AI for Product Managers: Part 1 - Discovery

As you ideate and validate your product idea, use AI to help you research and define your product strategy. The guide below demonstrates how to use AI during the discovery phase. (I'll be sharing future AI guides in other stages of the product lifecycle.)

Context:?

• You’re a B2B Product Manager and have observed that your current users - Sellers - need help with meeting scheduling.
• This is a hypothesis that needs validation through real data and user insights. (Remember, AI should only augment or kickstart your discovery process; direct user interaction is essential.)
• You're in the Discovery phase
• Full Gemini conversation: https://gemini.google.com/app/98eb1cba3b389321

For each Discovery topic below, you will find the exact Prompt and summary.

• Problem Validation
• Competitive landscape
• Market
• Persona /Audience
• Vision
• Needs
• Features
• Business Opportunity
• Obstacles / Risk
• GTM

Problem Validation

Prompt:?

You are a B2B Product Manager considering building a meeting scheduling service for your Seller persona. Your job is to provide evidence that this is indeed a problem in the market and a growing trend. You should clearly list: 

-How big of a problem this is for Seller
-Is it a growing problem
-Competitors        

Summary: While the market is competitive, there's a clear opportunity to build a meeting scheduling service specifically designed for the needs of B2B sellers. By focusing on deep CRM integrations, advanced automation features, and a user-friendly interface, we can capture a significant share of this growing market and empower our sellers to be more productive and successful.

Competitive Landscape

Prompt:?

You are a B2B Product Manager considering building a meeting scheduling service for your Seller persona. Your job is to provide insight into the competitive landscape. You should clearly list:

-Meeting Scheduling services
-Market share breakdown
-Pricing in a table
-Features in a table        

Summary:?

• Calendly
• Acuity Scheduling (acquired by GoDaddy)
• Doodle
• SavvyCal
• Chili Piper (focuses more on lead routing and scheduling for sales teams)

CRM-Integrated Solutions (Ecosystem Focus):

• Salesforce Meetings (part of Sales Cloud)
• HubSpot Meetings (part of HubSpot CRM)
• Zoho Meeting (part of Zoho CRM Suite)

Sales Engagement Platforms (Sales Workflow Integration): Outreach

• Salesloft
• Gong (includes meeting intelligence alongside scheduling)

Market

Prompt:

You are a B2B Product Manager considering building a meeting scheduling service for your Seller persona. Your job is to provide insight into the market landscape. You should clearly list:

-Market Size and Growth
-Target Audience - Sellers
-Market Segmentation
-Market Trends        

Summary:

Market Size & Growth: The overall scheduling software market is large and growing, driven by remote work, automation demand, customer experience focus, and technological advancements. The B2B sales segment is a significant portion of this.

Target Audience: B2B sellers, including sales reps, managers, BDRs, AEs, and enterprise sellers across various industries.

Market Segmentation: Can be segmented by company size, industry, sales complexity, tech adoption, and sales team structure.

Market Trends: AI-powered scheduling, deep CRM integrations, mobile-first experience, video conferencing integration, strong UX, data analytics, enhanced security, and personalization are key trends shaping the market.

Persona / Audience

Prompt:?

You are now a User Researcher considering building a meeting scheduling service for your Seller persona. Your job is to gather insights about Sellers.
You should clearly list the following things:

-Empathy Map Quadrants for Sellers
-What key pain points do Sellers when scheduling meetings
-What are Sellers currently using when scheduling meetings
-What do Sellers desire for an exceptional scheduling meeting experience        

Summary:

Empathy Map: Sellers say they waste time scheduling, think it's inefficient, do a mix of manual and automated scheduling, and feel frustrated.

Pain Points: Scheduling is time-consuming, complex, prone to errors, lacks CRM integration, and can negatively impact the prospect experience.

Current Tools: Sellers use email, calendar apps, basic scheduling links, CRM-integrated tools, sales engagement platforms, and phone calls.

Desired Experience: Sellers want automation, seamless CRM integration, easy booking for prospects, mobile access, video conferencing integration, customization, team scheduling features, reporting, reliability, security, and time zone management. Essentially, they want a tool that saves them time and makes scheduling frictionless.

Vision

Prompt:

You are a B2B Product Manager considering building a meeting scheduling service for your Seller persona. Given what we learned about the user, market, and competitors, your job is to craft a Vision statement.        

Summary:

Our vision is to empower B2B sellers to reclaim their time and focus on what matters most: building relationships and closing deals. We will achieve this by creating the most intelligent, intuitive, and deeply integrated meeting scheduling platform designed specifically for the complexities and demands of the modern sales professional.

Needs

Prompt:

You are a B2B Product Manager and building a Meeting Scheduler tool comparable to Calendly. Your job is to interview a user named Sonia who is a Seller about her needs for Meeting Scheduler and provide a summary. You want to list her: 

-Problems
-Goals
-desired future        

Summary:?

Sonia needs a meeting scheduling tool that is automated, integrates seamlessly with her CRM, handles time zones intelligently, is customizable, facilitates team scheduling, is mobile-friendly, and provides reporting capabilities. She wants to eliminate the friction and frustration associated with her current scheduling process and free up her time to focus on selling.

Features

Prompt:

You are a B2B Product Manager and building a Meeting Scheduler tool comparable to Calendly. Your job is to create an MVP to test our hypothesis. Clearly list:

-MVP Features
-MVP Features definition
-Put in a table        

Summary:

Business Opportunity

Prompt:

You are a B2B Product Manager and building a Meeting Scheduler tool comparable to Calendly. Your job is to define the business opportunity. Clearly list:

-Revenue potential
-Strategic advantage
-Secondary benefits        

Summary:?

Revenue Potential: Primarily through tiered subscription pricing (per user, value-based, freemium potential), with opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

Strategic Advantages: Increased sales productivity, improved customer experience, competitive differentiation, data-driven insights, ecosystem integration, and scalability.

Secondary Benefits: Enhanced brand image, reduced administrative overhead, improved internal communication, better forecasting, increased data accuracy, stronger customer relationships, and potential for platform expansion. Essentially, the tool offers significant potential for revenue generation and provides valuable benefits to both sellers and their companies.

Obstacles / Risk

Prompt:

You are a B2B Product Manager and building a Meeting Scheduler tool comparable to Calendly. Your job is to identify obstacles and risks to launching an MVP. Clearly list:

-Engineering challenges
-Distribution challenges
-Adoption challenges        

Summary:?

Launching a meeting scheduler MVP has several potential obstacles. Engineering challenges include complex calendar and CRM integrations, real-time updates, scalability, security, mobile responsiveness, and avoiding technical debt. Distribution challenges involve reaching the target audience, navigating the competitive landscape, building initial traction, and effective marketing. Adoption challenges consist of getting users to change habits, ensuring a good user experience, integrating with workflows, demonstrating value, gathering feedback, and measuring success. Essentially, the MVP needs to be technically sound, reach the right people, and be compelling enough for them to use it.

GTM

Prompt:

You are a Go-to-Market Product Marketer. Your job is to design the GTM strategy for our Meeting Scheduler product. Your job is to organize and prioritize the various GTM elements based on the 4P's Framework of Marketing (Product, Price, Place, Promotion).

-Product: Define the product's key features and differentiators
-Price: Decide on a pricing strategy and any potential discounts or offers
-Place: Identify the ideal channels and platforms for distribution
-Promotion: Outline the promotional tactics and campaigns        

Summary:?

This GTM strategy for a meeting scheduler uses the 4Ps framework. Product: Focuses on automated scheduling, calendar integrations, reminders, CRM integration, customizable booking pages, and mobile responsiveness. The value proposition is saving sellers time and improving prospect experience. Price: A tiered subscription model (potentially with a freemium option) is proposed, with launch discounts and a referral program. Place: Distribution will be through direct sales, online channels (website, social media, SaaS marketplaces), and partnerships. Promotion: A pre-launch buzz campaign (landing page, early access, content), a strong launch campaign (Product Hunt, press release, social media, email, webinars), and ongoing marketing efforts (content, social media, testimonials, paid advertising) are planned. The strategy emphasizes iterative refinement based on market feedback.

Go / No-Go

Prompt:

Based on all the discovery we've performed, provide a Go / No Go decision        

Summary:?

Based on this make a Go / No Go decision

Based on the provided information, the recommendation is a Go decision for the Meeting Scheduler MVP launch, with the following caveats and action items:

Reasons for Go:

• Clear Market Need: The research indicates a significant pain point for B2B sellers regarding meeting scheduling, validating the need for such a tool.
• Defined Target Audience: We have a clear understanding of our target persona (B2B sellers) and their specific needs.
• Viable MVP: The defined MVP focuses on core functionalities and allows for rapid testing of key hypotheses.
• Comprehensive GTM Strategy: The outlined GTM strategy addresses the 4Ps of marketing and provides a solid framework for launch and ongoing marketing efforts.
• Revenue Potential: The proposed subscription model offers a clear path to monetization and scalability.

Business Case

Prompt:

Can you make a business case document from this conversation?        

Business Case: Meeting Scheduler for B2B Sellers

1. Executive Summary:

This document presents the business case for developing a meeting scheduling tool specifically designed for B2B sellers. Market research indicates a significant need for such a solution, as sellers struggle with inefficient and time-consuming scheduling processes. The proposed tool will automate scheduling, integrate seamlessly with CRM systems, and improve the overall prospect experience, leading to increased sales productivity and revenue. A phased approach, starting with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), is recommended to validate key hypotheses and minimize risk.

2. Problem Statement:

B2B sellers spend a significant amount of time on administrative tasks, including scheduling meetings. This reduces their selling time and negatively impacts revenue generation. Current scheduling methods are often inefficient, involving numerous emails, phone calls, and manual calendar comparisons. This leads to frustration, scheduling errors, and a potentially negative impression on prospects. Existing solutions often lack the specific features and integrations required by B2B sales teams.

3. Proposed Solution:

We propose developing a meeting scheduling tool tailored to the needs of B2B sellers. The tool will automate the scheduling process, integrate seamlessly with popular CRM systems (Salesforce initially), and offer a user-friendly interface for both sellers and prospects. Key features of the MVP include:

• Automated scheduling link sharing and self-service booking.
• Integration with Google Calendar and Outlook.
• Automated meeting reminders.
• Basic CRM integration (Salesforce).
• Customizable booking page (basic branding).
• Mobile-responsive design.

4. Market Analysis:

• Market Size and Growth: The market for scheduling software is substantial and growing, driven by remote work, increased demand for automation, and a focus on customer experience. The B2B sales segment represents a significant portion of this market.
• Target Audience: B2B sellers, including sales representatives, managers, BDRs, AEs, and enterprise sellers across various industries.
• Competitive Landscape: While existing scheduling tools address some needs, there is an opportunity to differentiate by focusing specifically on the complexities and integrations required by B2B sales teams.

5. Business Opportunity:

• Revenue Potential: A tiered subscription model (potentially with a freemium option) will be used, offering various features and user limits. This allows for scalable revenue generation as the user base grows.
• Strategic Advantages: Increased sales productivity and revenue. Improved customer experience and conversion rates. Competitive differentiation. Data-driven insights into scheduling and sales performance. Integration with existing sales ecosystems.
• Secondary Benefits: Enhanced brand image. Reduced administrative overhead. Improved internal communication.

6. Go-to-Market Strategy:

A comprehensive GTM strategy will be executed, focusing on the 4Ps of marketing:

• Product: Focus on core scheduling features and integrations relevant to B2B sellers.
• Price: Tiered subscription pricing, with potential discounts and a referral program.
• Place: Direct sales, online channels (website, social media, SaaS marketplaces), and partnerships.
• Promotion: Pre-launch buzz, a strong launch campaign, and ongoing marketing efforts.

7. Financial Projections (Illustrative - Requires Detailed Analysis):

• Development Costs: [Insert estimated development costs for MVP]
• Marketing Costs: [Insert estimated marketing costs for MVP launch]
• Revenue Projections: [Insert projected revenue figures based on estimated user adoption and pricing]
• ROI: [Calculate projected ROI based on costs and revenue]

8. Risk Assessment and Mitigation:

• Engineering Challenges: Mitigated through thorough planning, robust testing, and experienced development team.
• Distribution Challenges: Addressed through a well-defined GTM strategy and targeted marketing efforts.
• Adoption Challenges: Mitigated through user research, iterative design, and clear value proposition.
• Competition: Differentiation achieved by focusing on specific B2B sales needs and integrations.

9. Recommendation:

The recommendation is a Go decision for the Meeting Scheduler MVP, with the following critical action items:

• Validate Pricing: Conduct thorough market research.
• Refine Messaging: A/B test messaging for maximum impact.
• Secure Early Adopters: Prioritize an effective early access program.
• CRM Integration Focus: Ensure seamless and robust integration with Salesforce.
• Performance Testing: Rigorous testing is crucial.
• Security Audit: Prioritize data security and compliance.
• Go/No-Go Checkpoint (Post-MVP): Establish clear success metrics and schedule a decision point after a defined period.

Conclusion

AI accelerated our product validation and strategy definition. It enabled us to quickly develop a clear plan, effectively articulate our vision to stakeholders and building buy-in.

This structured approach and the use of prompts allow you to go from initial idea to a concrete plan in hours, rather than the days it used to take.

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(I'll be sharing future guides on using AI in other stages of the product lifecycle.)