10 Misconceptions about Product Management Consulting that Block Startups from Getting Valuable Help

Written by Jessica Nelson-Kohel (COO) & Justin Kistner (Product Leader)

Misconceptions about product management consultants can quietly shape, and sometimes misshape, strategic decisions and growth opportunities for startups. We've met many innovative companies, teetering on the cusp of a breakthrough, who almost missed crucial advice because of the misunderstandings we're about to dive into. Now, you might be thinking, "Of course, a product management consultancy would want to debunk these myths - it's in their interest!" And, you know what? You're right.?

However, the reality is that breaking down these misconceptions doesn't just benefit us. It's also about providing a path for startups to access the essential support they need to bring their ambitions to life without needless obstacles. After hearing all kinds of doubts and hesitations in discovery calls, social media chats, and conversations, we're uniquely positioned to shed some light on these common misconceptions. In doing so, we intend to clear the path, not just towards our services, but to enable startups to access the valuable expertise they need, wherever and however they choose to find it. And whatever path they may take, hopefully, we can debunk some of these myths along the way.

Misconception 1: Product management can’t be effective part-time

Ever heard the phrase ‘something is better than nothing’? It applies here 100%. Especially at an early stage, having some level of product management expertise, even in the form of a fractional consultant, is far better than having none. Bringing someone in to help you make critical strategic decisions for the product, avoid costly mistakes, and bring a user-centric and efficient mindset to your MVP can all be done fractionally, well before you’re ready to hire a full-time product leader. Even in the earlier days of your product development, product consultants can provide execution oversight and product operations leadership to help you get the right foundational elements in place.?

We’ve heard numerous founders say that they only wish they had found us earlier in their journey. They could have avoided so much confusion, frustration, unnecessary spin, and so many other challenges startups often experience. Fractional or part-time product involvement is not only available, but it’s also incredibly valuable at the early stages. The alternatives are risky and hard and can be avoided.?

Misconception 2: Consultants won’t be as invested as employees

There’s a common myth that consultants float on the surface of your business, touching base with the bare minimum effort—unlike employees, who are seen as diving deep, with a vested interest in the long-term success of the company. In truth, a dedicated consultant often matches the commitment of full-time employees, if not exceeding it in various places.

Consider the nature of a consultant’s role: their professional reputation and future business rely heavily on the success and satisfaction of every client they serve. This drives them to invest fully in your product's success. Their engagement may be time-bound, but within that period, their focus is laser-sharp, working not just on immediate tasks but also on leaving a lasting impact that speaks to their quality of work.

As we’ve touched on in earlier sections, consultants bring a level of objectivity that is sometimes lost on full-time employees. They are positioned uniquely to provide frank, unbiased opinions that employees may hesitate to express due to internal politics or career implications. This objective insight often leads to innovative solutions and strategies that an internal team might overlook, purely because consultants are trained to look beyond the horizon, untethered by company culture or the status quo.

It’s also worth noting that consultants are adept at cultivating an environment of trust and accountability—key ingredients for investment and ownership. They understand that their actions and advice need to foster a culture where the product thrives long after they've moved on. This means they're not just invested in the product but in the team's ability to sustain and grow the product independently.

Misconception 3: Consultants will take over the product

Some startups may fear that bringing in a product management consultant means giving up control over their product. It's certainly possible for an inexperienced or overly ambitious consultant to behave like they are the CEO of the product. However, a great product management consultant will work alongside the existing team to enhance their capabilities and help them make informed decisions. They will teach the team how to fish, not do the fishing for the team, like the way we helped Coterie grow their product team from 2 to 16 people. They also bring new, objective, and often very innovative ideas about the product. Since they haven't been embedded in the organization for long, they may look at it through a different lens with different experiences. This often adds valuable ideas, questions, or solutions to consider as the product evolves.?

Misconception 4: Consultants are too expensive for startups

An ineffective consultant is the last thing any business needs, especially a startup. However, a primary reason to bring in some outside help is often to increase top-line revenue or to improve the bottom line. They can help avoid costly mistakes, speed up product development, and improve the product's market fit. Many consultants offer flexible and fractional pricing to models to accommodate startups and their ever-changing needs.

While upfront costs might seem high, engaging with a product management consultant can help you avoid costly risks & pitfalls, optimize processes, reduce time-to-market, and increase profitability in the long run. Their expertise can help identify and mitigate potential risks and roadblocks early in the product lifecycle, saving costs that would otherwise accrue due to inefficiencies or mistakes. So, while consultants charge for their services, their value far outweighs the cost.?

Misconception 5: Consultants only provide theoretical advice

Some startups may believe that consultants only provide high-level, theoretical advice that does not apply to their specific situation. Feeling skeptical towards external advisors is understandable if you've had lousy consulting experiences or heard horror stories. It can be frustrating to seek help and not receive the support you need. There's also a pervasive narrative in the startup ecosystem that values in-house, ground-up knowledge over external input, fostering a belief that solutions should be as bespoke and original as the product or service being developed. That line of thinking is known more commonly as the Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome. NIH syndrome occurs when we prioritize our ideas over those outside our group.

Consider a scenario: a product feature launch doesn't generate the anticipated customer engagement. A good consultant will sift through your analytics, navigate through the user experience, and evaluate your data to turn strategic advice into tangible actions. They’ll draw on a greater volume of experience to pull out relevant solutions and learnings for your situation. We recently worked with Alo Yoga on an initiative aimed at reducing returns. A solution had been proposed, but when our product consultant started digging, she found a different root cause of the issue and suggested an alternative solution focused on presenting better sizing data to customers. The results were immediate, and these improvements have had a 7 figure impact on revenue to date.

So, while the strategic insights may have a theoretical foundation, the application is anything but. It's rooted deeply in your product's specific context, challenges, and opportunities, ensuring that the advice is relevant and readily actionable.

Misconception 6: Consultants don't understand our product or market well enough

A common belief is that external consultants might not grasp the nuances of a particular business or industry. It's part of what fuels the NIH syndrome, too. In reality, experienced consultants often bring a wealth of knowledge from working across various industries. By nature, consultants see a much higher volume of products, organization structures, operational challenges, etc. due to the fact that they change jobs (clients) far more often than FTE’s do.?

This is where some of the real magic (value) in consultants lies. The wider breadth of experience they bring, paired with the ability to apply the most contextually relevant knowledge in each situation is gold. They've seen patterns, what works and what doesn't, which can help avoid common mistakes. They can provide fresh eyes and unbiased insights that the internal teams might overlook. They employ frameworks and methodologies to understand your business's unique challenges and dynamics quickly. These improvements benefit the company and teams in so many ways, including reduced turnover, improved morale, increased productivity, and lower overall costs. In the rare situation that we encounter a challenge, we could use some help (we aren’t perfect, after all), we collaborate with our team of product experts, and 9.9 times out of 10, someone has the knowledge and experience to help solve the problem.?

Misconception 7: Consultants are only for big companies

Some startups may believe consultants are only helpful for large, established companies. However, startups can significantly benefit from a consultant's expertise. When you're in the early stage or operating lean, it's even more important to have some level of guidance, expertise, and support to ensure you're working on the right things most efficiently and positioning your product for growth. One great thing about consultants is that they're often flexible and/or fractional, meaning they can guide critical areas like product strategy, market positioning, and growth tactics tailored explicitly to startups, all without the need to commit to full-time hiring. Bonus - We even help clients determine when to hire and for what roles, ensuring they can grow their team at the optimal time and with the right people.?

One of our favorite types of engagements is with a post-seed or Series A startup experiencing sudden growth. We’ve done a number of these in the last 24 months. These companies are growing, they usually don’t have enough internal product expertise, and they have a hard time envisioning exactly how to get from here to there. We partner with them to address their most pressing needs right away (high-priority work, gap coverage, a reorg, process optimizations, etc.) and better understand their product, culture, and company. We help them avoid hasty hiring that often leads to mistakes, and incurring unnecessary tech debt from a lack of sufficient planning & oversight.?

Once we’ve stabilized things, we help them craft a relevant hiring plan, and job descriptions that are specific to their needs and that don’t read like every other generic product JD out there. We even help them hire their long-term team, get them effectively onboarded and immersed, and off they go. Not only is this hugely valuable to the company and its product in the immediate term, but they are set up for longer-term growth and have confidence in their product org moving forward. Plus they avoid so many common mistakes and the associated opportunity costs. We love a good win-win.

Many assume that only big corporations can benefit from or afford consulting. However, startups and small businesses can also derive significant value by tapping into the specialized knowledge of product management consultants and the opportunity to leverage their expertise in a more flexible model. They can guide businesses in honing their product strategies, identifying customer needs, and optimizing resource allocation, which can be crucial for smaller entities with limited resources.

Misconception 8: Our technology/product is enough to win the market

At the heart of every startup is a genuine belief in their product. We think, "Hey if we build something amazing, won't people just naturally flock to it?" The dream is simple: create a good product that sells itself. After all, who wouldn't want to mirror the success stories of brands like Krispy Kreme, Costco, or Lululemon? They've seemingly cracked the code, letting their products and customer experiences do the talking.

There's also the buzz around product-led growth (PLG) strategies. Loom, for example, is using PLG effectively, leveraging its video-sharing capabilities to take the lead in driving growth. But here's the thing: it's about more than having a stellar product. Loom's success with PLG took time. They dove deep, experimented, refined, and iterated. It's an approach heavily reliant on product practices. (Congrats to them on their acquisition by Atlassian!)

If your strategy isn't PLG, or you're just relying on the product's brilliance alone, you'll find the market a tough nut to crack. A fantastic product is a great start, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. To make an impact, you need a comprehensive approach that includes market positioning, understanding your audience, and crafting a go-to-market strategy beyond the product.?

Having a great product doesn't guarantee success. Consultants not only help in crafting product strategy but also assist in creating a go-to-market strategy, identifying the right target audience, validating direction with customers, positioning, pricing, and promotional strategies, ensuring that the product doesn't just meet the market but thrives in it. One of our clients, Coterie Baby, spent 2 years of research & development learning how to make the best diapers. But, not enough customers in the market for diapers knew that. Frank Yu, their CEO, quickly realized that their small team needed help with building a direct-to-consumer digital experience to really grow and scale. When we started working together, they had no internal product management expertise. They needed strategic and tactical help to establish a roadmap, create product development processes, and increase cross-functional alignment. Over the next 18 months, our engagement evolved from initial product launch to helping them establish a hiring process. Now their in-house product development team has grown to 16+. The number of new orders has almost doubled. We've also seen the number of repeat customers increase by 65%.

Misconception 9: Consultants will slow us down by being disruptive and time-consuming

Startups often operate at a fast pace, and there may be concerns that bringing in a consultant will slow down progress. However, a good consultant can speed up the process by helping clarify the product vision, prioritize features, and streamline the development process. They also onboard to new projects regularly, so it typically happens faster and with more urgency to make an impact and create value quickly. With the fresh perspective they bring to the team and product, they can also often identify opportunities for improvement within the structure of the org, the way teams collaborate, culture and morale, alignment on goals, and many other impactful areas.

While change can be challenging, consultants often utilize structured, data-driven approaches to manage transitions smoothly and minimize disruption. They work collaboratively with internal teams, ensuring alignment and providing support throughout the product development cycle, facilitating smoother delivery and overall improvements to the teams' performance and outcomes.

Misconception 10: Product management consulting only focuses on product development

They're process-heavy and impersonal, and they're here to whip us into shape so we work faster and deliver more for the product. These are all familiar and valid concerns.?

The scope of product management consulting extends well beyond just product development. Consultants can assist with strategy formulation, market analysis, product positioning, pricing, launch strategies, and even post-launch analysis to ensure the product continues to succeed and evolve. But that's all related to the overall product development lifecycle.?

There's also a whole set of critical EQ and human-related benefits that great consultants bring. Hear me out…It can be challenging for an FTE to give tough feedback to a manager or leadership team. Teams often have difficulty trusting leadership, speaking up, or feeling heard. There are power dynamics, politics, cultural factors, and a slew of other possible reasons teams struggle to perform. A great consultant is good at building relationships, listening to people, seeing patterns or nuances, and looking beyond the work itself for opportunities. We can shine a light on things that may be tucked away in the corner or buried under a few layers of dust. Valuable insights and opportunities that can deliver value beyond your product development are often hidden under trust or accountability issues that impartial folks can help improve.

A while back we worked with a couple of clients who had the goal of getting their product teams to be more innovative and come up with ideas that would better move the needle. After much consideration & observation, we found that the teams actually had no shortage of great ideas. But they weren’t speaking up or sharing them with leadership. The ideas weren’t making it onto the roadmap or into intake discussions. So we turned our focus to why that was. We learned they felt their ideas never went anywhere, they didn’t feel heard, or that they were shut down when suggesting riskier options. Folks were very risk averse, without considering potential upsides or mitigation plans and giving new things a try (or at least a test).? After experiencing this for long enough, the teams finally just quit speaking up and actively participating in this process. This is another great example of consultants joining a team to seemingly solve one set of problems, only to discover there was a different problem altogether that required a very different solution. These perspectives and relationships can be hugely valuable in getting to the core of what’s holding a team or product back, and solving the right problems.?

Dispelling myths is just the beginning

Startups ready to take their product to the next level should not be afraid to consider a consultant as their next strategic move. Whether it’s refining your go-to-market strategy, optimizing your product development operations, or enhancing team dynamics, the time is now to explore how a consultant’s targeted expertise can catalyze growth. Imagine where your startup could be in six months with the right strategy.

The first step is to identify your specific challenges and opportunities where external expertise could be most beneficial. Many of our clients start with an assessment. We call them discovery sprints, where we work with you to create a customized and actionable plan to realize your vision.

Curious about what strategic consulting can do for you? Let's have a conversation about where your product could go next – no strings attached, just endless possibilities.