October 12, 2026
Jonas Weber, Director of ProductKontor CommerceMunich, Germany
Dear Mr. Weber,
Kontor's checkout runs payments for thousands of small online shops, and your new installment option puts one of the hardest problems in e-commerce on your roadmap: offering more choice at checkout without adding friction. I've spent three years as a product manager working on exactly that trade-off, and I'd like to bring that experience to your Product Manager, Payments role.
At Ferngrün, a Berlin marketplace for refurbished electronics, I own checkout and payments for a team of six engineers, a designer and an analyst. Our funnel data showed that 41% of mobile shoppers abandoned at the payment step. After 18 customer interviews and a review of session recordings, we found the problem wasn't the number of payment methods but that local options like SEPA direct debit sat below the fold. We redesigned the step, ran a four-week A/B test and lifted mobile checkout conversion from 2.1% to 2.6%, worth about €1.2 million in additional annual revenue.
I also say no when it matters. When sales asked for a custom invoicing flow for one large reseller, I estimated the effort with engineering, showed it would delay a fraud-screening upgrade that affected every order, and agreed a lighter workaround with the account team. Chargebacks fell by 30% after the upgrade shipped. I write clear product requirements, run discovery with design, and use SQL and Amplitude when I need an answer quickly.
I'd bring Kontor a habit of tying every roadmap decision to a customer problem and a measurable outcome. I'd welcome the chance to walk you through the checkout experiment, including the version that failed first. Thank you for your consideration.
Kind regards,
Lena Hoffmann
Opening
It names a specific product challenge at the company and frames it as a trade-off. That shows product judgment in the first two sentences, before any claim about the candidate.
Product story
The second paragraph runs the whole product loop: data shows a problem, research finds the real cause, the team builds a fix, an experiment proves it, and the result is stated in conversion and revenue. Prospects describes this as the core of the job: using user feedback and data to set priorities.
Trade-off
Most PM letters only describe things they built. Saying no to a stakeholder and showing the reason (an upgrade that affected every order) demonstrates prioritization, one of the hardest parts of the role.
Tools and craft
Requirements, discovery, SQL and analytics appear in one sentence, attached to how the candidate works. Enough to pass a screen without turning the letter into a list.
Close
Offering to share "the version that failed first" signals honesty and a learning mindset, and gives the interviewer a good first question.
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