert, professional talent to help you get the job done right.

If you are tight on headcount, the 280 Group can help expand your team with high-quality contractors (from one up to an entire team of consultants) to help you get critical work done quickly. Our contractors can also help fill the void when employees are on maternity leave, short-term disability or sabbaticals. And we can also help you and your employees improve your effectiveness on the job by providing training and proessional templates and toolkits.

About the 280 Group name

Within a few miles of the Interstate 280 corridor in Silicon Valley some of the world’s greatest companies have come to life. We help these companies to define, launch and market breakthrough new products.

We decided to use the name 280 Group because the Highway 280 corridor and surrounding areas are such a unique and meaningful part of the valley and the technology industry. From Sand Hill road to Woodside to the Stanford campus, down South to Cupertino and San Jose, there is nowhere else in the world like the Highway 280 area for innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit.

The 280 Group Difference

When you need a Product Marketing or Product Management consultant or contractor you’ve got lots of choices, from interim “between job” consultants to contractor mills (see below).

The 280 Group is the best choice for several reasons:

• An excellent reputation and many satisfied clients. You can be sure you’ll get the highest quality work and the results you want.
• Hand-picked consultants and contractors that deliver premium results. All of our consultants and contractors come highly recommended through our networks and have been pre-screened for you, so you don’t have to do the work to find them. We only work with the best of the best.
• 280 Group methodology and toolkits. Based on decades of experience, the toolkits can be leveraged to get your projects done more quickly and effectively. And you can take advantage of our training and templates to ensure your company continues to do things the right way for years to come.
• The ability to scale depending on your needs. We can provide one person or an entire team to help you accomplish your goals.
• Experience across a wide range of technologies and markets. We’ve worked on software, hardware and Internet products & services and have experience in Consumer, Small Business, Enterprise, Government and Education markets. As a client you get to leverage the learning from dozens of products and industries.
• Reasonable and competitive rates. We keep our overhead low, and we want to build long-term relationships with clients so that they keep coming back time and time again. You get a virtual team that you can tap into at any time without taxing your budget.

A few of your choices other than The 280 Group…

• Interim “fly-by-night” product management & product marketing consultants. Many of these are people who are between jobs and decide to temporarily become consultants. Sometimes you can get good work from these folks – many of them are highly talented. Other times you don’t get good results. The quality of the work may be poor, or they may quit the project right in the middle because they get a good job offer.
• Independent consultants and contractors who are professionals and have chosen this as a way to make a living are another choice. They can provide good quality work, although oftentimes they will already be booked if you need them in a pinch, and you’ll still have to go through checking their references and making sure that their reputation lives up to the quality you are looking for.
• “Contractor Mills”. These are companies that keep databases of hundreds or thousands of consultants and contractors, many of which they have never even met and who have been added to their database through forms on their website. Sometimes you can get good results through these companies as well, though the value that they add in terms of pre-screening and qualifying the people they place may be questionable. You’ll also tend to pay a premium price – in order to keep their contractor engine going and fund their sales force, office space, and other expenses they’ll sometimes charge very high markup percentages – even as high as $100 per hour over what the contractor is being paid.